Himalaya vs mblaze
Himalaya: Command-line email client written in Rust that lists, reads, sends and moves mail through shell commands with JSON output.
mblaze: Set of small Unix utilities for reading, searching, threading and composing mail stored in Maildir folders.
Differences
- Only Himalaya has built-in IMAP, SMTP and JMAP.
- On Windows, Himalaya runs natively and mblaze runs through WSL.
- On BSD, Himalaya builds from source and mblaze runs natively.
- mblaze has OpenPGP; Himalaya does not.
- Himalaya has OAuth2 sign-in; mblaze does not.
- Himalaya is written in Rust; mblaze in C.
- Configuration: Himalaya uses TOML file; interactive setup wizard, and mblaze uses ~/.mblaze/profile (header-style key: value lines).
Side by side
| Himalaya | mblaze | |
|---|---|---|
| Interface | Command-line tools and prompts | Command-line tools and prompts |
| Language | Rust | C |
| License | MIT or Apache 2.0 | CC0 1.0 and MIT |
| Latest version | 2.1.0 | 1.4 |
| Linux | Native | Native |
| macOS | Native | Native |
| Windows | Native | Through WSL |
| BSD | Build from source | Native |
| Android | No | No |
| IMAP | Yes | Through a separate tool |
| POP3 | No | Through a separate tool |
| SMTP | Yes | Through a separate tool |
| JMAP | Yes | No |
| Maildir | Yes | Yes |
| mbox | No | No |
| notmuch | No | No |
| OpenPGP | No | via contrib scripts |
| S/MIME | No | No |
| OAuth2 sign-in | via script | No |
| Threads | through the IMAP, JMAP and Gmail subcommands | Yes |
| Search | built-in query syntax across backends; server-side for IMAP and JMAP | mpick and magrep filter messages by headers, flags and content |
| HTML mail | No | via a filter command in ~/.mblaze/filter used by mshow |
| Mouse | No | No |
| Multiple accounts | Yes | via separate Maildirs and profile settings |
| Offline use | with the Maildir backend and a sync tool such as mbsync | full; works only on local Maildir |
| Calendar | No | No |
| Contacts | No | No |
| Vim-style keys | No | No |
| Configuration | TOML file; interactive setup wizard | ~/.mblaze/profile (header-style key: value lines) |
Which to choose
Choose Himalaya for
- Every action is a shell command with optional JSON output, suited to scripts
- Native Windows binary through Scoop and GitHub releases
- Also supports JMAP, the Gmail API and Microsoft Graph
Watch out for
- No interactive interface; himalaya-tui is still pre-release
- Composing rich MIME or PGP messages needs the separate mml tool
- Version 2 dropped the notmuch and sendmail backends
Choose mblaze for
- Each command does one job, so mail handling is easy to combine in pipes and scripts.
- Works directly on Maildir with no index or database to maintain.
- Small C programs with no external library dependencies.
Watch out for
- No built-in IMAP, POP3 or SMTP; needs mbsync and msmtp or similar tools.
- Command-line only, with no full-screen interface.
- OpenPGP and S/MIME handling relies on unsupported contrib scripts.
Questions
What is the difference between Himalaya and mblaze?
Only Himalaya has built-in IMAP, SMTP and JMAP. On Windows, Himalaya runs natively and mblaze runs through WSL. On BSD, Himalaya builds from source and mblaze runs natively.
Which runs on Windows, Himalaya or mblaze?
On Windows, Himalaya runs natively. On Windows, mblaze runs through WSL.
See also: Himalaya alternatives, mblaze alternatives.