After a recent macOS update to Tahoe, all of my Apple Mail rules stopped working

Is there a way to get apple mail rules working again? After a recent OS update to Tahoe, all of my apple mail rules stopped working. I've tried deleting and re-creating the most important ones with all the others disabled, and they don't sort according to the rules unless I select all the messages and choose "apply rules". I've also removed the account and re-added it, but clearly there's some caching happening because the rules come back when I re-add the account and they still don't work.


About my mac:

MacBook Pro

Chip: Apple M3 Max

macOS 26.1 (25B78)


An example of a rule that won't run automatically, but does work when I select the messages and select "Apply rules" or CMD+OPT+L


Description: tech@domain.com

If any of the following conditions are met:

To contains tech@domain.com

Perform the following actions:

Move Message to mailbox: tech@domain.com


Additional details: This is a gmail controlled account, but it is in it's stock configuration and I don't have any tagging or sorting rules in gmail itself. It's important to remember that these rules worked perfectly prior to the OS update, and now no longer automatically apply. The only change was the macOS.



[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Get Apple Mail rules working

MacBook Pro 14″

Posted on Dec 22, 2025 6:57 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 23, 2025 6:12 AM

To anyone who finds this and has a similar problem, I believe I've fixed the issue.


Here are the steps I've taken:

1. Delete all my existing rules (I don't know if this was strictly necessary, you might try step 2 directly)

2. Select the Mailbox account and click the Mailbox menu and selecting Rebuild

3. Rewrite the rules


After this, it seems to be applying the rules as the messages come in rather than requiring me to manually select the messages and use the "Apply Rules" option.

7 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 23, 2025 6:12 AM in response to Rothelen

To anyone who finds this and has a similar problem, I believe I've fixed the issue.


Here are the steps I've taken:

1. Delete all my existing rules (I don't know if this was strictly necessary, you might try step 2 directly)

2. Select the Mailbox account and click the Mailbox menu and selecting Rebuild

3. Rewrite the rules


After this, it seems to be applying the rules as the messages come in rather than requiring me to manually select the messages and use the "Apply Rules" option.

Dec 23, 2025 6:08 AM in response to Rothelen

When I update a week and half ago Airdrop wouldn't work. I tried everything I found about resetting Airdrop on my Mac's. Nothing worked so over the weekend I decided to do a full install of 26.2 which took a hour or so but Airdrop started working on both Mac's, though I wonder why you have to use Bluetooth to do it it since I was using a third party add to transfer between Apple devices with just WiFi. If you want to try that route you can either click this link https://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/11/14/093-37361-A_NX0SMZC0LI/9slwkknt5xciy7bhd9ux9utct03e07j6qp/InstallAssistant.pkg


or go to the webpage that I got it from


https://mrmacintosh.com/macos-tahoe-full-installer-database-download-directly-from-apple/

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After a recent macOS update to Tahoe, all of my Apple Mail rules stopped working

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