mu4e Dashboard

mu4e dashboard provides a new mu4e org link type that allows to execute various mu4e queries when clicked. Such links can be organised into a dashboard, by simply writing an org file as shown below:

Screenshot 1: Full page dashboard

Screenshot 2: Side dashboard

Installation

Evaluate the buffer and you’re good to go. It is your responsibility to write an org file with links pointing to varius queries on your mailboxes.

Configuration

Links

The link syntax is quite intuitive:

[[mu:query|format|count][description]]

query must be a valid mu4e query and count (optional) is the maximum number of results to be returned. When the link is clicked, mu4e-headers-search is called with the proper query.

[[mu:flag:unread][All unread]]
[[mu:flag:unread||10][Last 10 unread]]

format can be used to specify that query results are to be counted in order to update the description using the given format:

[[mu:flag:unread|%3d][---]]

With the example above, when the link is cliked, the --- part will be replaced by the number of unread mails.

Using mu4e-bookmarks

Queries can include references to mu4e-bookmarks. A bookmark is denoted with bm:<bookmarkName>

bookmarkName cannot contain spaces nor ]. A query can contain several bookmarks, but their expansion is not recursive.

For example, assuming the following bookmark exists:

(add-to-list 'mu4e-bookmarks
     '(:name "Unread"
           :query "flag:unread and not flag:trashed"
           :key ?f)
     t)

the dashboard query:

mu:bm:Unread and date:7d..now

will be expanded to:

mu:(flag:unread and not flag:trashed) and date:7d..now

Note that parenthesis are added around the bookmark to make sure the expansion is hygienic.

Key bindings

Keybindings can be configured using the KEYMAP keyword in your org file:

#+KEYMAP: key | elisp function

For example, if you want to bind ; to context switch, you would write:

#+KEYMAP: ; | mu4e-context-switch

Query test

In the provided dashboard.org, there’s a definition for a mu query that can be called directly inside the org file using org-babel. This can be convenient if you want to test a query before creating a link. Usage is quite simple:

#+CALL: query(flag:unread, 10)
#+RESULTS:

Just type C-c C-c on the call line and you should see query results under the RESULTS line.

Usage

To activate the dashboard, type mu4e-dashboard-mode. This will turn on mu4e-dashboard-mode minor mode and install any custom keybindings in the current buffer.

To edit the org file, you’ll need to turn off mu4e-dashboard-mode.

Related

There is a fork of this software which is designed to be used with notmuch instead of with mu4e. It replaces the standard notmuch-hello dashboard with an org-mode version. You can find it here.