11 ms·

Apple Mail randomly becomes the frontmost application in macOS

278 points by dewey 6y ago

kwood 6y ago
It’s bizarre to me that nowadays an application can become frontmost application at all. When I switched to OSX back in the days, it was an advertised feature that this can’t happen the same way it does on Windows. If something wants attention, its icon bounced in the dock. Nothing more.
threeseed 6y ago
Please make sure to log this at http://bugreporter.apple.com http://bugreporter.apple.com Your bug will at least then be triaged and acknowledged.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > Your bug will at least then be triaged and acknowledged. Lol sure it will.
  - Austin_Conlon 6y ago
    Can't say for Mail, but in my experience watchOS and SwiftUI reports are frequently acknowledged.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      Apple definitely has a history of not acknowledging for a long time major problems that many people can clearly demonstrate. Bend gate, antenna gate, stage light gate, that thing with the coating on the screens...
      - threeseed 6y ago
        Bend date, antenna gate were fixed in the next revision of their hardware. Screen coating was fixed I believe even quicker. There is a limit to how quickly Apple can fix hardware given they have to work with third parties on retooling and retraining.
        jolux 6y ago
        The screen coating is still an issue. It crops up again every few years. I’ve gotten a few macs replaced for free because of it even when I didn’t mind.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        > Bend date, antenna gate were fixed in the next revision of their hardware. I know they were. But do you not remember there was quite a period of time where Apple didn't acknowledge the problems and ignored users trying to triage them? > There is a limit to how quickly Apple can fix What has this got to do with it? We're talking about triage and acknowledgement, not fix.
      - PunksATawnyFill 6y ago
        Flexgate is still a real, profound, and disgraceful defect. This is the one where your MacBook Pro’s screen stops working because Apple ran a ribbon cable through a hinge or some such stupid shit. Been happening since 2016 and still rendering $4000 laptops useless after 18 months of light use.
  - threeseed 6y ago
    Bugreporter is just a front end for Radar. And I can assure that when I was working at Apple bugs were triaged and acknowledged by a PM. Doesn’t mean they get fixed though.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      > I can assure that when I was working at Apple bugs were triaged and acknowledged As a counterexample, as late as 2018 Apple was publicly denying (so not acknowledging and ignoring attempts at triage) bendgate, but leaked documents show they knew about it in 2014. https://www.slashgear.com/iphone-6-bendgate-docs-confirm-apple-knew-bending-more-likely-24531867/ https://www.slashgear.com/iphone-6-bendgate-docs-confirm-app... > Doesn’t mean they get fixed though. We're not talking about fixing - we're talking about triage and acknowledgement.
    - mihaaly 6y ago
      "Doesn’t mean they get fixed though." Ok then! I am driven to report it now! Actually, this is a trouble bugs lots and lots of people for long long time. I browsed countless articles or threads about this with tons of workarounds. Where more than a few are Apple discussions. If it is not reported yet - from outside or inside - then it does not exist. But it does.
    - PunksATawnyFill 6y ago
      Radar’s asinine search functionality also obscures the seriousness of bugs by failing to reveal dupes. It doesn’t (or at least didn’t) default to searching for all words used in the title; it only searches for the EXACT string you enter. It was a pain in the ass to even find bugs YOU wrote. I couldn’t believe how goddamned dumb this is, or the Radar team’s response: Oh, you simply use Oracle syntax and wildcards in the title search! No explanation of how we were supposed to know this, or WHY.
      - saagarjha 6y ago
        > Oh, you simply use Oracle syntax and wildcards in the title search! TIL
    - 6y ago
- 4ad 6y ago
  Apple bug tracker is so frustrating. They take forever to answer, and ask for things that you have already provided in your original issue. When you try to reproduce the bug on multiple versions, they close your bug if you reproduced it on beta versions, because beta versions are unsupported, even though the bug affects release versions. Sometimes this happens even if they asked you to try the beta version! The bugs are almost always closed as duplicate of another bug, which, of course, you can't see because the bug tracker is private. The bugs are never fixed, at least no bug that I have ever reported has been fixed. Years or months later after submitting a bug that happens not to be closed as duplicate of another bug, they get closed because a new version of macOS is released, and you are encouraged to resubmit your report if it still affects the new version, which inevitably it does... Even if the bug is in some open source component, and you provide a patch, it is ignored and eventually closed as explained above. It's a total waste of time and a pain in the ass to submit bugs to Apple.
  - threeseed 6y ago
    You can’t see other people’s bug reports because they often contain screenshots or telemetry data which is confidential. And I believe the way Apple works is to look through Radar for important/widespread bugs, mark them for fixing in the next release, fix them and then ask you to retest. They aren’t just going through and fixing Radar’s one by one. Hence you get that frustrating experience where it looks like the bug is being ignored.
    - luckman212 6y ago
      I wish that was how it worked, but my experience has been more like the parent poster's: long-standing easily reproducible bugs never fixed despite multiple reports and multiple major releases. I've never once been informed by Apple of a bug I submitted being fixed, or "asked to retest". Not being able to see the duplicate bug when your case is closed and marked as such feels like a slap in the face. I understand that some material could be confidential, but I would bet over 99% aren't. If someone has spent enough time to determine that my report X is a duplicate of Y, they could also determine if Y is confidential and if so, just flag it in the system to show up as redacted.
- dewey 6y ago
  I usually file bug reports but this issue was already well documented in their support forum even by official Apple staff so I'd assume they would at least file the issues if they see something show up there? Also checked on https://openradar.appspot.com https://openradar.appspot.com if there's anything but there wasn't.
_qulr 6y ago
My workaround for this issue is to put Mail app in its own dedicated Space/Desktop. Then it only comes to the front in its own Space, not in the Space I'm normally using.
- elmcrest 6y ago
  good to know as a workaround, thx
- nextos 6y ago
  I've switched back to a new MacBook, temporarily due to COVID as it was easy to purchase from Apple and it was an emergency. I used OS X fulltime 2006-11. I'm surprised how buggy Catalina is, including Mail.app. I have had serious firmware issues too, such as needing to reset my SMC very frequently because my USB C stops charging the machine every other day. Apple is clearly, sadly, neglecting mac OS. Surprisingly, I haven't disliked butterfly keys as much as I thought I would do. I can type extremely fast. I do prefer their scissor keys, though, which are really good and low latency [1]. [1] https://danluu.com/keyboard-latency/ https://danluu.com/keyboard-latency/
  - mgkimsal 6y ago
    if you really got a brand new one, the keyboard may not be as bad as the previous iterations (2016/2017)
    - nextos 6y ago
      Yes, it's new and it's fairly decent. I love mechanical keyboards (especially those with ALPS and TOPRE switches), but I realize low travel means I type much faster and it doesn't tire my fingers. IMHO the scissor keys in the Magic Keyboard are really good because they strike a perfect compromise in terms of depth, comfort and speed. Also the board is really low latency. Not sure what tricks Apple has played with the firmware in those keyboards.
  - apple4ever 6y ago
    Have you run into the mail deleting bug yet? That's what is holding me back from upgrading.
ancarda 6y ago
I get something like this with Music.app -- it seems to randomly open. I suspect it's some kind of keystroke (i.e. hitting the play button) but I haven't figured out exactly why it's happening or how to stop it. I'm pretty sure this didn't used to happen until I upgraded to Catalina. I really wish I had better luck with Linux...
- 1_player 6y ago
  If no media is currently playing or paused and you press the Play button by mistake, the Music app opens. It's extremely annoying.
  - jedieaston 6y ago
    You can get rid of this with launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.rcd.plist (https://www.howtogeek.com/274345/stop-itunes-from-launching-when-you-press-play-on-your-macs-keyboard/ https://www.howtogeek.com/274345/stop-itunes-from-launching-...)
    - cytzol 6y ago
      Unfortunately, when I tried it, it made the media keys stop working entirely, not just stopping Music from opening.
- jdk 6y ago
  I get this semi-randomly when I'm using my bluetooth headphones/mic with Meet/Discord and then quit/close it and it becomes available to the OS or something. Music.app just pops up and as far as I can tell, there's no way to turn it off.
knolan 6y ago
I’ve had this issue for a long time now across a couple of versions of MacOS and three Macs. It appears to be related to Google Calendar. My current workaround is to hide a Mail window with CMD-h. I’ve given up trying to report it or find a fix.
- evanelias 6y ago
  Can confirm, same here. As long as you hide the window (cmd-h) instead of closing it (cmd-w), the problem doesn't ever come up. I've been using this work-around for over a year now.
- himynameistimli 6y ago
  I second this. For me it seems to happen at very specific times, like 12AM so it leads me to believe it had to do with calendar events. And it always does it a few times in succession.
coldcode 6y ago
Outlook 365 does this as well.
underyx 6y ago
I have this and it keeps happening while I'm playing Counter-Strike. Incredibly annoying for it to split screen and steal focus from the game.
holstvoogd 6y ago
Pretty sure it is due too it not being able to connect to a mail server. every time it happens, i see the "couldn't connect" icon
- galad87 6y ago
  Yes, that's it. It happened with my Gmail account too, it stopped when I removed it from Mail.
demarq 6y ago
I switched to Airmail for only this reason lol
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  Watch out. Last time I tried it, it was vulnerable to a bunch of issues similar to XSS. I suggest you test it with https://www.emailprivacytester.com/ https://www.emailprivacytester.com/ and see if it still finds anything.
  - demarq 6y ago
    oh wow, thanks for the heads up!!
- dmitriid 6y ago
  When I tried Airmail, they sent an email that had something like "oh, we see that you use @<domain>.com. Do you think you could reach to your colleagues and talk to them about using Airmail". I deleted the app immediately.
lcnmrn 6y ago
I keep it minimized to avoid the issue and to get notifications.
- 1_player 6y ago
  It still pops up when it's minimised. I blame this bug for my inboxes going to crap over the past year, because the only fix for me is keeping Mail closed and opening it only when I really need to.
ornornor 6y ago
Apple Mail is riddled with bugs it’s unusable. Do yourself a favor and switch. Anything else is better than it, Thunderbird is a pretty good alternative imo. It feels like apple doesn’t put any care into regression bugs in their applications. It’s the same on the iPhone, Mail is so bad that I uninstalled it in favor of outlook (the irony...) —Mail was sucking so much battery that my phone wouldn’t last 8h. With outlook it lasts all day (12+h)
- st3fan 6y ago
  > Apple Mail is riddled with bugs it’s unusable. Weird, I've been using it for a decade and I have zero issues. Maybe 'unusable' is a pretty subjective assessment?
  - auggierose 6y ago
    What configuration are you running? This bug happens to me several times a day, though I am trying to close Apple Mail when I am not using it, but that's easy to forget and also annoying.
  - orloffm 6y ago
    If people keep alligators at home, and some are eaten by them, the assessment of them being unsuitable for pets is not subjective.
    - andreasley 6y ago
      It depends on the percentage. Dogs are considered suitable pets, despite some owners being mauled.
      - swiley 6y ago
        Certain breeds of dogs are not, these probably account for the majority of mailings. https://www.askadamskutner.com/dog-bites/bite-statistics-according-to-dog-breed/ https://www.askadamskutner.com/dog-bites/bite-statistics-acc...
  - 6y ago
Veen 6y ago
This has been annoying me for months. It’s particularly irritating when you’re screen sharing. I just make sure Mail is quit when I’m not using it, which isn’t ideal.
amachefe 6y ago
Added to this, have anybody been able to get Mail app to connect via authenticated proxy?.. I can only use Outlook to work at work which is frustrating
auggierose 6y ago
Yeah, it is horrible. I am closing Apple Mail when I am not using it because of it.
villgax 6y ago
Just learnt to minimise(Ctrl+M) the window instead of closing it with x or Ctrl+W
rinaldsarins 6y ago
I have the same issue, in fact I'm so used to it that I even do not notice it anymore, except when watching fullscreen video, then I'm like: "It's just the way how things are here...[quits Mail]". As someone already mentioned - I'm also pretty sure it's related to some disconnect/reconnect thing.
hackandtrip 6y ago
It happens A LOT with non-GSuite Gmail accounts (personal GMail accounts) too!
- jeffbee 6y ago
  There's no reason why it shouldn't affect all google mail accounts equally. If the cause is frontend disconnections, it will happen to any account tier.
kristofarkas 6y ago
How is it that there is still no known root cause for this issue? I suspect there is a way to check what the reason an app came to the foreground is, no?
- galad87 6y ago
  The reason is that Mail thinks the mail server is unreachable, so it brings the window to front, but then magically it changes idea and the mail server is reachable again ️.
  - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
    Could be worse! Outlook on Windows just locks up entirely while it tries to connect. I don’t know why they’re still doing network IO in the UI thread - over 10 years after they admitted it was a major problem.
  - bambataa 6y ago
    In general I find macOS handles alerting the user very poorly. I don't know why but it infuriates me when icons bounce on the dock for attention. The animation is too insistent for whatever trivial thing the app wants to let me know. Or an app will open some Important Dialog Box that I need to deal with, except it's hidden behind some other windows somewhere and the rest of the app refuses to respond to my clicks until I find the dialog box. It doesn't bother foregrounding the dialog box for me.
    - redler 6y ago
      Yeah, that's not good. Sometimes you can find it through some combination of ensuring that app is frontmost by clicking its icon in the dock, choosing "hide others" from its menu, and triggering "show application windows" in Mission Control (often ctrl-down-arrow, or a three-finger down-swipe trackpad gesture).
      - bambataa 6y ago
        Due to the explosion in videoconferencing I've spent some time recently helping family set things up via remote desktop (I highly recommend Chrome Remote Desktop by the way, pretty easy to set up). This kind of thing is absolutely inscrutable to non-tech savvy people. All they see is that the computer suddenly stops doing anything but playing an annoying "donk" sound whenever they click and they have no idea that any of those features exist. Really, Windows with its `window == app == taskbar item` approach is far easier to understand.
MindTooth 6y ago
I have the problem that Mail.app gets the frontmost CPU-bound application. It for no obvious reasons too. All in all, a bit buggy application it seems.
jtlowe 6y ago
I experience this as well after upgrading to Catalina. I thought it was my fault at first, caused by some sort of key combo. It only happens for me when in full screen with another app. I use Mail with a GSuite account as well.
- mihaaly 6y ago
  I am still not on Catalina yet and it started for me ca. 6-9 months ago. Perhaps with some Mojave update. (unsure as no big changes occurred and it took some time to see being a systematic trouble) I am more and more turning off system updates (not only Mac) as those bring more trouble than good. Being a very late adopter pays off. (update to Catalina is still not in the middle term plans)
  - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
    I’m still on High Sierra (10.13), latest security update three days ago (10.13.6) Admittedly I am not a developer, and none of the software I’ve wanted to run has required a more recent version.
  - IAmEveryone 6y ago
    To add a datapoint that might be underrepresented for reasons of self-selections: I've updated to Catalina and haven't had any issues.
elmcrest 6y ago
hits me too and it‘s really annoying... I even got used to quit Mail.app but yeah... it‘s bad. My feeling though is that google is more and more saying goodbye to standards... just a feeling
pretzel_boss 6y ago
I thought I was going insane
brandonhorst 6y ago
You can fix this by removing the “Google” account and connecting to Gmail as a regular IMAP account. Since I did that, I haven’t had any issues with this.
- nottorp 6y ago
  Oh, I was wondering why I don't have that issue. I've set up Apple Mail long before they had specific support for "google" accounts so of course the gmail account is imap... Btw 7 years of importing application configuration across OS installs without a hitch.
mihaaly 6y ago
It is not a bug, it is a feature. Someone out there had to write the code that pushes the mail app to the front. It does not happen spontaneously, someone made it happen. And made it an exclusive behavior without user control. It must have been a conscious feature. A mindless and stupid one, but still a feature. No bug to fix here. (after suffering and spending toooo much time of experimenting I decided to get rid of the Google account approach of the Mac but use it as an IMAP account, turning off 'safe' access in my Google account)
- dewey 6y ago
  > Someone out there had to write the code that pushes the mail app to the front. Sometimes the code you write doesn't do what you had in mind. Or worse: gets triggered by side effects of something unrelated. I don't think it's intentional in this case but even if it would be intentional after seeing this many bug reports everywhere you'd have to reconsider and make connection errors less intrusive.
  - mihaaly 6y ago
    You do not push the whole app to the front by mistake, especially at some glitch of connection as it is happening here! It is not a typo or whatever kind of mistake just happens on its own but had to be a conscious action!! I write code, I make mistake, but this is beyond that! It is also neglected for years now while being very widespread, no way of being unnoticed and left there if it wasn't a conscious choice to do so!
mstade 6y ago
I don't have any issues with Apple Mail but I do have issues with zoom, randomly switching from full screen sharing to the desktop and back again, it's incredibly annoying. It doesn't happen when I share my screen, only when others do. It seems to have gotten better recently but still happens in occasion. Anyone else seeing this? Maybe it's related?
- vladnyc 6y ago
  It’s a setting you can turn off
  - snazz 6y ago
    Yes. This is a very annoying default, but luckily you can disable it.
    - mstade 6y ago
      Alright people, stop teasing and tell me what to look for please! :o)
      - blueberry_47 6y ago
        Settings > Share Screen > Maximize Zoom window when a participant shares screen ?
- gingerlime 6y ago
  I have another zoom problem on Mojave. Even though I marked the zoom windows to use Desktop 2, they keep opening on Desktop 1 :-/ any tips on how to fix this?
  - cerberusss 6y ago
    Several apps have this. I suspect they don't correctly support the windows restoration API.
vladharbuz 6y ago
I've had this issue for the past 2–3 years. It seems to happen because of improper error handling. If you look closely at the app in the instant it opens, your affected account will have a “disconnected” symbol next to it in the sidebar. However, it goes away before an error can be shown. My theory is: there is a momentary connection issue with these G Suite accounts, and Mail.app starts to show an error by focusing itself, but the error is resolved so quickly it doesn't actually get to show the “connection problems” modal. I hope this can be fixed soon, it's been a daily annoyance for me for a long time now.
- mihaaly 6y ago
  I confirm your observations. Yet, to force an app to the front when glitch in connection happens is more like a feature they deliriously thought is being useful, instead of choosing other means of notifications, which is plenty. An app is not forcing itself to the front without someone is specifically writing the code for it to do.
  - lonelappde 6y ago
    This smells like a feature built 10+ years ago, before notifications existed in Mac OS X, that never got upgraded. That's how apps "notified" back then.
    - snuxoll 6y ago
      > That's how apps "notified" back then. Polite apps would just bounce their dock icon rather than stealing focus, however.
      - tannhaeuser 6y ago
        Exactly. I found the bouncing animation genius, as it always reminded me of a toddler impatiently jumping up and down for attention. Doesn't mail.app do this?
        6y ago
KenanSulayman 6y ago
Funnily enough most of the times Mail came up was due to me accidentally pressing cmd + i in a browser.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  I hate that! I’ve been looking for ways to turn it off or rebind it to another keyboard shortcut but it never sticks…
jshaqaw 6y ago
For years I’ve seen a concostent bug where I can’t go to the Mail window until I force quit and reopen mail a bunch. Frustrating.
gumby 6y ago
This has been happening to me since 10.12 and I have no google account connected to my machine for anything (mail, calendar, nothing). It’s infuriating, and assumed it was some perverse design decision.
maxcbc 6y ago
I’ve had it since I got catalina
kahlonel 6y ago
I was a long time Gmail user, on the verge of leaving Gmail due to a long list of reasons. This bug was the final straw for me (I know it’s not Gmail’s fault). Got rid of Gmail completely. Haven’t seen this bug since.
- deergomoo 6y ago
  I’m not sure why but Google services seem to cause a lot of issues on the Mac. I don’t use Google-based calendars anymore, but when I did, the accountsd process would often sit chewing absurd amounts of CPU for no discernible reason. Same goes for this Mail issue, it only seems to happen with Gmail/G Suite accounts. But yes, I am also looking to move away from Gmail; not because of this bug but because I don’t like the idea of all my important online accounts being tied to a company that has essentially zero customer service or support.
- basilgohar 6y ago
  Gmail's IMAP interface does have issues, along with their repurposing IMAP folders as "labels", this causes many traditional email clients problems, including Thunderbird. My Gmail account causes Thunderbird to slow to a crawl most times. I am sure there is some Thunderbird liability as well, but I did not have this problem with other, large IMAP accounts that were not Gmail before.
7ewis 6y ago
Something I still don't understand, similar to this - not sure if it's a bug or feature but I use Desktops heavily, especially while working at home without my extra monitors. For some reason, the order of my Desktops on Mac seem to reshuffle, I can't work out what causes it or when it happens. I often have it ordered something like this: Desktop 1 - Google Doc (Chrome) Desktop 2 - Researching (Chrome) Desktop 3 - Slack Desktop 4 - Spotify I'll do the three finger gesture moving from Desktop 1 to 2 and randomly say Spotify will have moved there. It's so annoying.
- theDoug 6y ago
  The answer is found in System Preferences > Mission Control. Uncheck the “Automatically rearrange spaces based on most recent use” box :)
  - 7ewis 6y ago
    Wow, thanks so much! Always thought it was bug, turned that straight off.
  - jonpurdy 6y ago
    Astounding to me that automatic rearranging would have been considered desirable. Hard to imagine that it’s just visual folks (like myself) who would lose flow state if the mental map of their Desktops was interrupted if they were suddenly rearranged.
    - simongr3dal 6y ago
      When changing apps by using the dock, the animation only shows the desktops move over by one space. So by changing the order it will only take one swipe to get back to where you were before. If it didn’t rearrange based on use the animation would show an arbitrary number of moves and you would have to keep track of how many times it moved over to know how many times to swipe to get back. If you only change desktops by using Mission Control rearrange based on recent used shouldn’t even be a problem because it will never automatically rearrange if you use Mission Control.
willmacdonald 6y ago
I have a similar issue with Safari. I have not opened it for months, but every so often it is the frontmost app after waking.
defnotashton2 6y ago
Reading the people that put up with it why? What's wrong with thunderbird?
- jtlowe 6y ago
  I put up with it because I’ve used Mail for many years without issue until now. Fortunately for me it happens infrequently enough that it’s mildly irritating to me so far. Much less irritating than when I open my MacBook and receive dozens of iMessages at once along with their dings.
- PunksATawnyFill 6y ago
  Thunderbird sucks because, last time I checked, it had no way to copy or propagate filters between machines. Deal-breaker right there. I’d be happy to hear that was fixed. Meanwhile, SpamSieve makes Mail tolerable.
- arm 6y ago
  Or MailMate¹. ―――――― ¹ — https://freron.com/ https://freron.com/
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  Mac Mail supports the Exchange proprietary HTTP API, while all the other clients only support IMAP. HTTP is much more efficient and seems more resilient against temporary network issues (due to the lack of a persistent connection).
- Synaesthesia 6y ago
  Mac Mail is a great app IMO. It's full featured and performant, I'm very happy with it. This is pretty much the only issue, and it's only with Gmail.
rm445 6y ago
I stopped using Mac Mail quite recently, because of a bug that meant not all my IMAP folders were displayed. Remember Mozilla Thunderbird? It's great. Also has an RSS reader built in.
baby 6y ago
Same. I’ve had this issue for a while now.
wadkar 6y ago
Ugh! It’s most annoying when you’re in a full screen app and presenting. Suddenly, Mail.app decides to take half the screen and spurts all my inbox for everyone to see. You can’t watch full time videos either due to this annoyance.
saagarjha 6y ago
Interestingly, I have the opposite problem: when I boot up my computer Mail shows now windows until I click on it, even though every other app restores its windows. Very strange.
someonehere 6y ago
Where I work we don’t allow Apple Mail to run on corporate computers. IT rolled out mandatory endpoint protection once, and they started getting reports of malware living in the Mail storage folder. Apparently when employees synced their corporate Gmail to Apple Mail, Apple Mail was pulling down the malicious/suspicious attachments from the Google spam folder. So I figure that’s a good reason why physical mail clients need to die. There’s no real need for them anymore.
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
  Malware doesn’t harm your computer just by sitting around on the disk.
  - jojobas 6y ago
    Until someone finds a buffer overflow in Apple Mail MIME handling or some such.
bondolo 6y ago
If you have Microsoft Exchange accounts then you get a different bug. If you have no network connection or change network connections Apple Mail will thrash accountsd for long periods of time consuming as much of the CPU as it can. Neither Apple Mail nor accountsd appear to have any throttling of network connection attempts. Quitting Apple Mail until you have a network connection is the only option.
aichi 6y ago
This is happening to me on Catalina with Safari. Having on dual monitor another app and Safari, clicking in another app and Safari takes focus back.
lupinglade 6y ago
Hard to believe it still hasn’t been fixed.
gnicholas 6y ago
Another Mail issue I have: if one mail message is highlighted and then I click another and type command-R to reply, the email reply will be to the message that is no longer selected. Sometimes I’ll get a notification of a new email, go to click and send a quick reply (“ok great”), and I’ll have sent the email before I realize that it’s going to the wrong recipient. It seems crazy to me that the order of operations can be messed up like this. First I clicked, then I command-R’d. Why would Mail handle these commands out of order?
m463 6y ago
Apple mail also loads remote images when you forward an email, indepdent of the "load remote images" setting. (haven't tried latest OS)
marmaduke 6y ago
I've encountered other features such as long - long press on send (i.e. you're thinking about it) will send all your drafts - deleting an email might select the one above or below after, so you can't rapid fire delete a sequence
apple4ever 6y ago
I run into an issue that started the past few upgrades: Mail will just stop downloading new Mail. No rhyme or reason, it just stops. I can have a second computer next to it and watch mail come in, but on that Mail, it won't do anything. I have to quit (sometimes force-quit) to get it to start again.
egypturnash 6y ago
I get something like this all the time, except it pops up behind whatever I'm doing and doesn't steal focus. I also almost never do stuff in full screen mode, maybe that's the trigger for it stealing focus? Definitely seems to be related to "I had an email connectivity error and I must let you know NOWNOWNOW." Knowing that it's associated with gmail accounts feels like one more reason for me to get off my ass and disentangle my email from gmail...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
fsflyer 6y ago
My Apple Mail bug is with changing passwords on Exchange accounts. I change the password, Apple Mail prompts for the new password, then uses the old one to connect. I have to quit Apple Mail and use the accounts pane of preference panels and cancel when it prompts for the new password as it has the same bug. Then I can click details and change the password. That works. Reported many years ago in Sierra.
njhaveri 6y ago
If anybody is interested, I've been writing a Gmail-focused email client for macOS called Mimestream. It combines native macOS UI with Gmail-specific features such as categorized inboxes, colored labels, and aliases (made possible by the use of the Gmail API instead of IMAP). I just opened up a public beta, and you can request immediate access on the website at https://mimestream.com https://mimestream.com. It's free during the beta period - I only ask for feedback: feedback@mimestream.com. Unlike some other 3rd party email clients, it makes direct connections from your Mac to Gmail and stores data/credentials on your Mac. There's no intermediary servers.

278 points by dewey 6y ago

It’s bizarre to me that nowadays an application can become frontmost application at all. When I switched to OSX back in the days, it was an advertised feature that this can’t happen the same way it does on Windows. If something wants attention, its icon bounced in the dock. Nothing more.

threeseed 6y ago

Please make sure to log this at http://bugreporter.apple.com http://bugreporter.apple.com Your bug will at least then be triaged and acknowledged.

chrisseaton 6y ago
> Your bug will at least then be triaged and acknowledged. Lol sure it will.
- Austin_Conlon 6y ago
  Can't say for Mail, but in my experience watchOS and SwiftUI reports are frequently acknowledged.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    Apple definitely has a history of not acknowledging for a long time major problems that many people can clearly demonstrate. Bend gate, antenna gate, stage light gate, that thing with the coating on the screens...
    - threeseed 6y ago
      Bend date, antenna gate were fixed in the next revision of their hardware. Screen coating was fixed I believe even quicker. There is a limit to how quickly Apple can fix hardware given they have to work with third parties on retooling and retraining.
      - jolux 6y ago
        The screen coating is still an issue. It crops up again every few years. I’ve gotten a few macs replaced for free because of it even when I didn’t mind.
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        > Bend date, antenna gate were fixed in the next revision of their hardware. I know they were. But do you not remember there was quite a period of time where Apple didn't acknowledge the problems and ignored users trying to triage them? > There is a limit to how quickly Apple can fix What has this got to do with it? We're talking about triage and acknowledgement, not fix.
    - PunksATawnyFill 6y ago
      Flexgate is still a real, profound, and disgraceful defect. This is the one where your MacBook Pro’s screen stops working because Apple ran a ribbon cable through a hinge or some such stupid shit. Been happening since 2016 and still rendering $4000 laptops useless after 18 months of light use.
- threeseed 6y ago
  Bugreporter is just a front end for Radar. And I can assure that when I was working at Apple bugs were triaged and acknowledged by a PM. Doesn’t mean they get fixed though.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > I can assure that when I was working at Apple bugs were triaged and acknowledged As a counterexample, as late as 2018 Apple was publicly denying (so not acknowledging and ignoring attempts at triage) bendgate, but leaked documents show they knew about it in 2014. https://www.slashgear.com/iphone-6-bendgate-docs-confirm-apple-knew-bending-more-likely-24531867/ https://www.slashgear.com/iphone-6-bendgate-docs-confirm-app... > Doesn’t mean they get fixed though. We're not talking about fixing - we're talking about triage and acknowledgement.
  - mihaaly 6y ago
    "Doesn’t mean they get fixed though." Ok then! I am driven to report it now! Actually, this is a trouble bugs lots and lots of people for long long time. I browsed countless articles or threads about this with tons of workarounds. Where more than a few are Apple discussions. If it is not reported yet - from outside or inside - then it does not exist. But it does.
  - PunksATawnyFill 6y ago
    Radar’s asinine search functionality also obscures the seriousness of bugs by failing to reveal dupes. It doesn’t (or at least didn’t) default to searching for all words used in the title; it only searches for the EXACT string you enter. It was a pain in the ass to even find bugs YOU wrote. I couldn’t believe how goddamned dumb this is, or the Radar team’s response: Oh, you simply use Oracle syntax and wildcards in the title search! No explanation of how we were supposed to know this, or WHY.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      > Oh, you simply use Oracle syntax and wildcards in the title search! TIL
  - 6y ago
4ad 6y ago
Apple bug tracker is so frustrating. They take forever to answer, and ask for things that you have already provided in your original issue. When you try to reproduce the bug on multiple versions, they close your bug if you reproduced it on beta versions, because beta versions are unsupported, even though the bug affects release versions. Sometimes this happens even if they asked you to try the beta version! The bugs are almost always closed as duplicate of another bug, which, of course, you can't see because the bug tracker is private. The bugs are never fixed, at least no bug that I have ever reported has been fixed. Years or months later after submitting a bug that happens not to be closed as duplicate of another bug, they get closed because a new version of macOS is released, and you are encouraged to resubmit your report if it still affects the new version, which inevitably it does... Even if the bug is in some open source component, and you provide a patch, it is ignored and eventually closed as explained above. It's a total waste of time and a pain in the ass to submit bugs to Apple.
- threeseed 6y ago
  You can’t see other people’s bug reports because they often contain screenshots or telemetry data which is confidential. And I believe the way Apple works is to look through Radar for important/widespread bugs, mark them for fixing in the next release, fix them and then ask you to retest. They aren’t just going through and fixing Radar’s one by one. Hence you get that frustrating experience where it looks like the bug is being ignored.
  - luckman212 6y ago
    I wish that was how it worked, but my experience has been more like the parent poster's: long-standing easily reproducible bugs never fixed despite multiple reports and multiple major releases. I've never once been informed by Apple of a bug I submitted being fixed, or "asked to retest". Not being able to see the duplicate bug when your case is closed and marked as such feels like a slap in the face. I understand that some material could be confidential, but I would bet over 99% aren't. If someone has spent enough time to determine that my report X is a duplicate of Y, they could also determine if Y is confidential and if so, just flag it in the system to show up as redacted.
dewey 6y ago
I usually file bug reports but this issue was already well documented in their support forum even by official Apple staff so I'd assume they would at least file the issues if they see something show up there? Also checked on https://openradar.appspot.com https://openradar.appspot.com if there's anything but there wasn't.

_qulr 6y ago

My workaround for this issue is to put Mail app in its own dedicated Space/Desktop. Then it only comes to the front in its own Space, not in the Space I'm normally using.

elmcrest 6y ago
good to know as a workaround, thx
nextos 6y ago
I've switched back to a new MacBook, temporarily due to COVID as it was easy to purchase from Apple and it was an emergency. I used OS X fulltime 2006-11. I'm surprised how buggy Catalina is, including Mail.app. I have had serious firmware issues too, such as needing to reset my SMC very frequently because my USB C stops charging the machine every other day. Apple is clearly, sadly, neglecting mac OS. Surprisingly, I haven't disliked butterfly keys as much as I thought I would do. I can type extremely fast. I do prefer their scissor keys, though, which are really good and low latency [1]. [1] https://danluu.com/keyboard-latency/ https://danluu.com/keyboard-latency/
- mgkimsal 6y ago
  if you really got a brand new one, the keyboard may not be as bad as the previous iterations (2016/2017)
  - nextos 6y ago
    Yes, it's new and it's fairly decent. I love mechanical keyboards (especially those with ALPS and TOPRE switches), but I realize low travel means I type much faster and it doesn't tire my fingers. IMHO the scissor keys in the Magic Keyboard are really good because they strike a perfect compromise in terms of depth, comfort and speed. Also the board is really low latency. Not sure what tricks Apple has played with the firmware in those keyboards.
- apple4ever 6y ago
  Have you run into the mail deleting bug yet? That's what is holding me back from upgrading.

ancarda 6y ago

I get something like this with Music.app -- it seems to randomly open. I suspect it's some kind of keystroke (i.e. hitting the play button) but I haven't figured out exactly why it's happening or how to stop it. I'm pretty sure this didn't used to happen until I upgraded to Catalina. I really wish I had better luck with Linux...

1_player 6y ago
If no media is currently playing or paused and you press the Play button by mistake, the Music app opens. It's extremely annoying.
- jedieaston 6y ago
  You can get rid of this with launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.rcd.plist (https://www.howtogeek.com/274345/stop-itunes-from-launching-when-you-press-play-on-your-macs-keyboard/ https://www.howtogeek.com/274345/stop-itunes-from-launching-...)
  - cytzol 6y ago
    Unfortunately, when I tried it, it made the media keys stop working entirely, not just stopping Music from opening.
jdk 6y ago
I get this semi-randomly when I'm using my bluetooth headphones/mic with Meet/Discord and then quit/close it and it becomes available to the OS or something. Music.app just pops up and as far as I can tell, there's no way to turn it off.

knolan 6y ago

I’ve had this issue for a long time now across a couple of versions of MacOS and three Macs. It appears to be related to Google Calendar. My current workaround is to hide a Mail window with CMD-h. I’ve given up trying to report it or find a fix.

evanelias 6y ago
Can confirm, same here. As long as you hide the window (cmd-h) instead of closing it (cmd-w), the problem doesn't ever come up. I've been using this work-around for over a year now.
himynameistimli 6y ago
I second this. For me it seems to happen at very specific times, like 12AM so it leads me to believe it had to do with calendar events. And it always does it a few times in succession.

coldcode 6y ago

Outlook 365 does this as well.

underyx 6y ago

I have this and it keeps happening while I'm playing Counter-Strike. Incredibly annoying for it to split screen and steal focus from the game.

holstvoogd 6y ago

Pretty sure it is due too it not being able to connect to a mail server. every time it happens, i see the "couldn't connect" icon

galad87 6y ago
Yes, that's it. It happened with my Gmail account too, it stopped when I removed it from Mail.

demarq 6y ago

I switched to Airmail for only this reason lol

Nextgrid 6y ago
Watch out. Last time I tried it, it was vulnerable to a bunch of issues similar to XSS. I suggest you test it with https://www.emailprivacytester.com/ https://www.emailprivacytester.com/ and see if it still finds anything.
- demarq 6y ago
  oh wow, thanks for the heads up!!
dmitriid 6y ago
When I tried Airmail, they sent an email that had something like "oh, we see that you use @<domain>.com. Do you think you could reach to your colleagues and talk to them about using Airmail". I deleted the app immediately.

lcnmrn 6y ago

I keep it minimized to avoid the issue and to get notifications.

1_player 6y ago
It still pops up when it's minimised. I blame this bug for my inboxes going to crap over the past year, because the only fix for me is keeping Mail closed and opening it only when I really need to.

ornornor 6y ago

Apple Mail is riddled with bugs it’s unusable. Do yourself a favor and switch. Anything else is better than it, Thunderbird is a pretty good alternative imo. It feels like apple doesn’t put any care into regression bugs in their applications. It’s the same on the iPhone, Mail is so bad that I uninstalled it in favor of outlook (the irony...) —Mail was sucking so much battery that my phone wouldn’t last 8h. With outlook it lasts all day (12+h)

st3fan 6y ago
> Apple Mail is riddled with bugs it’s unusable. Weird, I've been using it for a decade and I have zero issues. Maybe 'unusable' is a pretty subjective assessment?
- auggierose 6y ago
  What configuration are you running? This bug happens to me several times a day, though I am trying to close Apple Mail when I am not using it, but that's easy to forget and also annoying.
- orloffm 6y ago
  If people keep alligators at home, and some are eaten by them, the assessment of them being unsuitable for pets is not subjective.
  - andreasley 6y ago
    It depends on the percentage. Dogs are considered suitable pets, despite some owners being mauled.
    - swiley 6y ago
      Certain breeds of dogs are not, these probably account for the majority of mailings. https://www.askadamskutner.com/dog-bites/bite-statistics-according-to-dog-breed/ https://www.askadamskutner.com/dog-bites/bite-statistics-acc...
- 6y ago

Veen 6y ago

This has been annoying me for months. It’s particularly irritating when you’re screen sharing. I just make sure Mail is quit when I’m not using it, which isn’t ideal.

amachefe 6y ago

Added to this, have anybody been able to get Mail app to connect via authenticated proxy?.. I can only use Outlook to work at work which is frustrating

auggierose 6y ago

Yeah, it is horrible. I am closing Apple Mail when I am not using it because of it.

villgax 6y ago

Just learnt to minimise(Ctrl+M) the window instead of closing it with x or Ctrl+W

rinaldsarins 6y ago

I have the same issue, in fact I'm so used to it that I even do not notice it anymore, except when watching fullscreen video, then I'm like: "It's just the way how things are here...[quits Mail]". As someone already mentioned - I'm also pretty sure it's related to some disconnect/reconnect thing.

hackandtrip 6y ago

It happens A LOT with non-GSuite Gmail accounts (personal GMail accounts) too!

jeffbee 6y ago
There's no reason why it shouldn't affect all google mail accounts equally. If the cause is frontend disconnections, it will happen to any account tier.

kristofarkas 6y ago

How is it that there is still no known root cause for this issue? I suspect there is a way to check what the reason an app came to the foreground is, no?

galad87 6y ago
The reason is that Mail thinks the mail server is unreachable, so it brings the window to front, but then magically it changes idea and the mail server is reachable again ️.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  Could be worse! Outlook on Windows just locks up entirely while it tries to connect. I don’t know why they’re still doing network IO in the UI thread - over 10 years after they admitted it was a major problem.
- bambataa 6y ago
  In general I find macOS handles alerting the user very poorly. I don't know why but it infuriates me when icons bounce on the dock for attention. The animation is too insistent for whatever trivial thing the app wants to let me know. Or an app will open some Important Dialog Box that I need to deal with, except it's hidden behind some other windows somewhere and the rest of the app refuses to respond to my clicks until I find the dialog box. It doesn't bother foregrounding the dialog box for me.
  - redler 6y ago
    Yeah, that's not good. Sometimes you can find it through some combination of ensuring that app is frontmost by clicking its icon in the dock, choosing "hide others" from its menu, and triggering "show application windows" in Mission Control (often ctrl-down-arrow, or a three-finger down-swipe trackpad gesture).
    - bambataa 6y ago
      Due to the explosion in videoconferencing I've spent some time recently helping family set things up via remote desktop (I highly recommend Chrome Remote Desktop by the way, pretty easy to set up). This kind of thing is absolutely inscrutable to non-tech savvy people. All they see is that the computer suddenly stops doing anything but playing an annoying "donk" sound whenever they click and they have no idea that any of those features exist. Really, Windows with its `window == app == taskbar item` approach is far easier to understand.

MindTooth 6y ago

I have the problem that Mail.app gets the frontmost CPU-bound application. It for no obvious reasons too. All in all, a bit buggy application it seems.

jtlowe 6y ago

I experience this as well after upgrading to Catalina. I thought it was my fault at first, caused by some sort of key combo. It only happens for me when in full screen with another app. I use Mail with a GSuite account as well.

mihaaly 6y ago
I am still not on Catalina yet and it started for me ca. 6-9 months ago. Perhaps with some Mojave update. (unsure as no big changes occurred and it took some time to see being a systematic trouble) I am more and more turning off system updates (not only Mac) as those bring more trouble than good. Being a very late adopter pays off. (update to Catalina is still not in the middle term plans)
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  I’m still on High Sierra (10.13), latest security update three days ago (10.13.6) Admittedly I am not a developer, and none of the software I’ve wanted to run has required a more recent version.
- IAmEveryone 6y ago
  To add a datapoint that might be underrepresented for reasons of self-selections: I've updated to Catalina and haven't had any issues.

elmcrest 6y ago

hits me too and it‘s really annoying... I even got used to quit Mail.app but yeah... it‘s bad. My feeling though is that google is more and more saying goodbye to standards... just a feeling

pretzel_boss 6y ago

I thought I was going insane

brandonhorst 6y ago

You can fix this by removing the “Google” account and connecting to Gmail as a regular IMAP account. Since I did that, I haven’t had any issues with this.

nottorp 6y ago
Oh, I was wondering why I don't have that issue. I've set up Apple Mail long before they had specific support for "google" accounts so of course the gmail account is imap... Btw 7 years of importing application configuration across OS installs without a hitch.

mihaaly 6y ago

It is not a bug, it is a feature. Someone out there had to write the code that pushes the mail app to the front. It does not happen spontaneously, someone made it happen. And made it an exclusive behavior without user control. It must have been a conscious feature. A mindless and stupid one, but still a feature. No bug to fix here. (after suffering and spending toooo much time of experimenting I decided to get rid of the Google account approach of the Mac but use it as an IMAP account, turning off 'safe' access in my Google account)

dewey 6y ago
> Someone out there had to write the code that pushes the mail app to the front. Sometimes the code you write doesn't do what you had in mind. Or worse: gets triggered by side effects of something unrelated. I don't think it's intentional in this case but even if it would be intentional after seeing this many bug reports everywhere you'd have to reconsider and make connection errors less intrusive.
- mihaaly 6y ago
  You do not push the whole app to the front by mistake, especially at some glitch of connection as it is happening here! It is not a typo or whatever kind of mistake just happens on its own but had to be a conscious action!! I write code, I make mistake, but this is beyond that! It is also neglected for years now while being very widespread, no way of being unnoticed and left there if it wasn't a conscious choice to do so!

mstade 6y ago

I don't have any issues with Apple Mail but I do have issues with zoom, randomly switching from full screen sharing to the desktop and back again, it's incredibly annoying. It doesn't happen when I share my screen, only when others do. It seems to have gotten better recently but still happens in occasion. Anyone else seeing this? Maybe it's related?

vladnyc 6y ago
It’s a setting you can turn off
- snazz 6y ago
  Yes. This is a very annoying default, but luckily you can disable it.
  - mstade 6y ago
    Alright people, stop teasing and tell me what to look for please! :o)
    - blueberry_47 6y ago
      Settings > Share Screen > Maximize Zoom window when a participant shares screen ?
gingerlime 6y ago
I have another zoom problem on Mojave. Even though I marked the zoom windows to use Desktop 2, they keep opening on Desktop 1 :-/ any tips on how to fix this?
- cerberusss 6y ago
  Several apps have this. I suspect they don't correctly support the windows restoration API.

vladharbuz 6y ago

I've had this issue for the past 2–3 years. It seems to happen because of improper error handling. If you look closely at the app in the instant it opens, your affected account will have a “disconnected” symbol next to it in the sidebar. However, it goes away before an error can be shown. My theory is: there is a momentary connection issue with these G Suite accounts, and Mail.app starts to show an error by focusing itself, but the error is resolved so quickly it doesn't actually get to show the “connection problems” modal. I hope this can be fixed soon, it's been a daily annoyance for me for a long time now.

mihaaly 6y ago
I confirm your observations. Yet, to force an app to the front when glitch in connection happens is more like a feature they deliriously thought is being useful, instead of choosing other means of notifications, which is plenty. An app is not forcing itself to the front without someone is specifically writing the code for it to do.
- lonelappde 6y ago
  This smells like a feature built 10+ years ago, before notifications existed in Mac OS X, that never got upgraded. That's how apps "notified" back then.
  - snuxoll 6y ago
    > That's how apps "notified" back then. Polite apps would just bounce their dock icon rather than stealing focus, however.
    - tannhaeuser 6y ago
      Exactly. I found the bouncing animation genius, as it always reminded me of a toddler impatiently jumping up and down for attention. Doesn't mail.app do this?
      - 6y ago

KenanSulayman 6y ago

Funnily enough most of the times Mail came up was due to me accidentally pressing cmd + i in a browser.

saagarjha 6y ago
I hate that! I’ve been looking for ways to turn it off or rebind it to another keyboard shortcut but it never sticks…

jshaqaw 6y ago

For years I’ve seen a concostent bug where I can’t go to the Mail window until I force quit and reopen mail a bunch. Frustrating.

gumby 6y ago

This has been happening to me since 10.12 and I have no google account connected to my machine for anything (mail, calendar, nothing). It’s infuriating, and assumed it was some perverse design decision.

maxcbc 6y ago

I’ve had it since I got catalina

kahlonel 6y ago

I was a long time Gmail user, on the verge of leaving Gmail due to a long list of reasons. This bug was the final straw for me (I know it’s not Gmail’s fault). Got rid of Gmail completely. Haven’t seen this bug since.

deergomoo 6y ago
I’m not sure why but Google services seem to cause a lot of issues on the Mac. I don’t use Google-based calendars anymore, but when I did, the accountsd process would often sit chewing absurd amounts of CPU for no discernible reason. Same goes for this Mail issue, it only seems to happen with Gmail/G Suite accounts. But yes, I am also looking to move away from Gmail; not because of this bug but because I don’t like the idea of all my important online accounts being tied to a company that has essentially zero customer service or support.
basilgohar 6y ago
Gmail's IMAP interface does have issues, along with their repurposing IMAP folders as "labels", this causes many traditional email clients problems, including Thunderbird. My Gmail account causes Thunderbird to slow to a crawl most times. I am sure there is some Thunderbird liability as well, but I did not have this problem with other, large IMAP accounts that were not Gmail before.

7ewis 6y ago

Something I still don't understand, similar to this - not sure if it's a bug or feature but I use Desktops heavily, especially while working at home without my extra monitors. For some reason, the order of my Desktops on Mac seem to reshuffle, I can't work out what causes it or when it happens. I often have it ordered something like this: Desktop 1 - Google Doc (Chrome) Desktop 2 - Researching (Chrome) Desktop 3 - Slack Desktop 4 - Spotify I'll do the three finger gesture moving from Desktop 1 to 2 and randomly say Spotify will have moved there. It's so annoying.

theDoug 6y ago
The answer is found in System Preferences > Mission Control. Uncheck the “Automatically rearrange spaces based on most recent use” box :)
- 7ewis 6y ago
  Wow, thanks so much! Always thought it was bug, turned that straight off.
- jonpurdy 6y ago
  Astounding to me that automatic rearranging would have been considered desirable. Hard to imagine that it’s just visual folks (like myself) who would lose flow state if the mental map of their Desktops was interrupted if they were suddenly rearranged.
  - simongr3dal 6y ago
    When changing apps by using the dock, the animation only shows the desktops move over by one space. So by changing the order it will only take one swipe to get back to where you were before. If it didn’t rearrange based on use the animation would show an arbitrary number of moves and you would have to keep track of how many times it moved over to know how many times to swipe to get back. If you only change desktops by using Mission Control rearrange based on recent used shouldn’t even be a problem because it will never automatically rearrange if you use Mission Control.

willmacdonald 6y ago

I have a similar issue with Safari. I have not opened it for months, but every so often it is the frontmost app after waking.

defnotashton2 6y ago

Reading the people that put up with it why? What's wrong with thunderbird?

jtlowe 6y ago
I put up with it because I’ve used Mail for many years without issue until now. Fortunately for me it happens infrequently enough that it’s mildly irritating to me so far. Much less irritating than when I open my MacBook and receive dozens of iMessages at once along with their dings.
PunksATawnyFill 6y ago
Thunderbird sucks because, last time I checked, it had no way to copy or propagate filters between machines. Deal-breaker right there. I’d be happy to hear that was fixed. Meanwhile, SpamSieve makes Mail tolerable.
arm 6y ago
Or MailMate¹. ―――――― ¹ — https://freron.com/ https://freron.com/
Nextgrid 6y ago
Mac Mail supports the Exchange proprietary HTTP API, while all the other clients only support IMAP. HTTP is much more efficient and seems more resilient against temporary network issues (due to the lack of a persistent connection).
Synaesthesia 6y ago
Mac Mail is a great app IMO. It's full featured and performant, I'm very happy with it. This is pretty much the only issue, and it's only with Gmail.

rm445 6y ago

I stopped using Mac Mail quite recently, because of a bug that meant not all my IMAP folders were displayed. Remember Mozilla Thunderbird? It's great. Also has an RSS reader built in.

baby 6y ago

Same. I’ve had this issue for a while now.

wadkar 6y ago

Ugh! It’s most annoying when you’re in a full screen app and presenting. Suddenly, Mail.app decides to take half the screen and spurts all my inbox for everyone to see. You can’t watch full time videos either due to this annoyance.

saagarjha 6y ago

Interestingly, I have the opposite problem: when I boot up my computer Mail shows now windows until I click on it, even though every other app restores its windows. Very strange.

someonehere 6y ago

Where I work we don’t allow Apple Mail to run on corporate computers. IT rolled out mandatory endpoint protection once, and they started getting reports of malware living in the Mail storage folder. Apparently when employees synced their corporate Gmail to Apple Mail, Apple Mail was pulling down the malicious/suspicious attachments from the Google spam folder. So I figure that’s a good reason why physical mail clients need to die. There’s no real need for them anymore.

fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
Malware doesn’t harm your computer just by sitting around on the disk.
- jojobas 6y ago
  Until someone finds a buffer overflow in Apple Mail MIME handling or some such.

bondolo 6y ago

If you have Microsoft Exchange accounts then you get a different bug. If you have no network connection or change network connections Apple Mail will thrash accountsd for long periods of time consuming as much of the CPU as it can. Neither Apple Mail nor accountsd appear to have any throttling of network connection attempts. Quitting Apple Mail until you have a network connection is the only option.

aichi 6y ago

This is happening to me on Catalina with Safari. Having on dual monitor another app and Safari, clicking in another app and Safari takes focus back.

lupinglade 6y ago

Hard to believe it still hasn’t been fixed.

gnicholas 6y ago

Another Mail issue I have: if one mail message is highlighted and then I click another and type command-R to reply, the email reply will be to the message that is no longer selected. Sometimes I’ll get a notification of a new email, go to click and send a quick reply (“ok great”), and I’ll have sent the email before I realize that it’s going to the wrong recipient. It seems crazy to me that the order of operations can be messed up like this. First I clicked, then I command-R’d. Why would Mail handle these commands out of order?

m463 6y ago

Apple mail also loads remote images when you forward an email, indepdent of the "load remote images" setting. (haven't tried latest OS)

marmaduke 6y ago

I've encountered other features such as long - long press on send (i.e. you're thinking about it) will send all your drafts - deleting an email might select the one above or below after, so you can't rapid fire delete a sequence

apple4ever 6y ago

I run into an issue that started the past few upgrades: Mail will just stop downloading new Mail. No rhyme or reason, it just stops. I can have a second computer next to it and watch mail come in, but on that Mail, it won't do anything. I have to quit (sometimes force-quit) to get it to start again.

egypturnash 6y ago

I get something like this all the time, except it pops up behind whatever I'm doing and doesn't steal focus. I also almost never do stuff in full screen mode, maybe that's the trigger for it stealing focus? Definitely seems to be related to "I had an email connectivity error and I must let you know NOWNOWNOW." Knowing that it's associated with gmail accounts feels like one more reason for me to get off my ass and disentangle my email from gmail...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

fsflyer 6y ago

My Apple Mail bug is with changing passwords on Exchange accounts. I change the password, Apple Mail prompts for the new password, then uses the old one to connect. I have to quit Apple Mail and use the accounts pane of preference panels and cancel when it prompts for the new password as it has the same bug. Then I can click details and change the password. That works. Reported many years ago in Sierra.

njhaveri 6y ago

If anybody is interested, I've been writing a Gmail-focused email client for macOS called Mimestream. It combines native macOS UI with Gmail-specific features such as categorized inboxes, colored labels, and aliases (made possible by the use of the Gmail API instead of IMAP). I just opened up a public beta, and you can request immediate access on the website at https://mimestream.com https://mimestream.com. It's free during the beta period - I only ask for feedback: feedback@mimestream.com. Unlike some other 3rd party email clients, it makes direct connections from your Mac to Gmail and stores data/credentials on your Mac. There's no intermediary servers.