Welcome to khard’s documentation!

Khard is an address book for the Unix command line. It can read, create, modify and delete vCard address book entries. Khard only works with a local store of vCard files. It is intended to be used in conjunction with other programs like an email client, text editor, vdir synchronizer or VOIP client.

Installation

Packaging status

Khard is available as a native package for some *nix distributions so you should check your package manager first. If you want or need to install manually you can use the release from PyPi:

pip3 install khard

If you want to help the development or need more advanced installation instructions see Contributing.

If you need a tarball use the one from PyPi and not from the Github release page. These are missing an auto generated python file.

Configuration

The configuration file of khard is stored in the XDG conform config directory. If the environment variable $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is set, it is $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/khard/khard.conf and it defaults to ~/.config/khard/khard.conf otherwise.

An example configuration is provided in the source tree. It looks like this:

# example configuration file for khard version > 0.14.0
# place it under ~/.config/khard/khard.conf
# This file is parsed by the configobj library.  The syntax is described at
# https://configobj.readthedocs.io/en/latest/configobj.html#the-config-file-format

[addressbooks]
[[family]]
path = ~/.contacts/family/
[[friends]]
path = ~/.contacts/friends/

[general]
debug = no
default_action = list
# These are either strings or comma seperated lists
editor = vim, -i, NONE
merge_editor = vimdiff

[contact table]
# display names by first or last name: first_name / last_name / formatted_name
display = first_name
# group by address book: yes / no
group_by_addressbook = no
# reverse table ordering: yes / no
reverse = no
# append nicknames to name column: yes / no
show_nicknames = no
# show uid table column: yes / no
show_uids = yes
# show kind table column: yes / no
show_kinds = no
# sort by first or last name: first_name / last_name / formatted_name
sort = last_name
# localize dates: yes / no
localize_dates = yes
# set a comma separated list of preferred phone number types in descending priority
# or nothing for non-filtered alphabetical order
preferred_phone_number_type = pref, cell, home
# set a comma separated list of preferred email address types in descending priority
# or nothing for non-filtered alphabetical order
preferred_email_address_type = pref, work, home

[vcard]
# extend contacts with your own private objects
# these objects are stored with a leading "X-" before the object name in the vcard files
# every object label may only contain letters, digits and the - character
# example:
#   private_objects = Jabber, Skype, Twitter
# default: ,  (the empty list)
private_objects = Jabber, Skype, Twitter
# preferred vcard version: 3.0 / 4.0
preferred_version = 3.0
# Look into source vcf files to speed up search queries: yes / no
search_in_source_files = no
# skip unparsable vcard files: yes / no
skip_unparsable = no