We got a lot of news about future updates from Apple on Monday. One of the big-ticket items was macOS Catalina, the new operating software coming to your Mac this Fall. Today we’re going to zoom in on macOS Catalina to look at new features in Mail.
Mail has never been Apple’s most exciting app. And for years it’s lagged behind third-party alternatives like Spark or PolyMail.
But all that seems to be changing because Apple introduced three exciting features to Mail in macOS Catalina.
Contents
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1. Block sender
Keep getting chain emails or spam from your weird Uncle Gary? Well, now you can just block him and everything he sends you goes straight to the trash.
The ability to block a sender in Mail is going to be an invaluable tool for keeping your inbox neat and tidy. Use it as a weapon against phishing, spam, or even cyber-bullying.
And in classic Apple style, it’s easy to use. Just click the sender’s name in any email header and then click Block.
Boom! All done.
2. Mute Thread
If you ever got added to one of those enormous email threads with 100+ contacts, you know how frustrating email notifications can get. Everybody keeps using Reply All with nothing valuable to add and your emails go off every 30 seconds.
Yeah, they’re often hilarious! But it’s impossible to focus on your what you’re doing!
That’s where Mute Thread comes in. This new feature for Mail in macOS Catalina lets you turn off notifications for a particular email thread.
You can still see all the messages in your inbox when you need to. But you won’t get notified every time a new one comes in.
Ahh, blissful silence.
3. Unsubscribe
And last but not least: Unsubscribe. This new Mail feature makes it easier than ever to unsubscribe from mailing lists and newsletters you don’t want anymore. Or never signed up to in the first place…
When you get an email from a commercial list, Mail in macOS Catalina shows an Unsubscribe button above the email header. Just click that without needing to search through the email for a link in the small print.
With these three features combined, it should be easier than ever to trim down your email notifications each day and keep that inbox neat and tidy.
All that with a new layout to boot
Not only can you block, mute, and unsubscribe with ease, but you’ll enjoy Mail’s new layout at the same time.
Apple has revamped Mail to have a column layout in macOS Catalina, with a preview of your currently selected message on the right side. This should make it easier than ever to navigate your inbox and view its contents at a glance.
None of these updates are groundbreaking, and they’re all relatively small changes to Mail. But together they should make a noticeable difference to feeling on top of your emails.
And we hope they’re a sign of things to come for the future updates as well.
Find out what else is new in macOS Catalina. And let us know your thoughts on WWDC 2019 in the comments!
Dan is a freelance writer based in South West England.
He spent two years supervising repairs as a Genius Admin for Apple Retail and uses that knowledge to keep our troubleshooting guides up to date.
Long before that, Dan turned to Apple products from a musical background. Having owned iPods for years, he bought a MacBook to learn sound recording and production. It was using those skills that he gained a first-class Bachelor of Science in Sound Technology.
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I totally agree that Apple new additions are not earth shattering, but that the removal of Column Functionality is! The ability to re-order and re-size your columns in order to personalise your mail box experience was a highly valued and very useful tool that allowed you to use Mail in a way that suited you.
Now gone! Totally weird that they think improving mail should include removing a basic and crucial aspect of functionality. Another loyal Apple Mail customer looking for alternative!
I totally agree with all these comments about NOT having the preview option in Mail columns. I absolutely HATE the new look. PLEASE bring back the columns in Mail. PLEASE
I happened to stumble upon this post b/c I was having an issue with my columns in mac mail suddenly resizing but this is freaking me out.
I’m still using macOS Mojave.
I will lose it if I can’t customize my views in macmail.
I like to work in a spreadsheet-style view and each mailbox has different columns.
I’m very picky about how I like to view my mail and sorting is key for me to manage everything and move it around.
I had to dumb down when I moved from Outlook to Mac mail years ago but this will be too much.
Any idea if they are going to hear people and put it back or do they just not care?
Dear Michele!
I can feel you! I am also very picky about the view of mail app.
But i made the mistake to update.
Mail 13 is horror!
Don’t update to Catalania!
I wish I could turn back time(machine).
I totally agree with all these comments about NOT having the preview option in Mail columns. I absolutely HATE the new look. PLEASE bring back the columns in Mail. PLEASE
Catalina has completely messed up Mail so much so that I am considering switching back to outlook (despite the problems I had with this before).
Apple have introduced some “cute” new features in Mail but damaged the fundamental basics of the programme with unhelpful changes to layout, the removal of options to chose the columns in layout – I can’t find old emails now as the search function is now too simplistic.
Also what the hell is that irritating TO box which I haven’t been able to remove yet. This is a real backward step. Too much focus on trying to be clever and not enough on seamless basics. What has happened to Apple?
The column issue was first raised here last October and now in late February there still isn’t a fix. Can anyone recommend a mail client which replicated that “classic” look?
I used to be able to see in the column how big the individual messages were. (i.e. KB or MB file size) That was helpful to me, and now it’s not showing up after updating to Catalina. 🙁
Hi Pamela,
That’s one we can fix! Open the Mail app on your Mac and choose the View menu from the top menu bar. Scroll down to Show Message Size and make sure you checkmark that option by clicking it–you want to see a checkmark next to it.
Once checked, you should now see the message size information just below the time.
Liz
Upgraded ???? to Catalina. now GMAIL inbox index shows only one mail in huge letters.
Unable to get list as before.
Does anyone have any idea how to correct?
Hi Dan,
I cannot get Apple’s new Blocked Mail Filtering to move messages to the Trash. Your screenshot is different from the latest Catalina version, so I’m wondering if this function worked in beta and no longer works for you now?
I’ve never gotten it to work automatically and Apple Boards are useless.
Here’s the thread if you think you can help?
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250774748?answerId=251499716022#251499716022
Cheers,
Mick
Lack of ability to adjust column width in Catalina Mail is a major fail. Makes Mail unusable.
OMG – Columns in Mail disappeared. Bring them back right now!! The only good thing about Mail is this.
I want my adjustable columns back!
I’m yet another user who’s upset Apple removed the ability to customize the mail columns. Why?? Don’t adjust them if you don’t know how…but for the many users that have been doing this for years, why strip this basic feature away?
Looking for emails I’ve sent to a particular – a really foundational need – is now impossible.
Literally…. why would they even do it? what logic??
Anyway to solve this issue?
From my standpoint, there’s a major fail in this new version of Mail. It’s the inability to choose which columns to display, how wide to make them, and where in the window you want them to be. We’ve also lost the ability to sort on a column by clicking on the column header (there are NO column headers in this version).
Apple appears to have decided to change things just for the hell of it, not because we wanted or needed these changes.
I can’t stand it!! I want my columns in the order that I had them before!!! I can’t do anything with this column view!!! It’s utterly awful.
I made the mistake of “upgrading” to Catalina for my iMac in the past 24 hours. What a mistake. The biggest “difference” I see, is specifically this dumbing-down of Mail so that the user no longerhas NO control over how his list of mail is displayed.
The main things for me are that,
where the mail was sent TO is now gone as a column (I have 2 different .mac addresses, for different USES, but now I can’t tell which mails are which at a glance because the TO column is gone…; I could of course teach myself to look at each address’ inbox separately, instead of just the combined-inbox which is how I’ve done it for over a decade, but why did they make things HARDER?);
the cc: and bcc: columns are also gone, also valuable information for the recipient to know before having to even OPEN an e-mail to find out any information; and
the owner / user no longer has any control over how wide his columns are….
Stupid that they took these things away, stupid that they’d think no one would notice.
There is still missing mail follow up feature. Now I need to drag e-mail from SENT folder to Reminders App and put a date to remind to check have I received an answer to it. Why Apple doesn’t make a button in a e-mail window just to follow up e-mail and it would go directly to Reminders.
We have been adding Mail items to Reminders as well. Hoping to see additional changes by the time Catalina is released in Oct. BTW, the sync process around Reminder items on Catalina and iPhone is still wobbly at best.
The one feature they should put back in is the ability to delay the “mark as read” as soon as you touch mail it marked as read.
I know you can reset it to unread after the fact but other mail apps allow it and it used to be a default you could set to do this but that’s been gone for the last 4-5 version of macOS
I just want gray bars.
And, yet, again, Apple fails to deliver.
What about the way Mail in Catalina handles Gmail accounts and account syncing ?
Pete, We haven’t noticed any issues with Gmail accounts and syncing after making sure to turn on the Google settings for ‘Allow less restricted apps’ in our account. We covered some of these tips in this article. Gmail login and authentication problems with Apple Mail? Try these tips! Is there a particular syncing issue that you are experiencing on Catalina?
I just want a snooze feature in Apple mail. That’s not too much to ask… One would think…
Snooze is a hack’s feature – fooling yourself, pretending an email isn’t there, when in fact it is. If what you want is a clean inbox then you consider mail management techniques like Inbox Zero.