Is “you have mail” not quite enough detail? Is a per-message notification too much? Welcome to xlbiff, the X Literate Biff.
Xlbiff presents enough information to tell you: Is this new mail worth reading right now? And it stops distracting you once you decide.
Xlbiff waits in the background, monitoring your mailbox file or IMAP server (or running your custom check-mail script). When a new message arrives, it invokes the MH scan(1) command (or your custom mail-scanning script) and pops up a window with the output (typically the From and Subject line of each new message). If more mail arrives, xlbiff scans again and resizes its preview window accordingly.
Clicking the left mouse button anywhere in the window causes it to vanish. It will also vanish if the mailbox becomes empty. Xlbiff stays out of your way when there is no new mail and pops up only when something requests your attention.
Included with xlbiff is mailbox-preview, a command-line program that peeks at an IMAP mailbox and uses scan to display a summary, one line per new message. Local mailboxes are also supported: Maildir directories and any single-file format scan supports (mbox and MMDF). Use mailbox-preview stand-alone on the command line or as the back-end of xlbiff.
If you want to read this message immediately, you can do so using your regular mailer, and xlbiff will go away when it detects that the message is read.
If this message looks boring, and you want to continue doing what you were doing before, you can make xlbiff hide again by clicking button 1 inside it. When more mail comes in, xlbiff pops up again including the new message:
Find xlbiff on github