Well, you can do that with the junk folder as well.
AFAIK, rules are only applied to messages in your Inbox. I don’t really understand why using preferences to empty the Junk mailbox daily isn’t more than enough. I often find legit mail in my Junk mailbox at least once a week, so my personal habit is to check and move legit messages to my inbox, then selecting all others and hit delete every night.
Thanks Al. I had mail set to move junk mail to the junk mail folder. I changed that to leave the junk mail in the inbox (but flagged) - maybe the rule will work now. (I didn’t know that the rules only worked for the inbox.). If that doesn’t work, I have also set Mail to empty the junk mail folder when I exit Mail - I don’t leave Mail running all day, so that should also work and save a (small) step.
David
Well, that didn’t work. The junk mail is still going into the junk mail folder (even though I configured settings to keep them in the inbox). They do delete when I exit Mail, so I will just go with that. It is amazing how many features I find in Apple software that just don’t work - and don’t get fixed across OS updates. Oh well…
David
The Mail.app Junk filter is not to blame. These messages are filtered on the iCloud server side, before Mail ever sees them.
Mail Rules are applied automatically only to new, unread messages arriving in the Inbox. Since the messages are already moved to Junk before Mail sees them, Rules are not applied automatically. (You can still apply Rules manually, Message > Apply Rules. I use that to remove false positives from Junk, that otherwise would have been automatically filtered by my Rules.)
Yeah, we hashed over a similar issue here a couple months ago. You may want to check out that thread to see if there are any ideas you haven’t already tried.
There is a tip from Apple Support here:
In particular “To set up other actions, select “Perform custom actions,” then click Advanced…”
I haven’t tried this but maybe there is the option to automatically delete junk?
However, as others have pointed out, this doesn’t affect the iCloud server that is identifying junk emails and moving them to the junk folder, only to be downloaded when using Mail on a Mac.
We need the “custom actions” available at iCloudDOTcom - or even just the option to keep them on the server and not send them to Mac Mail (my ancient ISP had this option decades ago!).
Well I did. I bought a $4000 appliance and put it on PayPal credit. I figure with today’s higher interest rates, no interest for 6 months is a pretty good deal.
Honestly, are these ‘don’t work’ or we just don’t know how to configure them?
As I get junk e-mails, I have been making rules to delete anything from that domain. So I think I am up over 300 now. But I have been getting a number from gmail users that I have been reporting to Google, I would like to report a Gmail user who has sent messages that violate the Gmail Program Policies and/or Terms of Use. - Gmail Help a number of those lately have links to a certain domain, if an e-mail has links to that domain I’d like to delete those automatically but haven’t figured out how.
The only thing I use PayPal for is subscriptions and small software purchases - so I know these messages are fraud. The other trick these spammers use is to put the name of a legit business in the header - those are also obviously fraud. Again, Apple should filter these at the front-end, but don’t. Seems like they would want to do that to reduce the volume of messages they have to transmit - it would probably cut volume in half!
David
I found I also need to go to PayPal and delete the order on PayPal. It doesn’t go through - hasn’t been authorized but it in the account and PayPal recommends deleting.
David
While changing the Mail settings as you suggested by reading the referenced Apple Support article I did find where deleting Junk mail immediately upon download is supposed to be possible. (While this wouldn’t stop long download times on slow internet connections, it would at least save some deletion steps.)
But alas, those Advanced settings simply don’t work. I set it up to delete everything in the Junk folder immediately upon download so I’d never see them. But I continued to get all the same junk email as I did before I changed the settings. No difference. So another disappointment.
Thanks for brining this up.
My junk mail box has exploded as well with the new year?
I have tried everything I could think of to get Apple Mail to just delete the junk mail in my junk mail box, but there is NOTHING that works.
As I read down this thread I see everyone trying what I tried, custom rules etc…
So, finally I decided to do this:
Key command: Option->>>Command->>>>J (letter “J”)
Deletes everything in the junk mail folder. Now when the icon says I have junk in there, three keys and I move on.
Rich the Weather Guy
Okay, I’m impressed. Thank you for this!
I don’t know why I’ve never stumbled on this key sequence before, but I’m betting it’ll become muscle memory within a week with all the Junk email I’ve been getting for the last couple of months.
Yeah, it still won’t stop the downloading of hundreds of spam emails per day, but it’s sure the next best thing for me.
I was completely frustrated, trying every solution I could find.
I only found it about a month ago, and now it is muscle memory for me!
I feel much better now…. 
Rich the weather guy
Again, Apple isn’t permitted to not deliver all messages addressed to you unless it is found to contain known malware. And if that were the case, it would likely have been stopped along the way, before it ever reached Apple servers. Filtering it into your Junk mailbox is the best they can do.
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“Again, Apple isn’t permitted to not deliver all messages addressed to you unless it is found to contain known malware.”
Not permitted by who? Mail services drop mail on the floor all the time, and have ever since spam became a thing. I’ve run mail servers and mailing lists for decades, and my logs have shown many occurrences of outgoing mail that has been accepted for delivery by gmail, hotmail, apple, etal. that the recipients never get even in the spam folder. It just vanishes. No pattern to it, and there’s no systematic problem such as a misconfiguration. I’m pretty sure there have been discussions here about icloud mail not reliably delivering all of the real mail.
Aside from that, pretty much everyone uses blocklists such as spamhaus or more elaborate intermediate services such as proofpoint, and they often err on the side of if in doubt, toss it. Neither the sender nor the recipient get notice, though it shows up in the logs.
For some odd reason, users are much more inclined to complain about getting spam than not getting their real mail, so that’s the way the services are run.
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What I would like for Apple to do is provide the means to notify all senders of mail in my junk folder to unsubscribe me.
Also, frequently, when I click on the “unsubscribe” that apple offers on mail, the mail is unable to be sent so it ends up in my outbox to delete.
As others have noted, this year there is a significant increase in junk mail - for me, probably 600 a day. I’ve tried unsubscribing but I fear that just adds me to another list and has had little impact on the number I get.
I “command” “delete” then do that again for trash - doesn’t take too much time but some emails that should be in junk get there so I have to scan - not many - maybe one or 2 a day.
David
Al, I know Apple filters out email before it reaches me. As I have mentioned, I buy wine from a Southern California wine store. Their emails to Apple Mail customers was blocked for many months. I had them change to my gmail address and that flows through without problem. Then, a few months later, the Apple mail started getting through again. The “malware” concept is really difficult to define - but I know most of the spam mail I get tries to get you to click on a link to cheat you. And this wouldn’t be an issue if the (advertised) client features to manage the spam email actually worked.
David