Why do I Have to Click Twice to Open Catalina Mail

Indeed you quit Mail with command-Q however when you click on Mail to open it, it does open Mail (menubar shows Mail) but not the window.

The window opens only when you click again the Mail icon.

If you stop clicking the red dot before quitting Mail, it will open with the Message Viewer open with a single click.

So Luis half pointed to the problem but the full explanation is thus...

The designers in their infinite wisdom have added a new feature - when you "QUIT" mail ...it remembers whether the window was open, minimised using the Amber - button, or closed having used the Red x button.

(if you quit while mail is minimised, then launch it again it starts, and the window animates open from the dock)

IT NEVER USED TO DO THIS, and is nothing to do with Windows vs OSX vs anything else. We are comparing the way something USED to work vs the way it NOW works, so let's not lose track or try to fob off the change as the second coming or what not.

If we have to turn this into a Poll about is the new way better than the old, then I'll start - OLD way please!

(oh, and deleting the trash items in iOS mail - again - OLD way please [who on earth decided MORE clicks is better than less])

"I have the same problem. Did you find a solution? I have to double click on the mail icon in the dock to open the application."

No, you don't. You have to click twice to open the Message Viewer window.

The application starts when you click once, but the window does not appear.

Just click once and look at the menu bar.

I don’t understand people’s fixation with the Dock, if you quit Mail (command-Q, or Mail->Quit) without closing the Message Viewer and “close windows when quitting” (or similar wording) is NOT checked in System Preferences->General, does it still require a second click?

peter_watt wrote:

If you read the whole thread you would know the reason and that you can avoid it, or you can wait for Apple to change it back to the Mojave setup.

Either way it is an insignificant change in behavior.

I doubt it will change. It is a feature called Resume. Apps reopen in the same state you left them. That is useful.

For some people, they may want Mail to reopen to check for new messages, but have no intention of viewing them.

If you don't want the message viewer to close, don't close the window when you want to Quit Mail. Just Quit Mail with the message viewer open. The red button does not quit an app unless the app has no purpose without a window. Mail has a purpose without the viewer.

Either keyboard is problematic or Mac files are corrupted , if in new test user account the same issue occurs first try these articles https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT204540

https://support.apple.com/en-in/keyboard-service-program-for-mac-notebooks

https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT204621

Then plan to visit apple authorised service centre to get some services , in very rare scenarios if mail application is corrupted then erase the hard drive and reinstall Mac OS https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT204904

It Does open on single click. As you say the ribbon at top of page says "Mail"

If you want the mail window to open with it then don't use the red dot to close the window before quitting. It has been stated ad nauseam.

Yes it is a change of behavior that has annoyed some people but all apps are different.

The issue of opening mail in catalina 10.15.1 is persisting , sometimes the mail app doesn't open with single click also some times have to force quit the app .

Its a bug , report this to apple link https://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/

The answer is not the same for all the applications you mentioned. Some applications are “single window applications”, like Reminders and System Preferences. Some, like Safari, are not. If you close the single window of System Preferences it quits. If you close the remaining window of Safari, or... Mail, the application carries on. Conversely if you start System Preferences from the Dock, its single window opens. If you do it for Safari or Mail after quitting them with no window they start with no window. That is correct. The behavior of Mail in this regard in previous versions of macOS was the incorrect one. It has been fixed in Catalina.

I haver seen this behavior both ways. if you close the mail window then quit mail the next time you open mail it will open without the "main" window displaying until you click on mail icon the second time. If you leave the window open and quit mail directly it will open to the "main" window on first click of the mail icon. At least this is what I noticed.

Hope that helps.

Edit - ha, it helps if I notice their is seven pages of responses already.

May be it would be happening in the op Mac or some other users , previously I used Mac OS mojave and other versions , tap once the mail app opens , to quit a mail right click on the icon and quit ( closing the window with red dot will not close the application it will be running in the background ) .

As this is not a bug in Mac OS Catalina 10.15 and I am also using the same version the mail app opens in single left click .

There could be many reasons that application is malfunctioning , repairing disk permissions , safe mode , new test user account are very basics .

I would recommend that the op can consult apple care senior advisor https://support.apple.com/en-in/contact

In the community etrecheck is highly used , they can post the etrecheck report , many members are trained and expert in reading the report and will give better solutions , the last option to reinstall os can be done , but before that a solution should be found , either they have changed some settings in trackpad gestures , or the trackpad is not working .

Also these settings are to be followed .

Try to use the yellow dot to close the window rather than red and it won't happen

When you click once, does the menu after the Apple say, “Mail”?

I do have to say that, subjectively, the "new, correct" way does not seem "correct" to me, but nor do I think it is a "bug." Here's why... if an app is not running then presumably the user will want to interact with it when it is opened, otherwise why open it? An exception to this could be for apps that do stuff in the background, like an anti-virus, that may never require direct user interaction. If you open an anti-virus app, it might be best, from a user experience standpoint to just start monitoring for viruses, etc., and give the user the choice of whether they want a window open or not to change settings, update, etc, and it may even make sense to remember the window state from the last time the app was running. In the case of an email app, however, it is reasonable to assume, from a developer standpoint, and I am a developer, that when a mail app is opened, the user is expecting to interact with it, i.e. read or send mail, and to do those things, you need a window open, so even if the app were closed with the window hidden I, as a developer, would make this assumption and open a window whenever the app is opened regardless of whether a window was open when the app was stopped by quitting it. There is also good reason to expect a user to want to close the mail window, but leave the mail app running. They are done reading and sending email and they don't want the Mail window taking up space or system resources, but they still want the dock icon to update if new mail comes in... and the Mail app has to be open for that to happen.

So intentional change or bug does not matter. As a user and as a developer, I say that Apple made a mistake and/or a poor design decision for user experience with this new behavior of Mail in Catalina. That is my opinion. However I do see that others may feel differently on the expectation of what happens with a Mail app window when the Mail app is launched. Perhaps some start Mail up just so it can start monitoring for new emails with no intention of reading or sending any emails in the near future... but that's not how I personally work. So correct or incorrect in this case is purely subjective, IMO.

Exactly as Dialabrain says.

If you feel better by clearing the desktop while keeping an app open then use the yellow minimise button not the red close window button. That was suggested many pages back.

But we can guarantee that the red button has exactly the same effect on every Mac running Catalina.