Installation

Requirements

• macOS or Linux (Unix domain sockets required)
• A truecolor terminal (recommended)
• $EDITOR set to your preferred editor (vim, neovim, helix, etc.)

SQLite is bundled, no separate install needed. Rust is only needed if building from source.

Homebrew (macOS / Linux)

brew install planetaryescape/mxr/mxr

Equivalent to brew tap planetaryescape/mxr && brew install mxr if you prefer to tap explicitly.

Pre-built binaries

Download from GitHub Releases:

• macOS Apple Silicon (aarch64)
• macOS Intel (x86_64)
• Linux x86_64

Extract and place mxr in your $PATH:

tar xzf mxr-v*.tar.gz
cp mxr ~/.local/bin/  # or /usr/local/bin

Cargo (from source)

mxr is not published to crates.io. Install directly from the git repo:

# Latest main
cargo install --git https://github.com/planetaryescape/mxr --locked mxr

# A specific release tag (replace vX.Y.Z with the latest from the releases page)
cargo install --git https://github.com/planetaryescape/mxr --tag vX.Y.Z --locked mxr

# Or clone and install locally
git clone https://github.com/planetaryescape/mxr
cd mxr
cargo install --path . --locked

Building from source requires Rust 1.88+ (see Cargo.toml for the current MSRV).

Verify installation

mxr --version
mxr doctor --check
mxr --help

Next

• Gmail setup for Gmail accounts
• IMAP / SMTP setup for any other provider
• First sync