Quick and complete Maildir usage summary

Managing Maildir mailboxes across multiple users can quickly become a challenge. How do you find out who’s using the most space, how many messages each mailbox contains, or how many are unread?

Maildir Insights is a simple shell script that gives you a fast, clear overview of your Maildir mailboxes – all with one command.

What Maildir Insights Does

  • Scans all user Maildir folders under /home
  • Shows total mailbox size and message counts
  • Breaks down messages by folder: new, cur, and tmp
  • Detects read, unread, and deleted messages based on Maildir flags
  • Includes counts for .Trash folder
  • Outputs a neat, tabular summary ready for reports or scripts

Sample Output

HOMEDIR               SIZE   COUNT  NEW  CUR  TMP  DIR  READ  UNREAD  TRASH
/home/alice/Maildir   1.2G   10452  320  10120 12   15   9022  1430    250
/home/bob/Maildir     845M   8330   210  8100  20   11   7100  1230    300

Runtime: 0 Minutes 2 Seconds

How to Use Maildir Insights

  1. Save the script below as maildir-insights.sh
  2. Make it executable: chmod +x maildir-insights.sh
  3. Run it: ./maildir-insights.sh

The script automatically scans /home/*/Maildir and summarizes each mailbox.

The Script

You can find the latest version and source code on GitHub:

Maildir Insights – Lightweight Bash script to quickly analyze Maildir mailboxes, reporting size, message counts, and read/unread status per user. No dependencies, easy to use, ideal for mail server audits and migrations.
https://github.com/filipnet/maildir-insights
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Clone the repository and run the script as explained in the README.

Why Use Maildir Insights?

  • No dependencies — runs anywhere Bash is available
  • Perfect for quick audits, migrations, or quota management
  • Easy to integrate into cronjobs or monitoring scripts
  • Clear, tabular output for effortless parsing or reporting

💡 Use Case

This script was originally written to compare the contents of Maildir trees before and after a mailbox migration using dovecot dsync. However, it’s useful in any scenario where Maildir-based mailboxes need auditing, quota analysis, or inspection.

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