# mu4e

10 Hacker News commenters recommended mu4e and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Fast email search and opening for people who already live in Emacs; critics mention slow indexing of new mail and some emails not rendering or sending properly.

## Why people recommend it

- Faster email opening and searching than Gmail (2 comments): "opening and (especially) searching for emails seem much faster than doing it in Gmail" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46220351)) "Mail was fast with Mu4e and Mairix." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46956579))

## What people warn about

- Some emails fail to send or render (2 comments): "one too many emails didn't send because I missed some notification or something in mu4e" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46217776)) "Too many emails not rendered properly in mu4e" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47374385))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Mozilla Thunderbird](https://hackerapproved.com/p/thunderbird.md): 210 recommend
- [Microsoft Outlook](https://hackerapproved.com/p/microsoft-outlook.md): 117 recommend
- [Apple Mail](https://hackerapproved.com/p/apple-mail.md): 57 recommend
- [Penguin Mail](https://hackerapproved.com/p/penguin-mail.md): 14 recommend
- [GNOME Evolution](https://hackerapproved.com/p/evolution.md): 13 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "mu4e", https://hackerapproved.com/p/mu4e/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).