Shark Mail

The simple filesystem-based email client

• Installation
• Configuration
• Receiving email
• Sending email

Installation

npm install --global shark-mail

Configuration

Shark Mail relies on a simple filesystem configuration. The following folders need to exist before launching Shark Mail...

~/sharkm
~/sharkm/outbox
~/sharkm/outbox/archive

Here's a quick oneliner to create the filesystem structure...

cd && mkdir sharkm && mkdir sharkm/outbox && mkdir sharkm/outbox/archive

Shark Mail also requires a configuration file for a few things...

1. Email credential configuration (the from email address)
2. Address book list

module.exports = {
  sender: {
    host: "smtp.gmail.com",
    port: 465,
    secure: true,
    auth: {
      user: "[e-mail]",
      pass: "password"
    }
  },
  addressBook: [
    { name: "Person1", email: "[e-mail]" },
    { name: "Person2", email: "[e-mail]" }
  ]
};

Currently the only supported provider is Gmail.

Receiving email

To receive email, you simply need to run...

sharkmail fetch

New emails that haven't been received and cached yet are created in ~/sharkm. A new file will be created for each email.

Sending email

Emails will be sent when you run...

sharkmail send

Emails that are sent will be in files in ~/sharkm/outbox with the file extension of *.email. All files that match ~/sharkm/outbox/*.email will attempt to be sent.

The file format for outbound emails is the following...

<email-address-or-address-book-name>
<email-subject>
<email-body>

In short, email address or address book name on line 1, email subject on line 2, and the rest of the file (lines 3+) is the message body.

💡 If you have a draft email that you don't want to accidentally send it's a good idea to have a different extension, such as *.email.draft and then remove draft when you're ready to send the email