New Mail Sound Dropdown in Preferences

[wormed]

Does this dropdown make any sense to anybody?

Fine, I have new mail sound set and it works, but what if I want to change my No mail sound or sent mail sound.

I select "sent mail" sound and all it does is play the sound. There is no options to change it?

Either the design of this menu is really bad and is in desperate need of an update or I'm a complete idiot.

Before you comment and label me an idiot try changing some of the options yourself.

 

[advres]

Does this dropdown make any sense to anybody?

Fine, I have new mail sound set and it works, but what if I want to change my No mail sound or sent mail sound.

I select "sent mail" sound and all it does is play the sound. There is no options to change it?

Either the design of this menu is really bad and is in desperate need of an update or I'm a complete idiot.

Before you comment and label me an idiot try changing some of the options yourself.

The ONLY sound you are changing is your "you've got mail" type sound. When you select "sent mail", you are telling the system that when you GET new mail, you actually want it to play the "sent mail" sound.

Yes this is stupid and yes you are an idiot But just to clarify, I was about to type "yeah, WTF is going on with this thing" until I finally realized what was going on.

 

[wormed]

ahh, but when you select "mail sent sound" you are not actually turning it on or off, it just plays the sound.

I've been using OSX for two years now and it's the only menu that is completely confusing.

I think i'm starting to see it though. Every option besides the New mail sound can not be changed. I guess those are just the defaults. But why is the menu called "new mail sound"?

 

[advres]

I think i'm starting to see it though. Every option besides the New mail sound can not be changed. I guess those are just the defaults. But why is the menu called "new mail sound"?

Because that dropdown is for changing the sound that happens when a new message comes to your inbox. The dropdown allows you to signify a random sound of your own, any system sound, or ANY of the mail sounds available (i.e. mail sent sound).

Reproducible steps:
1 - Change the dropdown to read "mail sent sound" and you will hear the "whoosh" sound like when you send an email.

2 - Now send yourself an email. Note: You will here the "whoosh" when you send the mail AND when you receive the mail in your inbox. You have now succesfully changed your received mail sound to the sent mail sound.

Hope that helps.

 

[calhobbes]

This is slightly tangential, but has anyone had the new mail alert just stop working? This happened to me for no apparent reason and it was out of the blue. My alert volume is at max, and the sound plays fine in the mail preference pane.