Use plaintext email

September 12, 2022

There are two main types of emails on the internet: plaintext and HTML. The former is strongly preferred, but often isn't set up by default. We'll get you set up right.

Recommended email clients for plaintext users

The following email clients are known to handle plaintext especially well:

aerc (TUI)
alpine (TUI)
bower (TUI)
claws mail (GUI)
Gnus (emacs)
KMail (GUI)
MailMate (GUI)
mblaze (TUI)
mmh (TUI)
mu4e (emacs)
mutt (TUI)
neatmail (TUI)
neomutt (TUI)
nmh (TUI)
SquirrelMail (Webmail)
Wanderlust (emacs)

These clients all compose plaintext emails by default, with correct quoting and text wrapping settings, requiring no additional configuration to use correctly. Want to add your own mail client to this list?

How to set up plaintext with other email clients

If your email provider's webmail doesn't have good plain text support, please consider writing to <[email protected]> with a complaint, and using one of the recommended clients over IMAP & SMTP instead.

Jump to:

After configuring your client, be sure to review our etiquette recommendations.

Afterlogic

Afterlogic does not support plain text email. Please ask them for it and use a different mail client.

alot

alot uses plain text email by default.

Apple Mail

Select Mail → Preferences from the menu
Visit the "Composing" category
Change the "Message Format" (or "Format") option to "Plain Text"

Evolution

Plaintext is the default. To enable bottom-posting:

Select Edit → Preferences from the menu
Select Composer Preferences → General
Enable "Start typing at the bottom"

You can also prefer to show the plain text email by default when viewing multipart messages:

Select Edit → Preferences from the menu
Select Mail Preferences → HTML Messages
Select your preference from the "HTML Mode" options

FairEmail

Visit Settings → Send
Scroll to the Message section
Toggle "Write below the sender's text"
Scroll to the Advanced section
Toggle "Send plain text only by default"
Toggle "'format flowed' for plain text"
Toggle "Follow Usenet signature convention"

When replying, use "Reply to all" instead of "Reply to list".

Fastmail

Visit Settings → Customize → Preferences
Expand "Advanced Preferences" at the bottom of the page
Change "Compose Format" to "plain text"
Disable "When replying, use the same format as the original message"

Geary

Compose a new message
On the bottom right, click the three-dotted icon
Select the plaintext option

Geary will remember your preference next time.

Gmail

Compose a new message
On the bottom right, click the three-dotted icon
Select the plaintext option

Gmail will remember your preference next time.

Gmail wraps plain text messages at 78 characters.

Gyazmail

Gyazmail has the correct settings by default.

K-9 mail

Tap the three lines on the top left
Select Settings
Tap the email address you wish to configure → Sending mail
Change the Message Format to Plain Text
Select "Reply after quoted text"

It is also recommended that you select "Manage identities", and for each identity, untick "Use Signature". This will remove "Sent from K-9" from your emails.

mailbox.org

Click the "gear" icon on the top right
Go to the E-mail section
Uncheck "Allow HTML formatted email messages" under "View"
Go to the Compose sub-section
Select "Plain text" under "Format email messages as"

You can request better plaintext support via their user forum.

Mailspring

Tap the three lines on the top right
Select Preferences → General
Unselect "Enable rich text and advanced editor features"

Mailspring supports basic plaintext composing. You can also create a single plain-text email by holding Alt or Option while clicking "Compose" or "Reply". Request more features by asking them for it.

Microsoft Outlook (Desktop)

Select File → Options → Mail
Under "Compose Messages", select "Plain Text" from the "Compose messages in this format" options.

Microsoft Outlook (Web)

Click the gear icon on the top right
Click "View all Outlook settings"
Go to Mail → Compose and reply
Scroll down to "Message format"
Change HTML to Plain text
Click "Save"

Nine

Open the side menu and click the "gear" icon
Select General, then Composer
Under Editor, change the Editor option to "Text editor"

Protonmail

Notice: Use of IMAP and SMTP with Protonmail requires the use of a bridge. A third-party, MIT-licensed bridge is available. Proton technologies also makes the source code to their official bridge available under the GNU-GPL-3.0-or-later.

Visit Settings → Appearance
Set "Composer Mode" to "Plain Text"

It's also recommended that you visit Settings → Account → Identity and remove the default email signature.

Rainloop

Compose in plaintext Wraps text or format=flowed Supports bottom posting

Click the "person" icon on the top-right corner and choose "Settings"
Set "Default text editor" to "Plain"

Roundcube

Click Settings on the top-right
Select Preferences → Composing Messages
Select "never" under "Compose HTML messages"
Select Composing Messages
Select "Start new message below the quote" under "When replying"

Also consider setting "Automatically add signature" to "never".

Runbox 7

Runbox 7 uses plain text email by default.

Smail

Smail uses plain text email by default.

Sogo

On the top-right, click the gear to open Preferences
Select the Mail tab
Change "Compose messages in" to "Plain text"
Click the green "Save" icon on the top-right

Sylpheed

Open Configuration → Common preferences
Visit the Compose → Editor tab
Enable "Wrap on input"

Thunderbird

In the accounts tab, right click on your account
Select "Settings"
Select the "Composition
Scroll down until "Sending Format" section.
Select "Only Plain Text" from list.

Tutanota

Notice: Use of IMAP and SMTP, open standards for email clients, is not possible with Tutanota. This is not acceptable behavior for an email provider and use of Tutanota is strongly recommended against for this reason. Tutanota's stated reasons for not supporting these protocols are lies and you would be well served by closing your account there.

Visit Settings → Email → Formatting
Set the format to plain text

Windows Mail

Windows Mail does not support plain text email. Please issue a feature request through the Feedback Hub app, and use a different mail client.

Etiquette recommendations for plaintext emails

In addition to training you that HTML emails are the norm, many harmful mail clients may have trained you with other bad habits. Here are some tips to unlearn them:

Wrapping your text

Email writers are encouraged to wrap their text at 72 columns by inserting a newline and resuming your writing on the following line. The recommended clients will do this for you, as well as any client shown above with "Wraps text or uses format=flowed" checked. Don't worry about re-wrapping the quoted parts of message you're replying to unless you want to. If your client doesn't do this for you, it can easily be the most frustrating part of being a good email netizen, but it's very much appreciated by recipients.

Why is plaintext better than HTML?

HTML emails are mainly used for marketing - that is, emails you probably don't want to see in the first place. The few advantages they offer for end-users, such as links, inline images, and bold or italic text, aren't worth the trade-off.

HTML as a vector for phishing

HTML emails allow you to make links which hide the URL behind some user-friendly text. However, this is an extremely common vector for phishing attacks, where a malicious sender makes a misleading link which takes you to a different website than you expect. Often these websites are modeled after the login page of a service you use, and will trick you into entering your account password. In plaintext emails, the URL is always visible, and you can more easily make an informed choice to click it.

Privacy invasion and tracking

Virtually all HTML emails sent by marketers include identifiers in links and inline images which are designed to extract information about you and send it back to the sender. Examine the URLs closely - the strange numbers and letters are unique to you and used to identify you. This information is used to hack your brain, attempting to find advertisements which are more likely to influence your buying habits. HTML emails are good for marketers and bad for you.

Mail client vulnerabilities

HTML is an extremely large and complicated set of specifications designed without emails in mind. It's designed for browsing the world wide web, on which a huge variety of documents, applications, and more are available. Implementing even a reasonable subset of these standards represents hundreds of thousands of hours of work, or even millions. A large subset (perhaps the majority) of these features are not desirable for emails, and if included can be leveraged to leak information about you, your contacts, your calendar, other emails in your inbox, and so on. However, because of the herculean effort necessary to implement an HTML renderer, no one has built one specialized for emails which is guaranteed to be safe. Instead, general purpose web browsers, with many of their features disabled, are employed in most email clients. This is the number one source of vulnerabilities in email clients which result in information disclosure and even the execution of arbitrary malicious code.

This is a list of 421 remote code execution vulnerabilities in Thunderbird. If you're bored, try finding one that doesn't exploit web tech.

HTML emails are less accessible

Browsing the web is a big challenge for users who require a screenreader or other assistive tools to use their computer. The same problems apply to email, only more so - making an accessible HTML email is even more difficult than making an accessible website due to the limitations imposed on HTML emails by most mail clients (which they have no choice but to impose - for the security reasons stated above). Plain text emails are a breeze in comparison for screenreaders to recite, especially for users with specialized email clients designed for this purpose. How do you speak bold text aloud? How about your inline image?

Some clients can't display HTML emails at all

Some email clients don't support HTML emails at all. Many email clients are designed to run in text-only environments, like a terminal emulator, where they're useful to people who spend a lot of time working in these environments. In a text-only interface it's not possible to render an HTML email, and instead the reader will just see a mess of raw HTML text. A lot of people simply send HTML emails directly to spam for this reason.

Rich text isn't that great, anyway

Rich text features desirable for end users include things like inline images, bold or italicized text, and so on. However, the tradeoff isn't worth it. Images can simply be attached to your email, and you can employ things like *asterisks*, /slashes/, _underscores_, or UPPERCASE for emphasis. You can still communicate your point effectively without bringing along all of the bad things HTML emails come with.

In short, HTML emails are a security nightmare, are mostly used for advertising to you and tracking you, are less accessible for many users, and don't offer anything especially great for it.

Recommendations for software which sends emails

Thanks for your interest in making plaintext emails more accessible to your users!

For senders of automated emails

If you must use HTML, send a multipart/alternative email with both a plaintext and HTML version included. Your programming language probably includes tools for creating these kinds of emails.

For senders of user-authored emails

Allow users to compose emails in plaintext, and consider making this the default. When the user composes a message in plaintext, send a text/plain email instead of a multipart/alternative email with a generated HTML part.
When composing a plaintext email, hard-wrap their lines at 72 columns by inserting newlines at the nearest word boundary. Optionally, use format=flowed instead to allow plaintext emails to be displayed and composed without hard wrapping.
When users reply to an email in plaintext, don't encourage top-posting by leaving their cursor above the quoted message. Instead, add two newlines after the quoted message and leave their cursor there. Allow the user to edit the quoted message. Quote each line of the original message with > and a single space, followed by the quote.
When users send an HTML email explicitly, convert it to text/plain and send a multipart/alternative email which includes both versions.
When displaying multipart/alternative emails, give the user the option to prefer to view the plaintext part by default.

Email clients which meet all of these criteria and prefer plaintext by default are entitled to a spot on our recommended clients list.

How to improve these recommendations

Do you want to add instructions for a new email client? Have suggestions or questions? Please send a plain text email to ~sircmpwn/[email protected]. You can also email a patch to this address. The code may be found on git.sr.ht.

Source

Edited September 12, 2022 by aum

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