Choosing default font in macOS Mail – for display only?

thormod_rk wrote:

choosing a new default font in macOS Mail mostly has to do with appearance/display on my own Mac, and does not affect the actual font when the email is opened on other devices or by other recipients. Am I correct?

Yes, Mail has always worked that way. Users who want to be able to set a default font for outgoings which is seen by the recipients have to use as different app. Outlook is probably the most common.

One way people have worked around this is to create a standard signature with the first line in the font you want to send out.

When composing, start at the first line of the signature, not the message area where the cursor shows up. I don't know if it still works.

I don't know if it still works the same, but Mail essentially sends messages as plain text unless you make a formatting change. The font in the message code is just a suggestion, not required. If you make a change to the default format, the message is sent as a styled message, using rtf or html (not sure which).

And, in case it wasn't clear in the previous workaround, you have to set a different default "viewing" font from the one you want to send with. It is the change of formatting that triggers the formatted email.

thormod_rk wrote:

I looked at the source code for newly sent messages

Do you mean you did View > Message > Raw Source on a message in your Sent folder and found the correct html code for the font chosen in Mail > Preferences > Fonts and Colors?

Palatino should then be displayed at the other end, assuming they have that font installed and are not using an email app that has rich text switched off.

Perhaps something has changed recently, will check

thormod_rk wrote:

I just strongly believe there‘s more sophisticated fonts out there for emailing than Helvetica!

It's more a question of whether one thinks the recipient should be able to see email in a font they prefer or be forced to see what the sender chooses. Mail defaults to letting your recipients choose their own font. But strangely it forces you to see what is chosen by senders (and lacks a setting available in some clients to see only the plain text version of incomings).

PS. On my 10.15.1 View > Message > Raw Source still shows no indication in the html code of the font name or size when I set the Message font in Mail Preferences to Palatino 24.

thormod_rk wrote: Do you have any suggestions on what to do if I'd like to have custom email formatting without using Outlook (I'm not an Office 365 subscriber)?

Check Thunderbird.

this is annoying!

Not for the people who don't want to see a hodge-podge of fonts and colors and formatting strewn about.

Spark might also work. It's in the App Store.