How to send email from Terminal?

Question

I know there are ways to send email from terminal in Linux/MacOS, but I can't seem to find proper documentation on how to do that.

Basically I need it for my bash script that notifies me every time there is a change in a file.

It should probably be noted here that some hosts and ISPs "turn off" the ability for you to send email. I presume it's an attempt to stop people spamming and phishing through them — Jim Jeffries, Nov 24 '11 at 18:25
@JimJeffries Which ones? I am using an Amazon EC2 web server. — ckjbgames, Feb 24 '17 at 16:58

score 149 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 24 '11 at 17:49

149

echo "this is the body" | mail -s "this is the subject" "to@address"

answered Nov 24 '11 at 17:49

earldouglas

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Note all this solutions assume you have a locally installed MTA – Miquel Nov 24 '11 at 18:07
14

@Miquel good point. In Ubuntu, you can get the prerequisites via `sudo apt-get install mailutils`. – earldouglas Nov 24 '11 at 18:48
3

@James, It isn't work for my MAC((( Could you help me? – neo Sep 25 '15 at 14:45
1

Step by step tutorial: http://rianjs.net/2013/08/send-email-from-linux-server-using-gmail-and-ubuntu-two-factor-authentication – Dušan Maďar Mar 07 '17 at 12:14
Strange. This gives me a "SyntaxError: invalid syntax" message although the only change that I have made was changing the address. – Jewenile Jul 20 '17 at 06:46
MTA is mail transfer agent btw. which mean you have to set up mail server before you run the command. – Jin Lim Feb 10 '22 at 07:59

score 136 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

136

Go into Terminal and type man mail for help.

You will need to set SMTP up:

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20081217161612647

See also:

http://www.mactricksandtips.com/2008/09/send-mail-over-your-network.html

Eg:

mail -s "hello" "example@example.com" <<EOF
hello
world
EOF

This will send an email to example@example.com with the subject hello and the message

Hello

World

edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

Community

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answered Nov 24 '11 at 17:46

gadgetmo

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I just tried, and it worked for me, but I have two questions out of my curiosity.1. What does << means, online I've seen some examples with ' – Deep Dec 12 '19 at 16:31
The "< – Joe Inwap Apr 06 '20 at 01:42

score 66 · Answer 3 · answered May 22 '19 at 12:56

66

Probably the simplest way is to use curl for this, there is no need to install any additional packages and it can be configured directly in a request.

Here is an example using gmail smtp server:

curl --url 'smtps://smtp.gmail.com:465' --ssl-reqd \
  --mail-from 'from-email@gmail.com' \
  --mail-rcpt 'to-email@gmail.com' \
  --user 'from-email@gmail.com:YourPassword' \
  -T <(echo -e 'From: from-email@gmail.com\nTo: to-email@gmail.com\nSubject: Curl Test\n\nHello')

answered May 22 '19 at 12:56

Aliaksandr Sushkevich

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This is a really good option. You can generate an app specific password for your Google account and this just delivers the email from your own account. Very cool! – dakdad Sep 12 '19 at 07:58
3

Great answer, Lastly don't forget to turn on the less secure app to make work https://myaccount.google.com/lesssecureapps – yubaraj poudel Nov 05 '19 at 11:04
@aliaksandr should add this last point to his answer. By default this option (give access to less secure apps) is disabled and it's not evident. At least if you're using gmail account as sender email. – EAmez Nov 26 '19 at 09:25
Very nice. Curl is another awesome swiss army knife like netcat :) – EdiD Aug 16 '20 at 08:41
How would you attach a file with this method? – Masoud Ghaderi Feb 11 '21 at 00:02

score 42 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 24 '11 at 18:04

42

If all you need is a subject line (as in an alert message) simply do:

mailx -s "This is all she wrote" < /dev/null "myself@myaddress"

answered Nov 24 '11 at 18:04

JRFerguson

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You may need to install `mailutils`. It can be installed via a package manager (eg. `apt install mailutils`) – Jeevan Takhar Jan 03 '18 at 11:53

score 22 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 06 '16 at 03:31

22

If you want to attach a file on Linux

echo 'mail content' | mailx -s 'email subject' -a attachment.txt username@stackoverflow.com

answered Aug 06 '16 at 03:31

Miae Kim

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It gives an `invalid header` message for my attached file. The correct option was an uppercase `-A`. – Stephane Jul 01 '17 at 06:59
3

@Stephane According to patrick-haugh, -a is the attachment switch. -A is for the account command. See the man page: https://linux.die.net/man/1/mailx – Miae Kim Jan 23 '18 at 21:34

score 9 · Answer 6 · edited Mar 30 '17 at 21:37

9

in the terminal on your mac os or linux os type this code

mail -s (subject) (receiversEmailAddress)  <<< "how are you?"

for an example try this

mail -s "hi" abc@example.com <<< "how are you?"<br>

edited Mar 30 '17 at 21:37

Alois Mahdal

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answered Mar 25 '16 at 12:41

Pramodya Abeysinghe

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score 4 · Answer 7 · answered May 14 '20 at 11:38

4

For SMTP hosts and Gmail I like to use Swaks -> https://easyengine.io/tutorials/mail/swaks-smtp-test-tool/

On a Mac:

brew install swaks
swaks --to user@example.com --server smtp.example.com

answered May 14 '20 at 11:38

Tum

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score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Jan 08 '22 at 22:50

I think swaks is the best. Here you have more complicated example, using TLS encryption on port 25:

swaks --from john.smith@mydomain.com \
--h-From: '"John Smith" <john.smith@mydomain.com>' \
--h-Subject: 'Subject of message' \
--auth LOGIN --auth-user mylogin --auth-pass mypass \
--to someone@otherdomain.com \
--server smtp.example.com --port 25 -tls \
--add-header 'Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"'

How to send email from Terminal?

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