Mail: Smart Mailboxes stopped working after updating to Ventura 13.2.1

Is anyone else experiencing a functionality issue with Mail: Smart Mailboxes after the recent update to Ventura 13.2.1? Smart Mailboxes are not flagging any messages. I have tried several things on my side, including:

  1. Mailbox > Rebuild
  2. Creating a brand new Smart Mailbox
  3. Deleting and recreating an existing Smart Mailbox
  4. Quitting and re-launching Mail
  5. Shutting down and rebooting my desktop


None of the above actions have made a difference.

Please advise.


iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 13.2

Posted on Feb 16, 2023 9:00 AM

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35 replies

Oct 21, 2023 12:57 AM in response to itsapplemike

Smart mailboxes suddenly stopped working properly after working successfully for at least a fortnight running Sonoma 14.0 (M1 Macbook Air): the previous contents were still there, but new mail that should have been there wasn't.


Rebuild mailboxes, restart Mail - no joy.


Following your linked suggestion, works again! Thanks!


Things look slightly different in Sonoma:

  • in System Settings, go down to Internet Accounts and select Icloud
  • go down to Apps using Icloud and select Icloud Mail
  • unset Sync this Mac

Nov 11, 2023 8:04 PM in response to NotClamz

Didn't work for me, but what did work for me was creating a new local user in MacOS, start Mail app and add my existing mail accounts (from Google, Exchange, IMAP) there again. Smart folders worked without any issue.

So it seems that the problem is due to some kind of corruption in the user's folder, but I haven't found out which one it could be. Removing the Mail folder in ~/Library didn't do the trick, it was immediately recreated after starting Mail without having any effect. There must be other locations where Mail saves preferences in the local user folder because even though I had removed all my mail accounts, the favourites and smart folders were still there, even after removing ~/Library/Mail.

I guess/hope that once we find the location of the file(s) where Mail stores these other kind of preferences, that this would help fixing the problem.

Mail: Smart Mailboxes stopped working after updating to Ventura 13.2.1

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