Claws Mail is a
free and open-source
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...
,
C/
GTK
GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free and open-source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and prop ...
-based
e-mail client
An email client, email reader or, more formally, message user agent (MUA) or mail user agent is a computer program used to access and manage a user's email.
A web application which provides message management, composition, and reception functio ...
, which is both lightweight and highly configurable.
[ Claws Mail runs on both ]Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
[ and ]Unix-like
A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...
systems such as Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...
, BSD
The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Be ...
, and Solaris. It stores mail in the MH mailbox format. Plugins allow to read HTML mail, but there is none to compose HTML messages.[
]
Features
Claws Mail is also a News client
A newsreader is an application program that reads articles on Usenet distributed throughout newsgroups. Newsreaders act as clients which connect to a news server, via the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), to download articles and post new ar ...
and RSS aggregator. Further features – integrated or supplied via plugins
Plug-in, plug in or plugin may refer to:
* Plug-in (computing) is a software component that adds a specific feature to an existing computer program.
** Audio plug-in, adds audio signal processing features
** Photoshop plugin, a piece of software t ...
– include:[
*Search and filtering, optionally via ]Perl
Perl is a family of two High-level programming language, high-level, General-purpose programming language, general-purpose, Interpreter (computing), interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it ...
and Python scripting
*Security ( GPG, SSL SSL may refer to:
Entertainment
* RoboCup Small Size League, robotics football competition
* ''Sesame Street Live'', a touring version of the children's television show
* StarCraft II StarLeague, a Korean league in the video game
Natural language ...
, anti-phishing)
*Anti-spam (SpamAssassin
Apache SpamAssassin is a computer program used for e-mail spam filtering. It uses a variety of spam-detection techniques, including DNS and fuzzy checksum techniques, Bayesian filtering, external programs, blacklists and online databases. It is ...
, Bogofilter
Bogofilter is a mail filter that classifies e-mail as spam or ham (non-spam) by a statistical analysis of the message's header and content (body). The program is able to learn from the user's classifications and corrections. It was originally writ ...
)
*Per-folder preferences
*Optional external editor
*Templates for messages
*Themes support, customisable toolbar
The toolbar, also called a bar or standard toolbar (originally known as ribbon) is a graphical control element on which on-screen icons can be used. A toolbar often allows for quick access to functions that are commonly used in the program. Some ...
s, X-Face
An X-Face is a small bitmap (48 × 48 pixels, black and white) image which is added to a Usenet posting or e-mail message, typically showing a picture of the author's face. The image data is included in the posting as encoded text, and attached ...
support, foldable quotes
*Viewers for HTML mail ( Dillo, Gtkhtml2, Fancy (WebKit
WebKit is a browser engine developed by Apple and primarily used in its Safari web browser, as well as on the iOS and iPadOS version of any web browser. WebKit is also used by the BlackBerry Browser, PlayStation consoles beginning from the ...
), LiteHTML)
*TNEF
Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format or TNEF is a proprietary email attachment format used by Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange Server. An attached file with TNEF encoding is most often named ''winmail.dat'' or ''win.dat'', and has a M ...
attachment parser
*PDF viewer
*Various notification plugins, e. g. trayicon and LED
A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor device that emits light when current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy in the form of photons. The color of the light (cor ...
handler
*Archiving, import/export from standard formats[
*Support for ]Mbox
Mbox is a generic term for a family of related file formats used for holding collections of email messages. It was first implemented in Fifth Edition Unix.
All messages in an mbox mailbox are concatenated and stored as plain text in a single fi ...
mailbox format
*Calendaring with events as kind of messages
History
Development started in April 2001 as ''Sylpheed-Claws'' off the development version of Sylpheed
Sylpheed is an open-source e-mail client and news client licensed under GNU GPL-2.0-or-later with the library part ''LibSylph'' under GNU LGPL-2.1-or-later. It provides easy configuration and an abundance of features. It stores mail in the MH Mes ...
, where new features could be tested and debugged. In August 2005 Claws Mail forked completely from Sylpheed.
See also
*Sylpheed
Sylpheed is an open-source e-mail client and news client licensed under GNU GPL-2.0-or-later with the library part ''LibSylph'' under GNU LGPL-2.1-or-later. It provides easy configuration and an abundance of features. It stores mail in the MH Mes ...
*List of Usenet newsreaders
Usenet is a worldwide, distributed discussion system that uses the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP). Programs called newsreaders are used to read and post messages (called ''articles'' or ''posts'', and collectively termed ''news'') to one or ...
*Comparison of Usenet newsreaders
This is a comparison of Usenet newsreaders.
Legend:
See also
* ''alt.*'' hierarchy
* List of newsgroups
* List of Usenet newsreaders
* News server
* Newsreader (Usenet)
* Network News Transfer Protocol
* Usenet newsgroup
References
{{ ...
*Comparison of email clients
The following tables compare general and technical features of notable email client programs.
General
Basic general information about the clients: creator/company, O/S, licence, & interface. Clients listed on a light purple background are no long ...
*Comparison of feed aggregators
The following is a comparison of RSS feed aggregators. Often e-mail programs and web browsers have the ability to display RSS feeds. They are listed here, too.
Many BitTorrent clients support RSS feeds for broadcasting (see Comparison of BitTo ...
References
External links
*
{{Aggregators
Email client software for Linux
Email clients that use GTK
Free email software
Free software programmed in C
Free Usenet clients
GNOME Applications