DOKK / manpages / debian 12 / notmuch / notmuch-reindex.1.en
NOTMUCH-REINDEX(1) notmuch NOTMUCH-REINDEX(1)

notmuch-reindex - re-index matching messages

notmuch reindex [option ...] <search-term> ...

Re-index all messages matching the search terms.

See notmuch-search-terms for details of the supported syntax for <search-term>.

The reindex command searches for all messages matching the supplied search terms, and re-creates the full-text index on these messages using the supplied options.

Supported options for reindex include

If true, when encountering an encrypted message, try to decrypt it while reindexing, stashing any session keys discovered. If auto, and notmuch already knows about a session key for the message, it will try decrypting using that session key but will not try to access the user's secret keys. If decryption is successful, index the cleartext itself.

nostash is the same as true except that it will not stash newly-discovered session keys in the database.

If false, notmuch reindex will also delete any stashed session keys for all messages matching the search terms.

Be aware that the index is likely sufficient (and a stashed session key is certainly sufficient) to reconstruct the cleartext of the message itself, so please ensure that the notmuch message index is adequately protected. DO NOT USE --decrypt=true or --decrypt=nostash without considering the security of your index.

See also index.decrypt in notmuch-config.


A user just received an encrypted message without indexing its cleartext. After reading it (via notmuch show --decrypt=true), they decide that they want to index its cleartext so that they can easily find it later and read it without having to have access to their secret keys:

notmuch reindex --decrypt=true id:1234567@example.com


A user wants to change their policy going forward to start indexing cleartext. But they also want indexed access to the cleartext of all previously-received encrypted messages. Some messages might have already been indexed in the clear (as in the example above). They can ask notmuch to just reindex the not-yet-indexed messages:

notmuch config set index.decrypt true
notmuch reindex tag:encrypted and not property:index.decryption=success


Later, the user changes their mind, and wants to stop indexing cleartext (perhaps their threat model has changed, or their trust in their index store has been shaken). They also want to clear all of their old cleartext from the index. Note that they compact the database afterward as a workaround for https://trac.xapian.org/ticket/742:

notmuch config set index.decrypt false
notmuch reindex property:index.decryption=success
notmuch compact


notmuch, notmuch-compact, notmuch-config, notmuch-count, notmuch-dump, notmuch-hooks, notmuch-insert, notmuch-new, notmuch-reply, notmuch-restore, notmuch-search, notmuch-search-terms, notmuch-show, notmuch-tag

Carl Worth and many others

2009-2022, Carl Worth and many others

November 30, 2022 0.37