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macOS Sonoma Drops Support for Legacy Mail App Plug-ins

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With macOS Monterey in 2021, Apple introduced a MailKit framework that developers can use to build modern and secure extensions for the Mail app on the Mac. Extensions can be created to block content, perform message actions, improve security, and more.

General-macOS-Mail-Feature.jpg

In turn, Apple said legacy Mail app plug-ins would stop functioning in a future macOS release, and it appears that time has now come. AltStore today said it confirmed with Apple during WWDC last week that plug-ins are not supported on macOS Sonoma, and that MailKit-based extensions are the only supported solution going forward.


While MailKit extensions are more secure, they have more limited functionality compared to legacy plug-ins, so not all plug-ins may live on as extensions.

Legacy plug-ins cannot be opened in the Mail app as of the first beta version of macOS Sonoma. The update will be released to the public later this year.

(Thanks, @aaronp613!)

Article Link: macOS Sonoma Drops Support for Legacy Mail App Plug-ins
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/06/14/macos-sonoma-drops-legacy-mail-app-plug-ins/
I've had a problem with the mail app for years.
Short Story:
I want to attach a JPG file to the client (who has windows), I do it in all possible ways (windows firendly, at the end / beginning of the message, RTF or plain text)
unfortunately, each time the client receives this JPG not as an attachment, but sewn into the email (so that he can't even save it on his hard drive.
The solution used to be a programmer's plugin, but unfortunately it has not worked for a few OSX.
The only thing I can do is send an empty email without any text - then this JPG is treated as an attachment.
I also discovered that if I send a file with some other extension in parallel with this JPG and the text of the email, then it goes as an attachment ...

Do you have any solution to this problem?
I will add that this only happens when I send to someone who has Windows.
 
Are there any meaningful upgrades to Mail.app in Sonoma? Apple's Sonoma web site only mentions "See travel-related emails at the top of your search results as your trip dates approach. And add big emoji to your messages." These functionality enhancements are quite modest, at best. Am I perhaps missing something?

Related: I wonder if Mail.app will ever support tagging emails?? (for example like Finder, Photos, Notes, Reminders, Music, etc.)
 
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While MailKit extensions are more secure, they have more limited functionality compared to legacy plug-ins, so not all plug-ins may live on as extensions.
Click to expand...

Apple loves doing this kind of thing -- see how they ruined Safari extensions -- and then they wonder why their native apps' usage stagnates rather than grows.
 
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ramirezzz said:
The only thing I can do is send an empty email without any text - then this JPG is treated as an attachment.
I also discovered that if I send a file with some other extension in parallel with this JPG and the text of the email, then it goes as an attachment ...

Do you have any solution to this problem?
Click to expand...

Give MailMate a try. Not nearly as pretty, but very powerful and the developer keeps it going strong. I use it with GMAIL and Exchange accounts and am very happy with it. It has a very powerful rules based system to sort and flag mail, which I find very useful. Haven't touched Apple's Mail app since I started using MailMate.
 
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Yup, I noticed that last week when I tried to get Gmailinator up and running again in the first Sonoma beta. It typically needs to be rebuilt via Xcode with each new release (even point releases) just to update the plug-in compatibility identifiers.

However, despite still having the UUIDPluginCompatibility string in the app bundle, there was no way to turn on the bundle functionality in Mail.

So I then headed over to SmallCubed, which makes the really useful Mail Act-On and MailTags plug-ins, and discovered that they'd already posted a note on their front page for macOS Sonoma that "Apple has permanently disabled the ability to load any Mail plugin in macOS 14."
 
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erikkfi said:
Apple loves doing this kind of thing -- see how they ruined Safari extensions -- and then they wonder why their native apps' usage stagnates rather than grows.
Click to expand...
I switched to Firefox ages ago for uBlock Origin support and proper cookie management/containerisation (the new '"profiles" feature doesn't come close, unfortunately).

As a consequence, I switched from Keychain to Bitwarden, which also solved a few issues I had.

As for Mail, apart from the IMAP bug in the iOS 17 beta (and an attachment bug in Sonoma which I might have fixed by deleting some caches), it does what I need and so far haven't found anything better. I've never used any Mail extensions.
 
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redheeler said:
Over a decade on MacOS and this is the first time I heard that the Mail app supports extensions.
Click to expand...
The original implementation of plug-ins was never officially supported. They were largely a remnant from the earliest days of OS X that's managed to stick around for years somewhere, but they were like "private APIs" that could change at any time — and it wasn't at all uncommon for devleopers to have to make major changes with major new OS X updates (and sometimes even minor point releases).

Apple brought Mail Extensions around in Monterey as an official solution two years ago, which are more like Safari Extensions. They tie into Mail using more modern APIs that shouldn't break as easily with every new release of Mail. Sadly, as the original article notes, they're also significantly more limited in what they can do.

For instance, one of the handiest mail plug-ins was Gmailinator, which mapped the Gmail keyboard shortcuts (e.g. j, k, shift-#, etc) to Apple Mail. It was a grassroots open-source project on Github that was maintained and forked by several folks over the years but somehow kept on ticking. Sadly, that kind of functionality isn't possible with the new Mail Extensions, and it's such a jarring shift to have to return to arrow-key navigation that I may be done with Apple Mail on the Mac.
 
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ramirezzz said:
I also discovered that if I send a file with some other extension in parallel with this JPG and the text of the email, then it goes as an attachment
Click to expand...

If that works for you, perhaps make a 1-pixel transparent .gif and also attach it with those .jpgs. You are still sending 2 attachments but one of them is nominal in size and invisible on screen.
 
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SmallCubed recently posted a message on their website. In short, MailTags and the entire Mailsuite suite of plugins is being retired, and will be replaced by an entirely new, independent email app called MailMaven that will incorporate most of the functionality of Mailsuite, including email tagging:


MailSuite will not work with Sonoma - macOS 14​

Sonoma will be released later this fall without support for Mail plugins. Apple has permanently disabled the ability to load any Mail plugin in macOS 14.
We are working on MailMaven - an email client to replace MailSuite - to be released later this year.
 
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Anyone know if this affects MarketCircle's Daylite CRM mail plugin?
 
A two year notification is plenty of notice to be able to build out MailKit compatible extensions, and it sounds like some of them have things about ready to go! Apparently it doesn't expose 100% feature parity as compared to legacy plugins, but no one should've been caught off guard by this.
 
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eoblaed said:
A two year notification is plenty of notice to be able to build out MailKit compatible extensions, and it sounds like some of them have things about ready to go! Apparently it doesn't expose 100% feature parity as compared to legacy plugins, but no one should've been caught off guard by this.
Click to expand...

And yet they always are, even big companies. Just look at the mess last year over the cloud storage APIs.
 
jhollington said:
Sadly, that kind of functionality isn't possible with the new Mail Extensions, and it's such a jarring shift to have to return to arrow-key navigation that I may be done with Apple Mail on the Mac.
Click to expand...
If you want to have powerful keyboard mapping, checkout MailMate. I recommended it in an earlier post, and as long as you aren't look for a shiny, MailMate is, IMHO, the best mail program or OSX.
 
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