Seeing a very strange behavior in Apple Mail. Noticed that I'd get occasional Mail chimes as if an incoming email arrived, but when looking at Apple mail there's nothing new. Restarted mail and my computer, but still having the same issue.
MacBook Pro 15”, macOS 10.15
Check your rules. Wouldn’t surprise to see a rule relocating and marking an arriving mail message as read.
Shareef Yousef Said:
"apple mail chimes: Seeing a very strange behavior in Apple Mail. Noticed that I'd get occasional Mail chimes as if an incoming email arrived, but when looking at Apple mail there's nothing new. Restarted mail and my computer, but still having the same issue."
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Reset your SMC and your NVRAM:
Sometimes changes are made to the system and then settings (i.e. for Mail) become corrupted, technically. So, reset both on your Mac.
To add a bit more detail. This ONLY occurs on my iCloud account. If I mark all messages in iCloud as read and press "get new messages", no chime. I also marked a Gmail message as unread and did the check, again no chime. But if I go back to my iCloud account and mark just one message as unread and do the check, the chime comes in. This applies to any email in my iCloud account. If just one message is marked as unread it plays the chime.
Current work around is to make sure all messages in iCloud are marked as read.
Going to file a bug report.
Well it wasn't the iCloud email account. Chimes continued after removing iCloud. Removed one of my Gmail accounts now to see if it's the cause. This account has multiple Gmail filters that will label/folder the emails when they arrive (this is configured in Gmail, not Apple Mail). Seems like when an email arrives into my Gmail account, even though Gmail sends it directly to a folder (bypassing the inbox) Apple mail still plays the chime. Is there any way to set the chime to play on ONLY primary inbox emails?
Might the following help?
Mail > Mailbox > Rebuild
MrHoffman Said:
"A linkage between an apparently-stuck mail message, the mail chime, and the NVRAM and SMC/ Could you elaborate on that? Macs are weird in some ways, but Mail and the nvram is not a linkage I’ve previously encountered. And yes, an NVRAM and SMC reset is typically harmless..."
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Reset your SMC and your NVRAM to this to fix corrupt speaker operability.
Thought about that, but didn't really want messages marked as read if I didn't get a chance to read them. For now I just disabled the chimes. But it's confirmed, the chime occurs when one of the subfolders receives an email in my Gmail account. Strange as the behavior doesn't occur with an Exchange account I have. Regardless of what email provider is added, Apple mail should behave based on configs of my local machine (which states: New message notifications: "Inbox Only"). A remote server config shouldn't be able to over-ride my local config. This is def a bug within Apple Mail.
Thing is, messages NEVER show up in the primary Inbox. They do go directly to the subfolder. I get that Gmail likes to do things differently. "Labels" instead of folders, "filters" instead of rules. But at the end of the day, my local laptop should adjust for that.
Mark or tag the messages with something other than the unread tag.
New mail gets a chime. You have new mail.
You want the new mail chime in one folder. Which means local mail rules.
And again, Google does their own thing with mail, and some of their mail-related implementations have diverged from tradition and from expectations. Sometimes widely.
None of which matters, if Google increments a count for new mail that doesn’t exist in the new mail folder.
One option is to migrate to Google and Google apps for this stuff. Google wants your data, and they offer tools to allow that.
Otherwise, log some feedback with Apple, with enough details to allow Apple to reproduce this case and to verify what’s happening at the protocol and mail server layer.
But this would not be the first time that Google “got creative” with their implementations. Nor the first Apple bug, but you’ve indicated a similar setup doesn’t show this (mis)behavior with a different mail server.
As a work-around, disable he chime, and re-implement the chime usint some local rules that chime (just) for new mail in the new mail folder
Tried the rebuild? If so, and if no rules are present, then yes, bug report.
There are some more involved mail rebuild sequences around, too; reindexing it all.
FWIW: Here’s one of the threads on mail issues with recent releases: mail search completely broken in Catalina - Apple Community Corruptions aren’t particularly new to Mail or macOS, nor specific to a recent releases. Mail is complex, the servers differ subtly, and app and system and component crashes can all cause problems.
Google has a long history of creative implementations of mail.
It ‘s probably possible to disable the new-mail chime entirely, then use rules to chime for specific cases.
Alternatively, ensure the arriving messages are marked read within the Google rules, and flagged in some other fashion.
Shareef Yousef wrote:
And "new message notifications: Inbox Only" should mean I only get notifications when messages arrive in the Inbox ... ONLY.
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That depends greatly on what Google servers are providing. You’ve shown this works with other mail servers.
A linkage between an apparently-stuck mail message, the mail chime, and the NVRAM and SMC/ Could you elaborate on that? Macs are weird in some ways, but Mail and the nvram is not a linkage I’ve previously encountered. And yes, an NVRAM and SMC reset is typically harmless...
apple mail chimes
