Apple Mail has been the de-facto standard for email clients almost since the early days of OS X. Since then, many Mac email clients have come and gone, but Apple Mail remains.
Apple Mail is quite versatile, with plenty of options and features. Even so, most users love to customize it, and eke out one more feature. For all you tweakers, here is our list of Apple Mail tips and tricks.
Newton, one of the best email clients for the Mac, is now available for Windows 10. Newton (previously CloudMagic) is a cross-platform email client that’s also available on Android and iPhone. Today, the company is launching its official Windows 10 app on the Windows Store, and it’s really good.
Keep an Eye on Important Email Messages
You can use the flag feature in Apple Mail to mark important email messages for later reference. We'll show you how to turn the flag feature on and off as well as replace the default names Apple assigned to the flags with ones that better fit your needs.
In addition, you can combine this tip with smart mailboxes (outlined in the tip Find Messages Quickly in Apple Mail) to have a mailbox that shows just the messages you have flagged.
Find Messages Quickly in Apple Mail
The search function in Apple Mail is surprisingly slow and unwieldy at times. If you need to find certain email messages quickly, use Smart Mailboxes instead.
Smart mailboxes use a set of rules you define to sort messages into a mailbox for quick viewing. Since the sorting is done in the background, most of the time, the smart mailbox content is up to date before you even think about looking inside.
Click and Drag to Customize the Apple Mail Toolbar
The default Apple Mail interface is clean and easy to use, but you can get some much more out of the Mail app by customizing the toolbar.
You may be astonished by the additional commands and tools that can be added to Mail's toolbar. We'll show you how to customize the Mail toolbar.
Take Control of Your Email in Mail
The Mac's Mail app included the ability to automate routine tasks such as filtering mail by specific criteria, organizing mail into folders, filtering out unwanted messages, and quite a bit more.
Mail rules are used to perform this automation and they are surprisingly easy to use. If you're ready to save time and let the Mail app take over a few basic tasks, these instructions will have you becoming a Mail Rules wizard in no time.
Organize Your Apple Mail With Mailboxes
The first step to taking control of your email is to organize it. We'll show you how to organize your email messages in Apple Mail by creating new mailboxes to house messages with specific topics.
Combine this tip with the one above (Take Control of Your Email in Mail) and you can have an easy time of using, finding, and answering email messages.
Pump Up Your Email With Apple Mail Stationery
Apple Mail can make your life, or at least your email messages, more colorful, with a number of stationery options to choose from. The stationary templates cover a number of topics including:
When you're ready to punch up a message, check out the stationary options.
Use Mail's BCC Feature to Send Emails to a Group
When you send email messages to a group in Apple Mail, use the BCC (blind carbon copy) option to protect everyone's privacy.
Add a Signature to Your Email Messages in Apple Mail
You can save yourself at least a few minutes a day by creating a signature to use in your email messages in Apple Mail. You can even create multiple signatures and switch between them.
Add a Photo to an Email Message
You can add a photo to an email message in Apple Mail without launching Photos, iPhoto or any image library app. This tip shows you how to use the Mail's built-in Photo Browser.
Filter Spam With Apple Mail
Apple Mail has a built-in spam filter with a respectably high level of accuracy. You can use it to set suspected spam aside to check later, or to whisk junk mail out of your sight, never to be seen again.
Access Your Gmail Using Apple's Mail
Apple's Mail is one of the most intuitive email applications currently available for Macs. It can easily handle Gmail and other web-based email accounts.
Best Mail Client For Mac For Workout
Access Your AOL Email Using Apple's Mail
Apple Mail can easily handle AOL and other web-based email accounts. This guide will walk you through the process of setting up Apple Mail to handle your AOL email account.
Moving Apple Mail: Transfer Your Apple Mail to a New Mac
Moving your Apple Mail to a new Mac, or to a new, clean install of the Mac operating system, may seem like a difficult task but it actually only requires saving three items and moving them to the new destination.
Fix Apple Mail Problems With These Troubleshooting Guides
Troubleshooting Apple Mail can seem like a difficult process at first, but Apple provides some built-in troubleshooting tools that can help you get your Mail application up and running quickly.
When you're having trouble with Mail, check out our Apple Mail Troubleshooting guides, which we've gathered in one place for quick access.
Set Up Apple Mail Rules
Apple Mail rules allow you to set up conditions and actions that tell Apple Mail how to process incoming messages. With Apple Mail rules, you can automate and organize your email for a better workflow.
Create Notes or To-Do's in Apple Mail
This tip is specifically for those still using OS X Snow Leopard or OS X Lion. In those versions of the Mac OS, Mail had an integrated To-Do and Notes function that has been sorely missed by many.
In later versions, the Mail Notes function was moved into the standalone Notes app, still included in macOS. To-Do was deligated to iCal in later versions.
And while the iCal app and the Notes app work well enough, the older integrated versions in Mail just seemed to work better.
Email clients come in all shapes and sizes, but when it comes to the options available on the Mac, we feel that Airmail is the best email client for most people. It’s easy to use, supports a number of different email providers, has a solid search function, and more.
Airmail 3
Platform: macOS
Price: $9.99
Download Page
Features
- Supports Gmail, Google Apps, iCloud, Exchange, IMAP, POP3, and local accounts
- Unlimited email accounts with a unified inbox
- Gmail keyboard shortcuts, global shortcuts, and custom shortcuts
- Adjustable interface with multiple themes, modes, and layout options
- Global search, filters, advanced token search, and a preview mode
- Integration with Omnifocus, Fantastical, Trello, Asana, Evernote, Reminders, Calendar, BusyCal, Things, 2To, Wunderlist, and Todoist
- Large contact photos for most contacts
- Support for Gmail Primary Inbox
- Support for folders, colors, Gmail labels, flags, and more
- Attachment support for integration with Dropbox, Google Drive, Droplr, and CloudApp
- Customizable notifications
- VIP support with sender-specific notifications
- Quick replies
- Send later options
- Customizable menus, gestures, and shortcuts
- Today extension and handoff support
- iCloud syncing with iPhone app
- Folders and labels for organization
- Search filters, flags, and message sorting
- AppleScript support
- Muting and blocking features
- Task-based sorting with options to send emails to memos, done, or to-dos
- Support for Markdown, rich text, HTML, and plain text
Where It Excels
Airmail’s biggest strength is the variety of ways you can customize it. Part of that comes from the fact that Airmail is updated pretty frequently, which means that not only does it regularly get new features, it’s also always up to date with the most modern iterations of macOS. Over the course of its life, those updates have added in features like snoozing, VIP mailbox, and plenty of other modern email features.
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The ways that you can customize Airmail are pretty in-depth. You can alter what’s on your sidebar, what emails you’re notified about, how emails are displayed, how long a “snooze” is, how gestures work, where you save files, and tons more. Airmail also integrates with a bunch of third-party services, so if you use one of the supported to-do apps or notes apps as part of your email workflow then it’s pretty easy to integrate that into Airmail.
Airmail is basically a power-user email app for people who don’t want to go “full power-user” with something like Outlook. It’s great for the niche of people who need an advanced email client on their Mac and who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty customizing it.
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Where It Falls Short
At $10, Airmail is a bit of an investment and while it’s well worth the cost if you use all is features, not everyone needs a ton of features to begin with. While Airmail is very customizable, it’s not great out of the box, which means you’ll want to spend a 10-15 minutes playing around with various settings, options, and other things to tweak it to suit your needs. If you use email a lot for work, this isn’t a huge deal, but if you’re a casual user who just want to send and receive some mail then Airmail is overkill.
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The Competition
Apple Mail is probably the most obvious competition here. The packed-in email client is... fine. It works on a fundamental level, but since it’s only updated when Apple updates its entire operating system, it’s pretty devoid of modern features. If you just check and reply to emails, it does the job though.
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Spark(Free) is easily the best alternative to Airmail for people who don’t need as many of the advanced features that come packed into it. Spark has a lot of the modern razzle-dazzle of Airmail without the clutter. It has smart inbox sorting, iCloud syncing with the free mobile app, email snoozing, and quick replies. The free part might seem like its main strength, but it gives me pause because it’s unclear what the business model is, and therefore hard to tell what will happen to the app in the future. We’ve seen far too many abandoned email apps over the years to trust any free app moving forward, even if it is run by a company with a whole productivity suite. Still, it’s a great alternative to Airmail and free to check out if you’re curious.
Postbox ($40) is another great competitor. Like Airmail, Postbox excels in search options and additional powerful features you won’t find in most other mail clients. For example, you get message summary mode, sorting by type/subject of email (called the Focus Pane), add-ons, easy archiving of messages, and more. It’s a little clunky to actually use though, and Postbox doesn’t feel as at home in macOS as Airmail does. While you can check out a trial of Postbox for free, it’s a tough sell at $40 unless you really enjoy it.
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Lifehacker’s App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories.
Best Mail Client For Mac For Working
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