Getting started with Mail

Mail is off until you turn it on. Your mail is kept on this Mac, and nothing of it goes anywhere else, except to your agent, for the things you ask it to do.

1. Mail isn’t finished yet, so it starts in Settings › Experimental: turn on Mail, and Mail appears among the pages of Settings.
2. Open Settings › Mail. It lists the Google accounts you’re signed in to in your spaces.
3. Pick one and press Connect, which names its address. Google asks once, in a tab where you’re already signed in: press Allow.
4. Your newest mail comes in first, and the rest follows while you read.

With Mail on, the welcome offers the same near its end, for the Google account it finds you signed in to.

Get there#

Mail is a space of its own. It stands in the row of spaces at the sidebar’s foot, last until you drag it elsewhere, and ⌃1 to ⌃9 count it by its place. Press ⇧⌘I to go there and back, swipe to it as to any space, or click the mail pin, which says how many mails need you; in ⌘T, Open Mail and Back to Your Tabs do the same. Right-click it in the row for Change Emoji… and Edit Look…. With more than one account, ⌘1 to ⌘9 show one account’s mail and ⌘0 all of it together.

The column#

Down the left, where your tabs are in other spaces:

• Needs you: mail that asks something of you.
• Waiting: you wrote last, two days to two weeks ago, and nobody has answered.
• Promised and Archive: what you said you’d do, and mail older than How far back, each only while it holds something.
• Other: lists, notifications and the rest.
• Later: mail you put off, and mail set to go out.
• Your splits, such as VIP or Receipts.
• Kept: threads you keep with P, drafts with words in them and mail set to send later, until they’re done.
• Your Gmail labels, at the foot.

Each row is who wrote, the subject and one line of what the mail wants, worked out on this Mac, with when on the right in words: “yesterday”, “Tue”, “5d, no reply”. The pen at the top of the column, or C, writes a new mail.

Read#

↩ opens a thread where the list was, its row becoming the letter, and esc takes it back into the same row, with the list where you left it. J and K go from thread to thread without the list, and after E or H the next one opens. Whatever you do, ⌘Z takes it back, even a sent mail for a few seconds. Reading and triage has every key, and ? lists them in mail.

Codes from your mail#

When a site asks for a code it mailed you, the code hangs under the box, and ↩ puts it in. That’s set in Settings › Autofill, beside codes from Messages: see Passkeys and one-time codes.

When fresh unread mail from the site you’re on brings a sign-in link, the corner says Sign in to … with Open, which follows the link in that tab. It needs Settings › Autofill › From your mail on too.

Make it yours#

Settings › Mail has Mail pin, which keeps the door to mail among your pins, or takes it away. The rest is on its pages:

• What needs you, in Inbox: mail that asks you something, or everything from people. The rest waits in Other.
• How far back, in Inbox: the last week, the last month or every age. Older mail waits in Archive, never counted or told; Gmail keeps it in the inbox.
• Ads and promos, in Inbox: Gmail’s Promotions and Social hidden here, kept in Other, or archived in Gmail too.
• Cold pitches, in Inbox: turned on, a stranger’s offer to sell has its no written ahead, its row says No ready, and ⌘↩ in the list sends it.
• Count, in Notifications: the one number on the mail pin, mail’s door and the Dock.
• Sort and sum up on this Mac, in Reading: Apple Intelligence reads new mail here for what it wants and by when. Without it, rules alone sort.
• Split summaries, in Reading: a line over a split on what matters in it, by Claude, on your plan.
• Block tracking pixels, in Reading: pictures load, but not the ones that tell a sender you opened the mail.
• Animations, in Reading: the row you open becomes the letter, and a sent mail flies to the corner. Off, every screen changes at once, as it does with Reduce Motion on.
• People in memory, in Agents: once a day, a page in memory for each person you write with often, only on this Mac.

More accounts, and leaving#

Add Account brings in another Gmail; mail then lists every account’s mail together, an unread mail’s dot in its account’s color. Right-click an account to disconnect it: Veb gives up its access at Google and deletes everything of that account on this Mac. The Mail switch in Settings › Experimental turns Mail off without deleting anything.