Has Apple Mail become a bit messy?

In My Apple Mail is in need of a “refurb”, but HOW? I discussed certain issues with Apple MAIL.

I’d ike to open up the discussion a bit wider. Has Apple Mail gone a bit downhill in recent releases? There are inconsistencies how MAIL on iOS sees and handles folders like SENT, SENT MESSAGES etc. opposed to MAIL on macOS.

I just deleted a few emails (macOS) and nowhere did they appear in a BIN/Trash.

Sometimes it can’t find email when I search, despite the fact that I see it right in front of me in a list.

Display names are being replaced from what macOS finds in Contacts, not was was supplied by the incoming email, this behaviour is different depending on what exactly you look at, the open email or a list.

Why can’t we have a clean, consistent and stable email environment?

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I don’t think Apple considers Mail on either iOS or macOS to be worth the developers’ time where the company’s business goals are concerned. (The same could be said for Safari, for that matter, but that’s another sad tale for another time.) Privacy features? Yes. Battery-conservation features? Yes. But otherwise keeping up with the feature sets of third-party email apps? It appears Apple just sees no business case to justify it. :slightly_frowning_face:

That’s why I stopped using iPadOS Mail for anything other than reading. (I never tried to use Mail on an iPhone for anything other than reading. That screen and especially keyboard are just too small.) If I need to reply or even simply delete, I wait until I’m on a Mac. However, recently, it seemed to me that iPadOS Mail started behaving better, and I assume iOS Mail would behave identically. I’m running iPadOS 14.8.1, but I think the better behavior precedes my most recent update.

Ditto. And I wish that I could restrict Search to an account or only the selected mailboxes (and sub-mailboxes). (Of course, I don’t know how to select an account or multiple mailboxes, so this is a multi-part wish.)

I hadn’t been concerned enough to investigate, but that is what has been niggling the back of my mind. Thanks for clearing it up.

I have, for sometime, been aware that many users, on this forum and elsewhere, believe Apple Mail to be wonky. This is the first time I have run into any issue that makes me think I might agree. My issue with Apple Mail has to do with the visual quality of the user interface.

Apple Mail provides an adjustable horizontal slider/divider that allows one to view the content of individual emails while looking at a mailbox’s list of available messages. This allows reading of emails without having to open individual emails.

Recently, I lowered the slider/divider to the bottom of the mailbox window and it became non-functional…I can’t move it back up. I have been able to correct the situation by running Disk Utility, but the corrected state only lasts as long as I don’t turn off my MBP. When I restart the laptop, I have to run Disk Utility again to get things working…until today. The Disk Utility repair no longer fixes things.

Any thoughts as to what the issue might be and how it might be repaired?

But otherwise keeping up with the feature sets of third-party email apps? It appears Apple just sees no business case to justify it.

Hi Bryce. Is there a single app with a feature set superior to that of Mail, for your uses?

I started a new thread, “Mail Bottom Preview not working.”

Oh, I use Mail, along with MailMate and, occasionally, Spark. Indeed, I’ve long thought Apple’s best move would’ve been to buy Spark and rebuild both the macOS and iOS versions of Mail on top of it (but with Apple’s privacy features), just as Microsoft bought Accompli and turned it into Outlook for iOS. Obviously that’s never happening, but it’s nice to contemplate.

My biggest problem was always the lack of nested folders on the iOS version. I’ve tried third party offers but none do this. Gmail on my Android phone allows them, but Apple don’t allow the Gmail app on iOS to do anything other than Gmail last time I looked. I guess I’m old & stuck in my ways, but for my work, multiple folders lets me be efficient. If anyone knows of an app on iOS that works like Mail on MacOS, I’m all ears! :grinning:

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Google added this to the iOS app a while ago, though it’s not all that intuitive. (I haven’t done this myself.) I don’t believe it was a restriction by Apple - Google just hadn’t done it yet.

Tap the account photo circle top right, tap add account, and you can choose from the options.

There are two iOS mail apps which handle nested folders, but they are far more comparable to MailMate (i.e., complex) than Apple Mail:

Tried & it just says “Cannot connect to server”

Thanks. They look more effort than it should be, though.

No argument there. They’re indispensable for those who need their respective feature sets, but they’re definitely acquired tastes.

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How so? I’ve been using nested mailboxes in iOS and iPadOS for years. I don’t usually create them from a mobile device, but I can. What trouble have you had?

I should have been more specific, so sorry for that. The nested mailboxes are there, but you cannot close them into the nest. For example, mine go back to 2011. I can close each year on my iMac & MBP so I only see the years, & can expand at will, but on my iPad I must scroll all the way down through every year with every nested mailbox folder showing.

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Yeah. I have literally taken to making my 3-4 most-used folders top-level folders whose names begin with an underscore, so they sort at the top of the list and are accessible in iOS, and doing any other work with folders on the desktop machine because the iOS un-collapsible presentation of the folder “hierarchy” is so hard to use with a significant number of folders.

Dave

My problem with the Mac OS Mail is the pop up hierarchy of folders and trying to get them in a convenient order. I can rearrange the many email accounts I have on the side bar, but when I click on an item to file it away, my main iCloud account is always at the bottom and I have to scroll down to get to the right folder. I actually like the iOS version that tries to point you to which folder it thinks is correct (and usually is for me 85% of the time) but the Mac Mail does not want to do that.

Is there a trick/hack/software that will help me with this?