In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to setup the Google recommended OAuth 2.0 way with Mutt.

Remember, the OAuth client setup should be an one-time step, it should be usable for your different email addresses on Gmail, that includes your work email if your employer choose Gmail as their email service provider, as long as you authorize permission during the OAuth App.

1. Login to your google account, navigate to https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/credentials and if this page says anything API not enabled, enable it.
2. In the credentials page, create a project.
3. After creating the project, you should be able to go to the OAuth consent screen tab, put something recognizable in the application name, click save.
4. Go back to “Credentials” page and click on “Create credentials” button and select OAuth client ID.
5. Select other and click create. You’ll be given an OAuth client ID and secret. You can view the id and secret anytime.

Now you’ve setup an OAuth client, it is time for mutt configuration.

Download oauth2.py from GitLab: https://gitlab.com/muttmua/mutt/-/blob/master/contrib/mutt_oauth2.py and make it executable. You’ll need to run the command to generate an OAuth token.

Fill your Google App client id and secret here: https://gitlab.com/muttmua/mutt/-/blob/5347d1c5c0f529ad7e1464ce9f1716d54ed9c31a/contrib/mutt_oauth2.py#L61 and Line 62.

Execute the following command to authorize yourself.

mutt_oauth2.py userid@myschool.edu.tokens --verbose --authorize

Open the web browser with the link given and authenticate yourself, login and grant permission.

The way I manage my files under ~/.mutt:

.
|-- accounts
|   |-- gmail.asc
|   |-- account2.asc
|   |-- account3.asc
|-- mailcap
|-- muttrc
|-- oauth2.py
...

The muttrc master config file only manage generic stuff such as header and format stuff, it also has some macro to map function keys to switch accounts. The actual accounts are under ~/.mutt/accounts folder with GPG encryption in ASCII.

The original gmail file should only contain account related stuff, such as IMAP and SMTP configuration. At the core the login lines should be:

set imap_user = "your@gmail.com" 
set imap_authenticators="oauthbearer"
set imap_oauth_refresh_command="~/.mutt/mutt_oauth2.py ~/.mutt/tokens/gmail"
set smtp_authenticators="oauthbearer"
set smtp_oauth_refresh_command="~/.mutt/mutt_oauth2.py ~/.mutt/tokens/gmail"
set smtp_url = "smtp://your@gmail.com@smtp.gmail.com:587/"
set from = "your@gmail.com" 
set realname = "Your Name"
set signature = "~/.mutt/signatures/mysig"

# Basic config, you can leave this as is 
set folder = "imaps://imap.gmail.com"
set spoolfile = "+INBOX"
set imap_check_subscribed 
set postponed = "+[Gmail]/Draft"
set record = ""
set header_cache=~/.mutt/cache/headers

You should be able to use mutt to view/send emails via Gmail using OAuth 2.0!

My primary OS is Fedora and right now I am using Fedora 27.

Strangely I failed to start mocp command once I installed moc, with a little searching, add ~/.moc/config file with the content:

TiMidity_Config = /etc/timidity.cfg

Make sure this config file has 600 permission or it will complain about insecure permission.

Then I would be able to use mocp in any directory.

MOC has Equalizer support, download the eqset from their official website and the presets to ~/.moc/eqsets

I’ve customed some configuration that happens to be useful for me. I will add comments about them below it.

unbind C-b
set -g prefix C-w

I have removed the default Ctrl+b key binding and made it to ctrl+w.

set -g default-terminal "screen-256color"
set -g status-utf8 on
set-option -g default-shell /bin/zsh

Charset and terminal colour setting.

#up
bind-key k select-pane -U
#down
bind-key j select-pane -D
#left
bind-key h select-pane -L
#right
bind-key l select-pane -R

With these settings done, when switching window, all I should do is ctrl+w+[kjhl]. Vim user, sound familiar?

Of course I’ve already set the vim keys to ctrl+[kjhl] so it’s not “conflicted” with the tmux key combination.

setw -g mode-keys vi

Enable vim mode.

bind '"' split-window -c "#{pane_current_path}"
bind '%' split-window -h -c "#{pane_current_path}"

When split window, create a shell session under the folder of the split session.

yum install perl-ExtUtils-MakeMaker perl-Term-Animation -y 

The above 2 packages are dependencies for this animation in terminal.

Then download ASCIIquarium from http://robobunny.com/projects/asciiquarium/asciiquarium.tar.gz

Decompress this tar and give it an executable permission (+x).

Copy it over to any location in your $PATH, in my case, I copied to ~/bin

Show the ASCIIquarium by typing asciiquarium

You can quit the animation by pressing “q”.

Another similar cool terminal animation is cmatrix, give it a go