8 Must Have Plugins for Mac OS X Mail
This post is more for new Mac users, or Mac users who’ve not tried any Mail plugins before and would like to explore better use of Mac OS X native Mail application. Here are 6 of the best Mail plugins I can’t live without.
1 – Mail Act-On 2 ($24.95)
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If you’re an organized Mail user, you’ll most likely have many mail folders setup so that you can sort individual emails into their respective folders. Overtime it makes you counter-productive as you’ll end up with tons of folders sorted into different levels, dragging them into their respective folder becomes a pain as you have to find that particular folder from a whole stack of them. Mail Act-On solves that problem by letting you call up a HUD panel via a hotkey, letting you type the name of the folder and hitting “Enter” to file the email instead. I’ve been using this plugin extensively, $24.95 is worth every dime.
But if you want a free alternative, you can also try MsgFiler. Although the program will nag you to pay $8 within intervals of your use, if you don’t mind the nag, you can use it free forever.
2 – WideMail (Free)
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Wide screen monitors and laptops are everywhere these days, you’re probably using one, to make full use of the screen estate when using Mail, you’ll be happy to use WideMail plugin. To put it simply, WideMail displays your mail vertically instead of the original horizontal display. This makes reading emails easier.
3 – MailUnread (Free)
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MailUnread is a menubar plugin that shows you how many unread emails you have in your Mail. So whenever a new mail arrives, you’ll immediately know it. What’s more there’s an option to see a few lines of the new emails before you decide whether it needs your immediate attention.
4 – MiniMail ($9)
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MiniMail is like a Mini Player for iTunes. Clicking on the “+” sign on the Mail app collapse Mail into a “Mini Player like window”, MiniMail for this instance. You can scroll through unread mails, reply, create a new mail, delete, mark as read, check for new mail etc. Small but powerful plugin. MiniMail works best if you have a dual monitor setup, so that you can place MiniMail on the other monitor while making space for other applications you want to place on that monitor, iCal or iTunes for example.
5 – Mail Appetizer (Free)
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Mail Appetizer displays a notification window everytime a new email arrives. You can then determine whether the message requires your immediate attention.
6 – Mail Attachment Scanner (Donation)
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There are times we send out an email saying “Attached is the file.” only to get a reply from the recipient telling you nothing was attached. This can be embarrassing when the recipient is your professional client. Mail Attachment Scanner solves this for you. This plugin scans the email for words like “attached” when you click “Send”, if the plugin can’t find any attachments in the email it’ll prompt you before sending it out. A nifty tool.
If you find or is already using some fantastic Mail plugins please feel free to share it here. :)
7 – Subjectivity (Free)
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Subjectivity is a simple but helpful plugin that will let you know if you forgot to fill in the subject line of an email you’re sending out.
8 – Mail Widget (Free)
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Mail Widget is a dashboard widget that will check your email periodically (user defined) even if your Mail is not running, complete with growl notification. There is also an option where you can enable a female voice to speak to you eg. “New Mail Has Arrived” when there is a new unread mail in your inbox.






All I want is a plugin that lets me view the source code of an email before I open it. It’s the only thing I miss from Outlook. Apple Mail requires that you open an email first, before it lets you view source [Menu > View > Message > Raw Source]. If your intention (as mine is) is to see if the email is spam (and includes an image), then you want to do it before opening, so you can bounce it without opening. If you open the email, the image src tag will then ping the spammer’s server and confirm that your email is actually a live address. Frustrating as hell that Apple Mail won’t let the user view source before opening.
cheers,
Chris
ChrisGrayson.com
Great post, Cheers! Anyone have any other application suggestions? http://twitter.com/brianjking
Cheers!
Great links !!! Great and beautiful site !!!
I use and like very much Herald (http://erikhinterbichler.com/software/herald/) plugin which is free !!!!
Great post :)
Handling a lot of emails is a chore.
You run through a pile of new ones and you don’t have time to deal with them all immediately. But there are quite a lot that may be needed later and may not (eg notice of that meeting you may or may not have time to go to, or that tender which is a bit of an outside chance).
At present, I have to go through each of these many times, before I eventually delete them. I would like to be able to apply the “read once” rule.
To do this I need to be able to tag each email with a delete date, so that if the need arose I could refer back to it until that date arrived, but on that date it would self-destruct without further intervention.
Does such a plug-in exist?
Great recommends.