Sending emails from cmd line

Sep 1, 2024

You can send emails from cmd line in Ubuntu using mutt and gmail (which is useful for scripting notifications for example) as follows.

  1. Set up Gmail app password

    • Google account -> Security -> Enable 2-Step Verification
    • Google account -> Security -> 2-Step Verification -> App passwords -> Create
    • Still, the above may not show app-specific password option, go to https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords directly.
    • App password should be a 16-character code

  2. Set up mutt

    • Install mutt
    sudo apt-get install mutt
    • Create mutt config file ~/.muttrc with the following content
    set from = "{your-email}@gmail.com"
set realname = "{sender}"
set smtp_url = "smtp://{your-email}@[email protected]:587/"
set smtp_pass = "{Gmail app password}"
set ssl_starttls = yes
set ssl_force_tls = yes

    Make sure to keep Gmail app password as it is, do not remove spaces. It should be **** **** **** ****.

  3. Test

echo "Hello there" | mutt -s "test subject" recipient@example.com

Using mutt to mail to your designated sms email is basically how you programmatically send SMS notifications.