MASTER YOUR MAC

Help Mail Help You

Streamline your inbox with rules.

Mail rules can handle many of your email messages before you ever see them: Automatically file newsletters to read later. Archive messages you don’t need to review but want to keep. All without lifting a finger!

To get started, open the Rules screen of Mail preferences and click Add Rule.

Make the rules

Every Mail rule has two parts: The conditions when the rule should apply, and the actions the rule takes.

Create a condition for a particular person (like your boss), only people in your contacts, or messages with a PDF attached.

You have dozens of options for conditions.

Some conditions are more powerful than they seem at first glance. For example, “Message is not addressed to my full name” is a handy way to filter spam; “Sender is VIP” can ensure you don’t miss a message from your boss or bestie; and “Message content” lets you move all messages that mention “Credit Union” to your Finances folder.

If you’ve added multiple conditions, be sure to choose whether any or all must be met.

Take action

Now for the fun part: What happens when a message meets your conditions?

Create actions to move the message to a mailbox, change its color, or get a notification.

With the right Mail rule, you’ll never miss that super-important work email.

Mail can even send a stock reply of your choice using the “Reply to Message” action. And if you’re an AppleScript pro, leverage the Run AppleScript action to have your Mac do just about anything!

Full stop

Inspired to create a slew of rules? Mail can handle it. But a couple quick tweaks can ensure that Mail does exactly what you want with each message.

First, put rules in order of importance by dragging them up or down the list. For example, you likely want a rule that handles messages from your boss to take priority over a rule that archives potential junk mail.

Second, add Stop Evaluating Rules as the last action for each rule. This tells Mail not to apply any additional rules once the current one has handled an email.

These other outstanding email apps also let you create rules—including a few unique options.

Microsoft Outlook

Outlook’s rules can turn an email from a VIP into a to-do item, so you don’t forget to reply. You can also create boilerplate responses as well as rules for outgoing messages (to file a message to your sister into your Family folder, for example).

Airmail

Use Airmail’s rules to snooze messages, create a calendar event from a message, and unsubscribe from all those mailing lists you get added to when you shop online.