I’ve used Mutt for years, but recently had to rebuild my configuration from scratch. In hindsight, that turned out to be a blessing. Instead of carrying forward years of accumulated tweaks and workarounds, I rebuilt it cleanly with a modular structure and a couple of genuinely useful improvements: account switching and colour theme switching.

A Modular Structure

Rather than keeping everything in one monolithic ~/.muttrc, I now split things into:

  • ~/.muttrc (main entry point)
  • ~/.mutt/common/ (shared settings, keybinds, colours)
  • ~/.mutt/accounts/ (per-account configuration)

The main config simply sources the shared settings and then loads a default account:

1
2
3
4
5

source ~/.mutt/common/settings.muttrc
source ~/.mutt/common/keybinds.muttrc
source ~/.mutt/common/colors.muttrc

source ~/.mutt/accounts/roland.muttrc

This makes the layout readable and maintainable. Each account file only contains what differs — typically from, imap_user, and the sendmail command.

Switching Between Mail Accounts

I run two mailboxes on the same domain:

  • roland@hillnet.co.nz
  • roland_lists@hillnet.co.nz

Each has its own IMAP login, but I use msmtp locally to relay mail via my internal server.

Each account file looks something like this:

1
2
3

set from      = "roland@hillnet.co.nz"
set imap_user = "roland@hillnet.co.nz"
set sendmail  = "/usr/bin/msmtp -t"

Switching between accounts is handled with simple macros:

1
2

macro index <F2> "<enter-command>source ~/.mutt/accounts/roland.muttrc<enter><change-folder>=INBOX<enter>" "Main account"
macro index <F3> "<enter-command>source ~/.mutt/accounts/roland_lists.muttrc<enter><change-folder>=INBOX<enter>" "Lists account"

Pressing F2 or F3 reloads the relevant account configuration and jumps to its inbox. Clean, fast, and no restarts required.

Colour Theme Switching

I also keep colour schemes in their own directory:

~/.mutt/colors/

Each theme is a separate file, for example:

modern-dark.muttrc
midnight-teal.muttrc

Switching themes is just as simple as switching accounts:

1
2

macro index <F5> ":source ~/.mutt/colors/modern-dark.muttrc\n" "Theme: Modern Dark"
macro index <F6> ":source ~/.mutt/colors/midnight-teal.muttrc\n" "Theme: Midnight Teal"

This makes it trivial to change the look of Mutt on the fly without touching the core configuration.

Why This Approach Works Well

  • The configuration is modular and easy to reason about.
  • Each account is isolated and self-contained.
  • Themes are independent of behaviour.
  • Everything can be version-controlled cleanly in Git.

Rebuilding from scratch forced me to understand each line again. The result is a much cleaner and more intentional setup than what I had before.

Sometimes losing a configuration is the best way to improve it.