Render HTML emails as plain text using html2text

Fall back to html2text when no text/plain part is available,
converting HTML emails to readable terminal output.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Cargo.lock

@@ -482,6 +482,16 @@ version = "0.1.1"
 source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
 checksum = "00b0228411908ca8685dba7fc2cdd70ec9990a6e753e89b6ac91a84c40fbaf4b"
 
+[[package]]
+name = "futf"
+version = "0.1.5"
+source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
+checksum = "df420e2e84819663797d1ec6544b13c5be84629e7bb00dc960d6917db2987843"
+dependencies = [
+ "mac",
+ "new_debug_unreachable",
+]
+
 [[package]]
 name = "generic-array"
 version = "0.14.7"
@@ -549,6 +559,30 @@ version = "0.4.3"
 source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
 checksum = "7f24254aa9a54b5c858eaee2f5bccdb46aaf0e486a595ed5fd8f86ba55232a70"
 
+[[package]]
+name = "html2text"
+version = "0.14.4"
+source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
+checksum = "c1637acec3b965bab873352189d887b12c87b4f8d7571f4d185e796be5654ad8"
+dependencies = [
+ "html5ever",
+ "tendril",
+ "thiserror 2.0.18",
+ "unicode-width",
+]
+
+[[package]]
+name = "html5ever"
+version = "0.31.0"
+source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
+checksum = "953cbbe631aae7fc0a112702ad5d3aaf09da38beaf45ea84610d6e1c358f569c"
+dependencies = [
+ "log",
+ "mac",
+ "markup5ever",
+ "match_token",
+]
+
 [[package]]
 name = "iana-time-zone"
 version = "0.1.65"
@@ -762,6 +796,12 @@ dependencies = [
  "hashbrown 0.16.1",
 ]
 
+[[package]]
+name = "mac"
+version = "0.1.1"
+source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
+checksum = "c41e0c4fef86961ac6d6f8a82609f55f31b05e4fce149ac5710e439df7619ba4"
+
 [[package]]
 name = "mac_address"
 version = "1.1.8"
@@ -783,6 +823,28 @@ dependencies = [
  "quoted_printable",
 ]
 
+[[package]]
+name = "markup5ever"
+version = "0.16.2"
+source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
+checksum = "2e4cd8c02f18a011991a039855480c64d74291c5792fcc160d55d77dc4de4a39"
+dependencies = [
+ "log",
+ "tendril",
+ "web_atoms",
+]
+
+[[package]]
+name = "match_token"
+version = "0.1.0"
+source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
+checksum = "88a9689d8d44bf9964484516275f5cd4c9b59457a6940c1d5d0ecbb94510a36b"
+dependencies = [
+ "proc-macro2",
+ "quote",
+ "syn 2.0.116",
+]
+
 [[package]]
 name = "memchr"
 version = "2.8.0"
@@ -839,6 +901,12 @@ dependencies = [
  "tempfile",
 ]
 
+[[package]]
+name = "new_debug_unreachable"
+version = "1.0.6"
+source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
+checksum = "650eef8c711430f1a879fdd01d4745a7deea475becfb90269c06775983bbf086"
+
 [[package]]
 name = "nix"
 version = "0.29.0"
@@ -1103,6 +1171,12 @@ version = "0.2.0"
 source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
 checksum = "439ee305def115ba05938db6eb1644ff94165c5ab5e9420d1c1bcedbba909391"
 
+[[package]]
+name = "precomputed-hash"
+version = "0.1.1"
+source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
+checksum = "925383efa346730478fb4838dbe9137d2a47675ad789c546d150a6e1dd4ab31c"
+
 [[package]]
 name = "prettyplease"
 version = "0.2.37"
@@ -1471,6 +1545,7 @@ version = "0.1.0"
 dependencies = [
  "chrono",
  "crossterm",
+ "html2text",
  "imap",
  "mailparse",
  "native-tls",
@@ -1491,6 +1566,31 @@ version = "1.1.0"
 source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
 checksum = "a2eb9349b6444b326872e140eb1cf5e7c522154d69e7a0ffb0fb81c06b37543f"
 
+[[package]]
+name = "string_cache"
+version = "0.8.9"
+source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
+checksum = "bf776ba3fa74f83bf4b63c3dcbbf82173db2632ed8452cb2d891d33f459de70f"
+dependencies = [
+ "new_debug_unreachable",
+ "parking_lot",
+ "phf_shared",
+ "precomputed-hash",
+ "serde",
+]
+
+[[package]]
+name = "string_cache_codegen"
+version = "0.5.4"
+source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
+checksum = "c711928715f1fe0fe509c53b43e993a9a557babc2d0a3567d0a3006f1ac931a0"
+dependencies = [
+ "phf_generator",
+ "phf_shared",
+ "proc-macro2",
+ "quote",
+]
+
 [[package]]
 name = "strsim"
 version = "0.11.1"
@@ -1553,6 +1653,17 @@ dependencies = [
  "windows-sys",
 ]
 
+[[package]]
+name = "tendril"
+version = "0.4.3"
+source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
+checksum = "d24a120c5fc464a3458240ee02c299ebcb9d67b5249c8848b09d639dca8d7bb0"
+dependencies = [
+ "futf",
+ "mac",
+ "utf-8",
+]
+
 [[package]]
 name = "terminfo"
 version = "0.9.0"
@@ -1763,6 +1874,12 @@ version = "0.2.6"
 source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
 checksum = "ebc1c04c71510c7f702b52b7c350734c9ff1295c464a03335b00bb84fc54f853"
 
+[[package]]
+name = "utf-8"
+version = "0.7.6"
+source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
+checksum = "09cc8ee72d2a9becf2f2febe0205bbed8fc6615b7cb429ad062dc7b7ddd036a9"
+
 [[package]]
 name = "utf8parse"
 version = "0.2.2"
@@ -1905,6 +2022,18 @@ dependencies = [
  "semver",
 ]
 
+[[package]]
+name = "web_atoms"
+version = "0.1.3"
+source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
+checksum = "57ffde1dc01240bdf9992e3205668b235e59421fd085e8a317ed98da0178d414"
+dependencies = [
+ "phf",
+ "phf_codegen",
+ "string_cache",
+ "string_cache_codegen",
+]
+
 [[package]]
 name = "wezterm-bidi"
 version = "0.2.3"

Cargo.toml

@@ -11,4 +11,5 @@ native-tls = "0.2"
 serde = { version = "1.0", features = ["derive"] }
 toml = "1.0"
 chrono = "0.4"
-mailparse = "0.15"
+mailparse = "0.15"
+html2text = "0.14"

src/inbox.rs

@@ -178,23 +178,31 @@ fn extract_raw_body(fetches: &[imap::types::Fetch]) -> Option<Vec<u8>> {
 
 fn extract_plain_text(raw: &[u8]) -> Result<String, String> {
     let parsed = mailparse::parse_mail(raw).map_err(|e| e.to_string())?;
-    // Try to find a text/plain part
+    // Try text/plain first
-    if let Some(text) = find_plain_text(&parsed) {
+    if let Some(text) = find_part(&parsed, "text/plain") {
         return Ok(text);
     }
-    // Fallback: return the body of the top-level message
+    // Fall back to text/html rendered as text
+    if let Some(html) = find_part(&parsed, "text/html") {
+        return Ok(html_to_text(&html));
+    }
+    // Last resort: top-level body
     parsed.get_body().map_err(|e| e.to_string())
 }
 
-fn find_plain_text(mail: &mailparse::ParsedMail) -> Option<String> {
+fn find_part(mail: &mailparse::ParsedMail, mime_type: &str) -> Option<String> {
     let content_type = mail.ctype.mimetype.to_lowercase();
-    if content_type == "text/plain" {
+    if content_type == mime_type {
         return mail.get_body().ok();
     }
     for part in &mail.subparts {
-        if let Some(text) = find_plain_text(part) {
+        if let Some(text) = find_part(part, mime_type) {
             return Some(text);
         }
     }
     None
 }
+
+fn html_to_text(html: &str) -> String {
+    html2text::from_read(html.as_bytes(), 80).unwrap_or_else(|_| html.to_string())
+}