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. Open Settings › Mail. It lists the Google accounts you’re signed in to in your spaces.
2. Pick one and press Connect. Google asks once, in a tab where you’re already signed in: press Allow.
3. Your newest mail comes in first, and the rest follows while you read.

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, first among your spaces. 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. 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 asked, and nobody has answered in two days.
• Other: lists, notifications and the rest.
• Later: mail you put off, and mail set to go out.
• Your splits, such as VIP or Receipts, and under them your Gmail labels.
• Kept: threads you keep with P, drafts with words in them and mail set to send later, until they’re done.

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.

Make it yours#

In Settings › Mail:

• Mail pin keeps the door to mail among your pins, or takes it away.
• Sort and sum up on this Mac: Apple Intelligence reads new mail here for what it wants and by when. Without it, rules alone sort.
• Block tracking pixels: pictures load, but not the ones that tell a sender you opened the mail.
• Animations: 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.

More accounts, and leaving#

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