Using Mutt with GPG

Mutt is a great command line email client, but it does not offer a built-in way to store passwords. But that’s where GPG comes in. A while back I wrote an article on how to use GPG to store your passwords: GPG Usage, this is a more practical note about using GPG to store your passwords for mutt. This note implies that you already have installed and configured GPG (which you can learn how to do in above linked article).

First you will have to record a password to a GPG file. Replace $PASSWORD with your password and $ACCOUNT with a desired account alias. You probably want to prefix this command with a space, to avoid writing your password to a history file.

echo '$PASSWORD' | gpg --use-agent -e > ~/.passwd/$ACCOUNT.gpg

Next, open your ~/.muttrc file and add following line:

set imap_pass = "`gpg --use-agent --quiet --batch -d ~/.passwd/$ACCOUNT.gpg`"

Again, replace $ACCOUNT with the same account alias you specified earlier. Now you don’t have to re-enter your password every time you start Mutt.