# Himalaya vs meli

- Himalaya: Command-line email client written in Rust that lists, reads, sends and moves mail through shell commands with JSON output.
- meli: Terminal email client written in Rust with IMAP, JMAP, notmuch, Maildir, mbox and NNTP backends and TOML configuration.

## Differences

- Himalaya is a command-line program; meli is a full-screen terminal client.
- Only meli has built-in mbox and notmuch.
- On Windows, Himalaya runs natively and meli is not available.
- On BSD, Himalaya builds from source and meli runs natively.
- meli has mouse support; Himalaya does not.
- meli has OpenPGP; Himalaya does not.
- meli has Vim-style keys; Himalaya does not.
- Configuration: Himalaya uses TOML file; interactive setup wizard, and meli uses TOML file (config.toml).

## Side by side

| | Himalaya | meli |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Interface | Command-line tools and prompts | Full-screen terminal interface |
| Language | Rust | Rust |
| License | MIT or Apache 2.0 | EUPL 1.2 or GPL 3.0 or later |
| Linux | Native | Native |
| macOS | Native | Native |
| Windows | Native | Not supported |
| BSD | Build from source | Native |
| Android | Not supported | Not supported |
| IMAP | Yes | Yes |
| POP3 | No | No |
| SMTP | Yes | Yes |
| JMAP | Yes | Yes |
| Maildir | Yes | Yes |
| mbox | No | Yes |
| notmuch | No | Yes |
| OpenPGP | No | Yes |
| S/MIME | No | No |
| OAuth2 sign-in | via script | via script |
| Threads | through the IMAP, JMAP and Gmail subcommands | Yes |
| Search | built-in query syntax across backends; server-side for IMAP and JMAP | built-in; sqlite3 index by default; notmuch queries |
| HTML mail | No | via filter command, w3m by default |
| Mouse | No | Yes |
| Multiple accounts | Yes | Yes |
| Offline use | with the Maildir backend and a sync tool such as mbsync | IMAP header cache in sqlite3; full offline use with Maildir and mbsync |
| Calendar | No | No |
| Contacts | No | built-in contact list; reads vCard and mutt alias files |
| Vim-style keys | No | Yes |
| Configuration | TOML file; interactive setup wizard | TOML file (config.toml) |

Pages: [Himalaya](https://terminalemail.com/clients/himalaya/index.md), [meli](https://terminalemail.com/clients/meli/index.md)