Hide select IMAP folders

Hi bpatton.

Is there a way to unsubscribe folders in Mail?

No. Mail lacks this feature and there is nothing you can do about it other than using another mail client if it's a deal-breaker for you.

David is right that mail lacks a feature available in other IMAP clients allowing one to subscribe and unsubscribe to particular IMAP folders. However, his response might be a bit too hasty, as there is a workaround for Mail.

1. You can set up one main folder on the top level of your IMAP folder hierarchy (call it 'My Mail', for example).

2. Then, place all the folders you want to access inside this folder as subfolders.

3. Finally, under Mail-->Preferences-->Accounts-->Advanced, Make 'My Mail' your IMAP path prefix.

Warning: this means that ALL the folders at the top level besides 'my mail' will no longer be accessible. But mail.app will recreate the sent and drafts folders as subfolders of my mail. End result: you can no longer see the folders you don't want to see.

It's not a perfect solution, but lots of folks use it to avoid public exchange folders and the like, and it works well.

Well, this is a hack, rather than "not a perfect solution" 🙂.

For one thing, Mail may need something else to be put in the IMAP Path Prefix field for it to work properly with some IMAP servers.

Another problem is that you may want to access this account with other software on a different computer, be it webmail or another mail client. If that other software assumes any of the standard mailboxes (e.g. Sent) should be somewhere else other than the folder you created, then this arrangement just won't work.

Frankly, I wouldn't consider this an acceptable solution, and I'd rather just use another mail client such as Thunderbird for this, but maybe it's just me. At any rate, you're right that I was wrong when I said "there is nothing you can do about it". There is clearly something you can do about it 🙂.

Regards.