I sometimes get the sound of outgoing mail when nothing was sent.

No, that's not it. My wife (who has this problem) does not have a GMail account, much less a GMail/Mail connection. Also, your theory does not explain the lack of any outgoing mail sound when any message is sent from Mail. Also, I'd be surprised if the IMAP sync process causes any "email sent" sound to occur. If it does, I'd also consider that a bug.

Yeah Gmail or IMAP any email you have with these will do the same thing.

Wifi / Ethernet no change. It's when you have internet conection.

Notes about this:

1. I only hear it when my computer has been asleep.

2. I get it all the time when I switch from Home to Work wifi.

Let me see if I can figure it out if I am right, as it's bugged me for months now.

Happened to me after upgrading to Lion but for 3 days now, I have switched wifi off on 3 Macs here and only connect via Ethernet and the problem appears to have gone.

also I can't work it out. Is it a woosh or a shwoooooowwwhhh?

I have a feeling that it could be the buddy signing out sound on imessage / ichat?

Could it be that...

Nope. It's a million percent the incoming email sound. If I have 90 incoming emails it goes off 90 times....

Or it did before I stopped connected by Wifi & Ethernet together.

Perhaps there are two different issues that have similar symptoms?

This message is about the sound of outgoing mail when nothing is sent. The most critical common symptoms of this problem are: 1) The outgoing mail sound is not heard when mail is sent from within Mail; and 2) Multiple outgoing mail sounds are heard in rapid succession at a seemingly-random later date.

In my wife's case, it happened with a nearly-new Macbook Air, running Lion. The Air is the only device she uses to access her one POP-based email account. About two weeks ago, Mail starting playing the outgoing mail sound properly. Maybe it was an update? Or maybe it momentarily straightened out after a restart? Anyhow, for the time being, all is well.

I suggest you all to read the posts on the first page of that thread.

You will see that even when you change the outgoing mail sound from Whooosh to something ekse, the periodic Whooosh sound continues....

No Whoosh when you device is offline !!! When back to online, immediate whoosh and then, periodically again...

I'm having the same problems, well, sometimes. I haven't been able to find out under what circumstances this happens, I do know that it occurs sometimes when I wake my MacBook Air.

Just now it did the same thing, last time was already a couple of weeks ago. It keeps going until I actually do something (not even related to Mail itself). It's a very weird bug which I have no idea of why it'd happen.

Also note that my Mail application is broken in more ways. I can't search for text (in subjects, body's etc.) in any of my mailboxes, although I can search for senders and recipients (these problems occured since 10.7.2 I believe, although I never installed 10.7.1 and went from 10.7.0 directly to 10.7.2 with a Combo Update)

It's odd I have been installing CS6 last week. I had to do a permission replair and havn't heard it since.

I was getting this every day since then.

Don't worry about the combo update, it's good to run them as it makes sure everything is installed correctly. You should upgrade to 10.7.4.

I'm seeing this also, on Lion and Mountain Lion on my Macbook Pro.

The issue is:

1) Sometimes mail does not play the sent mail sound.

2) Connecting headphones triggers a flurry of sent mail/new mail sounds.

It seems that the sounds are queued up and connecting headphones makes the audio subsystem to flush them in succession.

Repair permissions/reinstall combo updades does not fix this. Upgrading to mountain lion also does not fixes this.

If you notice that mail is not playing the sent mail sound, try connecting headphones and see if you get the same behaviour I'm seeing.

I think we are getting closer here! You are right.

Generally when I get into work I plug everything in including my 3.5mm jack for speakers..

It was only when this was plugged in I would see this happeneing.. Interesting...

No I don't worry about Combo Updates, just stating as much as information as I know to maybe find a specific cause 😉 I am on 10.7.4 already, which hasn't made any difference.

Also, the headphones suggestion does not apply to me, as I never use the headphone jack of my MacBook Air.

Just stating that I notice this after connecting the headphones. I don't recall hearing this through the built-in speakers.

<Edited By Host>

The description above is exactly what I was experienceing too. So much so that I though I had a virus.

I no longer hear that sound. I now run 10.7.4 on Macbook Pro with all the firmware updates, so it may be that, to be honest I don't know. The sound has stopped.

Hope this helps.