I noticed I hadn't been seeing my (zsh) shell's "You have new mail" notification for awhile, so I sent myself a few mails from another ISP account and discovered that mail notification is definitely not happening. But it does work if I *edit an existing message* in my inbox. (since, In mutt, if you edit a message, it's marked for deletion and a new one is created.) I can close vim, quit mutt, and the "You have new mail" message appears below the shell prompt. (Or I can close vim & switch to another terminal where the shell prompt is displayed, press RETURN and then see the new mail message.) init file settings: biff n mesg y export MAILPATH=~/.mailspool/rj/ export MAILCHECK=5 I use maildirs, and this may be the key to the problem. I tried setting: export MAILPATH=~/.mailspool/rj/new/ since the zsh manpage has this: mailpath <S> <Z> (MAILPATH <S>) An array (colon-separated list) of filenames to check for new mail. [...] If an element is a directory instead of a file the shell will recursively check every file in every subdirectory of the element. but that made no change. All clues appreciated. -- // [EMAIL PROTECTED] //