How To Install The Hiri Email Client On Linux
If you use Linux and need access to Microsoft Exchange Email services, forget what you learned online and ditch it all the Hiri mail client. It makes connecting to Outlook and Exchange incredibly easy on Linux.
Install Hiri Email Client
The app isn’t available for installation for most Linux distribution’s software repositories (with an exception to the paid portion of Ubuntu Software Center) due to the fact that users must purchase a software license to access all of its features. Instead, those looking to install this app will need to go to the website first.
To get started, look for the “Try for Free” button and click it. This should take you directly to the download page for Hiri.
Note: installing Hiri automatically gives you access to the 7-day free trial. After 7 days you must buy a copy.
On the download page for Hiri, there are only two options. The first option is the instructions for the user to install it via Snap. Distributing the Hiri app via Snap packages is a great idea, as it makes it possible to easily install the software on a multitude of Linux distributions.
Before proceeding with the instructions for installing Hiri via the Snap store, you’ll need to be sure you have Snaps enabled on your Linux PC. First, go to your Linux PC’s Wiki or official Forum and find out if they officially support Snaps. After that, install and enable SnapD via the instructions on our article here.
Once SnapD is installed and running, open up a terminal and use it to install the latest version of the Hiri email app.
sudo snap install hiri
Need to remove Hiri? Use the snap remove command to uninstall it.
sudo snap remove hiri
Install Hiri From Source
Snap packages are a great way to solve the issue of distributing programs to many different Linux operating systems on the platform. Still, not every distribution has chosen to adopt Canonical’s Snap package system, for whatever reason. If you’re using a Linux operating system that has no way of using Snaps, you’re really missing out on some neat technology.
However, just because your distribution has chosen to avoid Snaps doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy Hiri. As it turns out, the program has a downloadable Tarball on their website. Inside this Tarball is an executable script that will run Hiri directly.
To download the latest Tarball, go to the official Hiri website and click the “Try for Free” button. Clicking the “Try for Free” button takes you to the official download page. Select the “Linux” download button and the Hiri Tarball will start downloading.
Let the Tarball download. When it finishes, open up a terminal window and use the tar command to extract the files.
cd ~/Downloads tar xvzf Hiri.tar.gz mv hiri_* Hiri
Extracting Hiri.tar.gz will place all of the files into a folder labeled Hiri inside ~/Downloads. Take the new Hiri folder and move it to your /home/username/ folder. Moving this folder to the Home directory is critical, as things often get deleted from Downloads.
mv Hiri ~/
Now that the Hiri source files are inside the user’s Home folder, the app is ready to launch.
cd ~/Hiri
./hiri.sh
Creating A Custom Shortcut
Running Hiri directly from the terminal isn’t very usable, especially for the average user. To make using this program much easier, we’ll need to create a custom shortcut. First, use the touch command to create a new shortcut file.
touch ~/Desktop/hiri.desktop
Next, edit the new hiri.desktop file with the Nano text editor. Paste the code below inside.
[Desktop Entry] Type=Application Name=Hiri GenericName=Mail Client Comment=Hiri Email Client Categories=Office;Network;Email;Calendar; Keywords=Email;E-mail;Calendar;Contacts; Terminal=false StartupNotify=true MimeType=x-scheme-handler/mailto; Exec=/home/username/Hiri/hiri.sh %u Icon=/home/username/Hiri/hiri.png
After pasting the code for the desktop shortcut in the file, press Ctrl + O to save the changes. Exit Nano with Ctrl + X. Then, return to the terminal and update hiri.desktop‘s permissions. Updating permissions for this new file is crucial because it won’t work without it. Don’t skip this step!
cd ~/Desktop chmod +x hiri.desktop
After updating the permissions for the new desktop shortcut, it’ll be easy to launch an instance of the Hiri email client right from your desktop.
Run Hiri At Startup
One of the best things about having an email client is getting notifications for emails as soon as they happen. Unfortunately, many email clients don’t launch themselves at startup, so you won’t notice new emails when you first log in. To fix this problem with Hiri, consider adding it to the autostart folder. Doing this will ensure Hiri automatically starts up and fetches your email the minute you log in. To add an entry, follow the instructions below.
Snap Instructions
Search for “autostart”, “startup applications”, and etc. Gnome user? Open “Tweak Tool” and click “autostart”.
Add a new program, search for “Hiri” and click “OK”.
Alternatively:
cp /var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/hiri_hiri.desktop ~/.config/autostart
Source Instructions
cp ~/Desktop/hiri.desktop ~/.config/autostart
