Apple's OS X Mail program is a good e-mail client overall, but it has its share of annoyances. Apple does not provide a published or supported way to extend or modify Mail's behavior. Thus, these annoyances persist until a developer takes the time to dig into Mail's innards to find an underhanded solution.
One of the most common shortcomings/omissions/bugs/failures in Mail is the inability to truly preview messages. If the preview pane is displayed in the message viewer window, as soon as a message is selected and displayed, it is marked as read. Most every other e-mail client on the planet provides an option to delay marking messages as read. This particular issue has been the one nagging annoyance that has bothered me for years now. With every OS X upgrade, I have anticipated Apple finally adding this necessary functionality, only to be disappointed.
Enter TruePreview. I am the developer who finally took the time to dig into Mail's innards to find an underhanded solution. TruePreview adds a preference panel to Mail's preferences that allows you to mark messages as read immediately (Mail's default), never, or after a delay. Additionally, it allows you to immediately mark messages as read when replying, forwarding, opening in a separate window, or scrolling the preview pane. Finally, it allows you to specify these settings independently per-account, if desired.
System requirements
TruePreview requires Mac OS X and Mail, obviously. It has been tested with Mac OS X 10.5 (Mail 3.6) and Mac OS X 10.6 (Mail 4.1).
Support
To get support, file a bug report, or request a feature, please open a ticket. To be kept up to date on new releases, join the TruePreview-Announce mailing list.
Translations
If you are interested in providing a translation of TruePreview, please create an account on this site and contact me to let me know your username and the language(s) to which you will be translating. I will then send you instructions.
Cost/License
TruePreview is free, open source software covered by the BSD license. Before I took the time to write this myself, I often said I would gladly pay for it. I am a huge proponent of open source software, though, so if you find this plugin useful, please consider making a donation to allow me to continue updating, maintaining, and enhancing TruePreview.
Project maintainers:
Resources:
Releases:
| Version | Compatibility | Release date | File |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.4 (Release notes) |
Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Mail 3.6 Mail 4.1 Mail 4.2 |
Tue, 2009-11-24 08:16 - 15 weeks 17 hours ago | |
| 1.3 (Release notes) |
Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Mail 3.6 Mail 4.1 Mail 4.2 |
Tue, 2009-11-10 07:31 - 17 weeks 18 hours ago | |
| 1.2 (Release notes) |
Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Mail 3.6 Mail 4.1 |
Thu, 2009-10-15 17:38 - 20 weeks 5 days ago | |
| 1.1 (Release notes) |
Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Mail 3.6 Mail 4.1 |
Fri, 2009-10-09 09:43 - 21 weeks 4 days ago | |
| 1.0 (Release notes) |
Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Mail 3.6 |
Sat, 2009-06-27 03:55 - 36 weeks 3 days ago |
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