Mailtray

What is Mailtray ¶

Mailtray is a Python program that displays a tray icon which informs you when you have new email.
I searched for a simple and easy application which did exactly that, all I found were large applications which need a ton of dependencies, or applications which did not work for me.

Screenshots ¶

Here are two screenshots of Mailtray 1.2 being used with pekwm and stalonetray.

Download ¶

Latest version:
3 October 2009 – mailtray-1.3.tar.gz

Previous versions:
16 September 2009 – mailtray-1.2.1.tar.gz
15 September 2009 – mailtray-1.2.tar.gz
16 August 2009 – mailtray-1.1.tar.gz
11 Januari 2009 – mailtray-1.0.tar.gz

Installation ¶

Requirements ¶

Python – Tested with version 2.5.
PyGTK 2.10 or newer.

Mailtray was tested on OpenBSD & Windows XP. It should run fine on most other modern operating systems (i.e. MacOS, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, etc.).

Fast start ¶

Extract the files, move mailtrayrc.py.example to ~/.mailtray/mailtrayrc.py, you will need to modify at least the server setting OR use the -s argument.
You’re now ready to run mailtray.py.
The usual way to start it is putting it in your ~/.xinitrc or ~/.xsession, i.e.:

xsetroot -grey
~/bin/mailtray.py &
exec twm

For more documentation see the manpage: mailtray(1). The manpage in different formats (Both included in the download): HTML, plain text.

Changelog ¶

v1.3 (2001003) ¶

Tested on Windows XP, made some minor changes to make it compatible. You will need to download & install Python and PyGTK manually. A pre-compiled “double-click” executable will be added in a next release “soon”.
Fix unicode (again…).
Add Makefile for easier installation & deinstallation.
Various minor fixes and enhancements.

v1.2.1 (20090916) ¶

Bugfix—display tooltip correctly with unicode characters in the Subject or From header.

v1.2 (20090915) ¶

Note: Configuration file format and location changed and is not compatible with previous versions.
Reload configuration on kill -HUP.
Add verbose option to print extra messages.
Optionally display new subjects in tooltip.
New icons (Still rubbish, but it’s better…).
Now search for configuration in sensible default locations (i.e. ~/.mailtray/mailtrayrc.py) instead of just the cwd.
Add commandline arguments for most of the options.
Add manpage.
Quite a few various minor improvements.

v1.1 (20090815) ¶

Support for multiple folders.
Add configuration file.
New icon for disconnected status. Don’t exit/crash when disconnected from the interwebz.
Various minor improvements.

v1.0 (20090111) ¶

Initial release.

Notes ¶

Keep in mind that Mailtray was and is mainly written for personal purposes, which means that features I use have high priority, and other features I don’t use have a low priority. This doesn’t mean I won’t accept patches and/or will try my best to help people out if they have a problem.

Yes, I know the icons are not pretty. What can I say? I’m a programmer, not a graphical artist :-(

Todo ¶

More sensible tooltip resizing.
Better icons.
Support for different AUTH mechanisms.
Support for POP3.

Bugs ¶

The configuration could be significantly easier, the fact that it’s imported in Python makes configuration pretty flexible, but also makes it more difficult for non-python programmers.

Also note that if you have a mailtrayrc.py file in the same path as mailtray or mailtray.py then python will import that file, as far as Python is concerned this is not a bug but a feature, but due to my (mis)use of import it is a bug.

Authors ¶

Martin Tournoij <carpetsmoker@rwxrwxrwx.net>

Mailtray is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License [external link] .