Back in the days of POP email, such a reinstall would delete all your emails. These days, with push and IMAP email, setting everything back up to how it was before is relatively simple, especially if you have your desktop settings saved in your iCloud account.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Seeds Second Public Beta of macOS Big Sur 11.3
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
That sounds too drastic and time consuming, but thanks for the explanation.
I'm downloading a fresh installer from the App Store and I'll try that. If it's a problem in the system itself that should fix it, or not.
I'll let you know. Wish me luck! 🤞🏻
Good luck! If you ever do wish to try the fresh install, be aware that it's not as daunting as it sounds and that there are step by step guides (there aren't too many steps!) you can find on the web.
Thanks!
The downloaded installer was actually faster doing what it does once downloaded than the upgrade from 11.2 via Software Update, but nothing seems to have changed with Mail or anything else, so no harm done, just an hour of my life I'll never get back 😉.
I have actually done a fresh install using Restore, possibly for the first realease of Big Sur, and restored from my Time Machine backup.
I'm convinced that it is a bug, but because it isn't effecting more users Apple hasn't fixed it. I have sent several reports
I've also posted in these macrumors forums in the hope that some beta tester may also pass it on.
Last edited:
I installed macOS 11.3 Public Beta 2. During startup the normal graphical progress screen becomes the simple black-and-white progress screen halfway through, although it is still able to successfully start the macOS GUI afterwards. When I attempt to start Recovery Mode, it is only accepting the recovery key for my FIleVault2 volume, instead of asking for the password for my account as usual. I am using a MacBookPro11,1. Does anyone else have this problem or advice for fixing it? I have already filed feedback with Apple for both of these problems.
This bug seems to be affecting all Macs that have monitors connected via DisplayPort. 2 work arounds I have seen are to use a thunderbolt dock (HP G2 seems to work well) or use a USB-C to HDMI adapter (although I lose HDR when I do that). I suspect that everyone at Apple is using expensive thunderbolt monitors, so haven't really been impacted by it, which is why they haven't fixed it yet.
OK. There is something weird happening, I believe with System Preferences - Notifications - Mail, not Mail itself.
Out of curiosity I logged in to my wife's User account and was amazed to find that she has the option "Play sound for Notifications" for Mail, which I don't have.
I logged out of her account, logged back in and that option had dissapeared. It was identical to my Admin user account... no option to "Play sound for Notifications".
So, I bit the bullet and did a fresh install, again, this time using Recovery Mode. Still no change.
I created a new User Account called "Tester" and lo and behold these are the options I have in System Preferences - Notifications:
Instead this my main, Admin account's options:
How do I get that option to play sound, and why is it missing? 🤔
I checked that notification menu, and I don't have a "play sound for notifications." Yet I receive badges, banners, and notification sounds every time I receive new mail. Maybe whether that setting shows up in system preferences relates to how many mail accounts you have setup, whether you have a non-icloud mail account configured for use, etc. As I said before, the sound modification setting for me appears under the mail app's preferences menu.
Last edited:
I have the sounds setting in Mail too, but it doesn't work, ie: I get no sounds.
I have several email accounts set up; 3 at my own domain, 2 gmail, and 2 still working that were included with a previous ISP, all work normally apart from not getting alerts and only sometimes badges and banners.
Good to know at least that I'm not the only one missing the option in system prefs.
The plot thickens...
It is strange that they would have two spots for notification sounds, since the Apple Mail preferences has a "none" setting to shut sound off for notifications. My guess is that when you saw the option in the system preferences, it was due to the fact that the mail app itself hadn't been configured or opened. You said it was on your wife's account, right? Does she use Apple Mail?
You may be right.
Mail.app was configured in her account but the sound option dissapeared after I launched Mail in that user account to see how the prefs were configured there.
Her account hadn't been logged in to for a long time, most likely not after the last two updates to Big Sur.
She doesn't use her account on the MBP as she's working away from home and prefers to use her iPhone.
So it could be that if sounds are enabled in Mail.app the sounds option isn't available in system prefs.
That would almost make sense.
What doesn't make sense is that if I disable sounds in Mail prefs that option is still not available in system prefs, which convinces me even more that there is a bug in how Mail and system prefs notifications interact with each other 🤔
Again, I can't be sure, but my guess is that the option shifts over to mail.app as soon as it is open and configured, whether that configuration in-app is for notification sounds or not. But I really don't know. It does seem strange for the setting to appear or disappear under any menu/setting at all IMO.
I've just done another quick search and it's clear this is a very long standing bug.
As far back as 10.5!
2017?
Anyone else with no sound in Mail? - Apple Community
I'm certainly not the only one recently either:
I'm not going to waste any more time searching for a fix, I just hope Apple will eventually take it seriously. 🤞🏻
Get 3 or 4 external drives and then make multiple backups on different drives. That should take care of securing your data, so that you can feel better about reinstalling the OS.
As I've said in my previous posts, following the one you quote, I have reinstalled twice. Once using the installer downloaded from Apple Store, and the last one in Restore Mode.
See my most recent posts - it's a bug in Mail.app and/or System Preferences - Notifications that Apple needs to fix.
There seems to be nothing that you or I can do about it.
Last edited:
This will likely be a problem for you until you do a fresh install without restoring from backup, as I said last week. That means not just downloading a new copy of the OS and installing, but doing so without the "time machine" or "restore from iCloud" settings. If you don't want to try that for whatever reason, I understand. But as I noted before, sometimes Apple's layer upon layer of settings/file changes that accumulate after major version updates can have unforeseen consequences that engineers will not test for and therefore won't be addressed in bug patches.
Apple need stop introducing new features and concentrate on getting these long term bugs fixed for the next few updates.
I did 2 "fresh installs" without reformatting the disk, I didn't restore from backup, or iCloud, the install simply rebooted to were it was before.
I imagine you wanted me to erase the disk? If so I may be game to try, but reluctantly, because I'm convinced it'll be a waste of time.
Assuming I do that, then how do I restore all of my data if not from my last backup, which I imagine if there is a gremlin in my Home settings will simply reappear?
I've seen too many threads and too many suggestions that haven't worked here and elsewhere, dating back years, that convince me that the problem lies with Apple. It's true that perhaps it's only effecting a small number of users but I don't see any common element to tie it down to hardware model or anything else.
Last edited:
Your Mac disk is set up to have two different partitions, a system partition where the OS files reside, and a user partition where settings and your end-user files are contained. When you reinstall over a current install without deleting the the entire partition and reformatting it, you are just overwriting one of those partitions--the system partition. So if there's a problem with Mail.app based on a setting contained on your user partition, that will NOT change. This is why I and a couple of others have been stressing that you do a FRESH install, which is different than just reinstalling Big Sur over your current system partition (which is what you seem to have been doing repeatedly).
When I say fresh, I mean when that computer boots up, it should be as though it just shipped from the factory software-wise. When you get to this step in the process (depicted below), you should NOT be migrating files, from time machine, from another Mac, etc. You should skip this step and just sign into your iCloud account as though it were a brand new machine. If Mail.app truly has a bug with notification sounds, it will persist even after you do this. But it has never been an issue for me, and I'm sure it's not connected to any unique configuration in my iCloud account.
When I say fresh, I mean when that computer boots up, it should be as though it just shipped from the factory software-wise. When you get to this step in the process (depicted below), you should NOT be migrating files, from time machine, from another Mac, etc. You should skip this step and just sign into your iCloud account as though it were a brand new machine. If Mail.app truly has a bug with notification sounds, it will persist even after you do this. But it has never been an issue for me, and I'm sure it's not connected to any unique configuration in my iCloud account.
I forgot to respond to this part. As another user suggested, you can move the files you need (documents, program files, etc.) to an external disk or to a cloud service. I use iCloud Drive, which is the most convenient IMO. SO when I log into iCloud after doing a fresh install, all the files I consider essential for my work appear magically. iCloud also saves A LOT (though not all) settings, so the cloud will also download to my desktop the files that were there before, etc. You do have to reconfigure things like screensaver, the dock, and similar things. Once you have your system set up to do fresh installs like this, in my experience it's a best practice to do it after every major version upgrade (esp. after the jump to Big Sur, which seems particularly prone to bugs for whatever reason).
The problem with that is only have a 50 GB storage plan, of which around 40 GB is free.
I have around 180 GB of data between photos, music, mail, documents, downloads etc. that I don't want to lose.
Also as I see it iCloud does not store my mail, only my @icloud.com account, which I don't have.
I'm really not ready to pay for more iCloud storage. I do have space on an external SSD to store my entire user folder, but I'm back to thinking that if I simply transfer that to a fresh install I'm back where I started.
Okay, so your best bet would be an external storage drive or to upgrade your iCloud plan (I have the 200 gig plan for like 3 bucks per month). My iCloud stores all my email SERVER settings (which means that when I tick the mail boxes in "Internet Accounts" under system settings, I don't have to keep entering any smtp server info. I just have to log in with my u/p when prompted.
If you use IMAP or Push email, then your emails should be stored on your email server until you delete them using your client. So when you log in, the mail.app client will begin downloading all those messages from the server, and they won't be deleted from the server unless you delete them from the client. The exception to this is if you use POP email. As I noted in a previous message, that will remove the email messages from the email server as it downloads them to your client, but few people use POP these days -- I'd check to see what email protocol you've been using (i.e., if it's Gmail, it's almost certainly not POP). The payoff of what I'm saying here is that deleting your partitions, after logging out of all your iCloud/iMessage stuff, will NOT permanently delete your mail messages: they'll likely still be sitting on your mail server. I'd double check this stuff, though, just to be sure you don't accidentally delete important info., as I am not actually at your computer to verify what your settings are or aren't.
