Tagged: Mail

Where are VIP Contacts for Messages and FaceTime?

Where are VIP Contacts for Messages and FaceTime?

I’d love to see VIP moved from Mail’s settings to Contacts proper, so that I can make sure the people who are literally “very important” get through more easily, no matter how they choose to communicate with me. And it’d be great if it happened with iOS 9.

As soon as I saw the VIP feature of Mail, I wondered why I was setting it up in Mail instead of Contacts. It makes no sense. If someone is in my VIP list, they’re a VIP in Mail, Messages, and FaceTime, not just Mail.

Rene Ritchie goes into more detail at iMore.

Easily rearrange the order of accounts in OS X’s Mail app

Mac Mail address send order

If you have several different email accounts, you may find it annoying to have to choose the right email address as your “From” email from the drop-down menu (providing the default send account isn’t the one you want to use) in OS X’s Mail app. There is no cure for this problem, but you can at least put the list in the order you want it to appear in.

Mac Mail address send order fixI’ve seen other Mac sites that offer tips to accomplish this that range from the outrageous advice that you must delete all your email accounts and re-add them in the order you want them to appear, to the less dramatic but still cumbersome idea that you must uncheck the email checkbox in the Internet accounts preference pane and re-enable email in the desired order.

Thankfully, there’s a much more convenient way to accomplish the same desired result that doesn’t require you to delete anything.

Simply drag the individual email inbox icons for your accounts in the Mail sidebar to the order you want them to appear and restart Mail. Boom, you’re done. Now your drop-down menu will list your email addresses in the order you set them in.

Enlarge OS X Mail and Finder sidebar icons

Sidebar icon sizes

Large, medium and small icon options in OS X’s Mail sidebar

If you’re running OS X Lion on your Mac, you have the ability to enlarge the icons in the sidebar of Mail and the Finder. This is particularly useful for those with less than stellar eyesight, or who simply have large LCD screens and want an easier target to hit when dragging files to or otherwise clicking the icons.

Sidebar icon size preferencesChanging the sidebar icons in Mail is actually not an option if you adjust the size of the Finder’s sidebar icons. Oddly enough, both are controlled in the System Preferences under the General icon. Simply choose the size you wish from the drop-down menu next to the Sidebar Icon Size item and both Mail and the Finder’s sidebar icons will immediately adjust accordingly.

Delay OS X Mail’s “Mark As Read” status

One annoying function of OS X’s Mail app is that it automatically marks an email as Read the second it is selected. This is compounded by the fact that Mail automatically selects the top most email in the list (usually the newest email). Sometimes I just want to take a quick peek at an email without actually marking it as read. Thanks to this clever plugin, you can alter the delay Mail uses to mark an email as Read.

TruePreview is a simple plugin that allows you to adjust the delay time Mail uses to mark an email as Read. Once installed, you will find a new tab in Mail’s preferences where you can set the delay time to whatever you wish for all emails. Alternatively, you can turn of the “Mark as Read” status completely until you open an email in a separate window by double clicking the email, forwarding, or replying to an email.

TruePreview

TruePreview solves a huge annoyance in OS X Mail's behavior

If you prefer, TruePreview allows you to adjust the delay time on a per-account basis. This is particularly useful for those who have multiple email accounts with different providers. (more…)

Get rid of the new window animation in Lion Mail for a speed boost

OS X MailAmong many of the changes to the Mail application that Lion brought was an animation when you reply or create a new mail window. It’s a nice touch, but on an older Mac such as my original Mac Pro, it becomes a slow, annoying, and frivolous feature. Here’s how you can turn it off.

Fire up the Terminal and copy/paste the following text (and hit return):
defaults write com.apple.Mail DisableReplyAnimations -bool YES

This will turn off the animation when opening new windows in Mail. If you ever want it back, simply replace YES at the end with NO.

Email client marketshare: Infographic

email client marketshare infographic

With 10% marketshare, the iPhone outpaces OS X's Mail for reading email

Litmus, a company that tracks email campaigns, has published a report that shows where people are viewing their email. Not surprisingly, Outlook leads the way with 37%. The interesting factor is that mobile email has jumped from 7% to 15%.

Litmus put together a great infographic to display the results of their tests. It’s important for designers and campaign managers to know how their clients are reading their email, because it directly affects the technical aspects of the email design.

How to create customized OS X Mail stationery in Snow Leopard

Back in 2007, I wrote a tutorial on how to create your own customized OS X Mail stationery when Leopard was first released. To this day, it’s still one of the most popular articles on this site. I decided it was about time that I took a look at it again to make sure nothing had changed with all the updates to Leopard, and the release of Snow Leopard.

Mac OS X Mail Stationery

You can create your own customized Mail stationery quite easily

This tutorial is fairly simple, and you’re only limitations are your graphics skills. Of course, if you have knowledge of HTML, you can do a lot more with your customization. For the sake of this tutorial though, I’ll keep it simple.
(more…)

Archiving emails from OSX’s Mail application

OS X MailThere are lots of ways to archive old emails from OSX’s Mail application for later reading. Many of them require you to work with another piece of software, some require you to “restore” an .mbox file to the proper folder – and almost all of them require you to launch Mail in order to actually read the archived email. While most archiving apps offer plenty of flexibility, they can be more trouble than they’re worth if your needs are simple, and you don’t have the budget for 3rd party apps. If you’re looking for something a little easier with less bells and whistles, I’ve got a quick solution for you. (more…)

Free Christmas Mail stationery pack

iPresentee offers free Christmas Mail Stationery templates designed especially for the Christmas holiday to use with OSX’s Mail application. The Christmas Stationery package includes ten wonderful templates: Santa Claus Letter, New Year’s Day, Christmas Wreath, Merry Christmas, Gift, Snowman, Christmas Letter, Christmas Socks, Santa Claus and Christmas Tree. Christmas is on its way and there’s a good cheer everywhere. The Christmas Mail Stationery templates comes with an installer to make sure the templates end up in the right place and would be displayed in Apple Mail New Message Stationery menu automatically. Mail Stationery templates requires any Macintosh computer running Mac OS X 10.5 with bundled Mail application.

Customize OSX’s Mail “Flag” icon

UsingMac has a nifty tutorial on how to change the little “Flag” icon used in OSX’s Mail application. Using the built-in flag feature (Command + Shift + L) is a great way to bookmark/highlight an email, but for me the flag icon that ships with Mail doesn’t stand out enough. This simple tutorial not only shows you how to customize the icon, but makes the star icons you see in the image above available for download.

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