macOS Sonoma Drops Support for Legacy Mail App Plug-ins

[ddauerbach]

Since they’re lying about Mail not supporting plugins, seems like they’re just pushing people to buy their new mail app.

No they are not lying. In Sonoma plugins won't work and the new Mail extensions simply won't support the very useful features of the current Mailsuite plugins (particularly MailTags and MailAct-On). So don't slander them.

 

[patearrings]

I highly recommend Arc browser.

If you want a chromium browser yeh. But if you want to get away from chrome and use something native to mac, then orion is better, as well as faster.

 

[Michael Tsai]

I wrote a blog post with more information about how this will affect different Mail plug-ins. SpamSieve will be switching to a Mail extension, as described here.

 

[Westside guy]

I switched to Firefox ages ago for uBlock Origin support and proper cookie management/containerisation (the new '"profiles" feature doesn't come close, unfortunately).

It amazes me that, 20 years on, Firefox is still the only web browser that offers any substantive level of cookie management.

 

[gwhizkids]

Am I annoyed that the MailSuite will no longer be supported? Sure. But in the long run, it’s better for Apple to continue locking down the security on Mail. I can get behind that.

 

[Shirasaki]

Federighi continues to lock down macOS and remove more and more functionality. macOS is becoming increasingly annoying and burdensome to use.

I saw this the day when apple silicon was released. Still waiting for terminal to be retired. After all, server world is dominated by Linux, not macOS.

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.

And their native apps are still the worst in its class. I have never seen any modern browser having such tremendous difficulty loading webpages like Safari did, and iOS 17 beta almost breaks Safari to A point of no return (yes, will be fixed but that’s not the point).
Just for the record, setting up rules in Apple mail never works. I have to rely on Microsoft outlook on windows to help me managing those incoming emails. It’s just a joke.

 

[Shirasaki]

Am I annoyed that the MailSuite will no longer be supported? Sure. But in the long run, it’s better for Apple to continue locking down the security on Mail. I can get behind that.

And eventually the system as well. Might as well call macOS “iOS for Mac“ at that point.

 

[insomniac86]

Related: I wonder if Mail.app will ever support tagging emails?? (for example like Finder, Photos, Notes, Reminders, Music, etc.)

I've been submitting this feature requests for years.
What i want is for the Finder tags to intigrate across other Apple apps like Mail, Notes, Reminders etc.
I want to be able to tag things across multiple apps and be able to view them all in single interface.

 

[Lazyboner]

MailTags (now part of SmallCubed’s MailSuite) was the extension/plug-in that made Mail.app fly. Sad times.

Fingers crossed, SmallCubed’s upcoming stand alone app, MailMaven — https://mailmaven.app/ — will be a worthy replacement.

 

[Sportpoz]

I tested many different email systems and always went back to Apple Mail

 

[dwaite]

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.

Have you diagnosed what is actually happening and the underlying cause?

Does this only happen with particular jpegs? does it happen with other file formats like PNG or if you change the extension to add a .bin to the end? Does it only happen with this one person?

I've never heard or encountered anything like this, and find it fascinating that a app plugin would exist to try to work around what sounds like a server software issue.

 

[TwoBytes]

I need the ability to not have mails as read when i scroll through them as i have missed really important things in the past.
I used Mail Act-On from smallcubed / mailsuite. to do this. They are stopping as we know and pushing their email client. I like the Apple mail app.

Does anyone know of any workarounds?

 

[klasma]

And eventually the system as well. Might as well call macOS “iOS for Mac“ at that point.

They could go for "iMacOS" eventually.

 

[tehabe]

I'm hoping MailTrackerBlocker will still be able to work. It works very nicely and unobtrusively and seems to not break like Private Relay does.

Is that still needed if you use Mail Privacy Protection?

Edit: On the GitHub page of MailTrackerBlocker it says:

If you have macOS 12 and up, Mail Privacy Protection is recommended over MailTrackerBlocker for more complete privacy guards.

 

[dumastudetto]

These changes are engineered to give consumers more privacy and security over their invaluable email communications. Only Apple can do this.

 

[tehabe]

These changes are engineered to give consumers more privacy and security over their invaluable email communications. Only Apple can do this.

If that was the aim they would also remove the support for HTML mails completely.

 

[wanha]

I must have lived under a rock, because I have somehow completely missed that Mail plugins are a thing. May need to go investigate now...

 

[wanha]

I registered just to upvote this. SmallCubed is apparently going to release its own mail client now. So... well done, Apple.

Just what the world desperately needs... another email client. Hopefully it won't use a subscription business model

 

[adrianlondon]

If you want a chromium browser yeh. But if you want to get away from chrome and use something native to mac, then orion is better, as well as faster.

I just gave Orion a go. One of the things I like about Firefox is that I can customise it, especially the tabs, as I don't like the way Safari looks. Orion, of course, mimics the Safari way of doing things. However, that's a minor thing. The fact that keychain and text expansion work is a great thing. Plus I could install a couple of Firefox extensions. Magic!

Anyway, so I tried two websites ...

https://forums.macrumors.com/whats-new/posts/ - this worked as expected. Going back from posts to threads to forum lists is a bit slower than Firefox but that's to be expected. Safari is bad at that too.

https://www.sunrisetv.ch/en/epg/initial - failed to open at all, even if I disabled every blocking/anti-tracking/anti-cookie option.

So I had to delete it. I do like the idea of Orion though, and I'll give it another go in a few months.

 

[bellis1]

I'm really going to miss the really really useful SmallCubed Mailsuite suite of plugins.

I'm really going to miss the really really useful SmallCubed Mailsuite suite of plugins

It seems they've started working on their own e-mail client, MailMaven, which I suppose will include most of the same functionality as the mail plug-ins.

I wish Apple mail just added some keyboard functionality to quickly file emails to different mail folders.

 

[lexvo]

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.

I don't know if you have tried it already, but when I send a mail with an image attachment to a Windows user:
1) I drag the image into the mail
2) I right click on the image and select 'Show as symbol'
Works great for me.

 

[adrianlondon]

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.

I had a problem with attachments starting with this first Sonoma beta. It would send them OK if I sent the email totally in plain text, but the moment I changed to rich text, or switched automatically via, say, changing one word to bold, then the attachments wouldn't show for the recipient.

They WOULD show in Apple Mail, and looking at the raw mail contents, the attachment was there but put in a faulty wrapper.

I'm not 100% sure if I've fixed it (need to do more testing) but I shut down Mail and then deleted ebvery directory called "Mail" (there were a few!) in ~/Library/Containers. This seems to have fixed my issue.

 

[gwhizkids]

And eventually the system as well. Might as well call macOS “iOS for Mac“ at that point.

And you can only blame the bad actors for this, not Apple.

 

[gwhizkids]

MailTags (now part of SmallCubed’s MailSuite) was the extension/plug-in that made Mail.app fly. Sad times.

Fingers crossed, SmallCubed’s upcoming stand alone app, MailMaven — https://mailmaven.app/ — will be a worthy replacement.

I’m willing to give it a try (especially since I still have 9 months remaining on my current subscription). SmallCubed should probably offer refunds to people who have substantial parts of their subscription period to run since they (SmallCubed)knew that this was a possibility.

And they may. I’ve been impressed with their customer service. This really sucks for them. It’s like getting Sherlocked without there actually being a Sherlocking app.

 

[BadMacRumours]

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.)

No meaningful updates, as is tradition.