Mail Unread Menu 2.0.3: Menubar notification
The menubar notification utility, Mail Unread Menu has been updated.
Notification utilities comes in two basic flavours.
One style, the full-on “splash screen” approach, is best done by Mail.appetizer and GrowlMail 
.
Both of these interrupt your work to let you know about new mail:
The second style is more discreet. Mail Unread Menu and MailUnreadStatusBar sit in the menubar, counting away as new mail arrives but not disrupting your work.
Myself, I prefer the latter.
The latest update to Mail Unread Menu has a changed application icon and will now correctly set Mail.app to work with bundles if these settings are not already enabled.
It is also smarter about displaying the count in the Inbox, although as you can see in the screenshot it doesn’t tell you which inbox is which if you have it set to display the unread count in “All Mailboxes” in the preferences.
Take the new version and MailUnreadStatusBar for a test run and make up your own mind which one works best for you.
Similar Posts:
- Mail Unread Menu 1.2: Unobtrusive email alerts
- Mail Unread Menu: Menubar notification
- Mail Unread Menu 2.0: Jump to mailboxes
- Mail Unread Menu 1.1 now a bundle
- MailUnreadStatusBar notification app goes Universal
Tags: Apple Mail, mail.app, menubar, notification, plugins, pop-up, splash
December 19th, 2006 at 3:56 am
“The latest update to Mail Unread Menu … will now correctly set Mail.app to work with bundles if these settings are not already enabled.”
What does this mean?
December 19th, 2006 at 5:32 am
I actually prefer the former, using Growl. I have Mail.app set up with a rule that triggers Growl’s Mail Notification script only according to certain criteria. Those criteria are that the sender is one of my immediate co-workers, to whom I have a responsibility to be aware of their emails as soon as they arrive, or messages that are marked with a high priority. Emails from other senders do not pop a notification, so I am able to remain within my flow of work without needless distraction. Since my Dock is hidden, I have no distractions from useless unread message counts cluttering my view. I read my email when I choose, rather than being interrupt-driven. Well, for anything not from an immediate colleague, anyway.
December 19th, 2006 at 7:22 am
@ny: That’s not very well expressed, is it?
It means that the app will automatically adjust the enablebundles settings stored in Mail.app’s preferences. In the past, one often had to adjust them manually through the Terminal like this.
December 19th, 2006 at 9:08 am
“Both of these interrupt your work to let you know about new mail”
While I see where you’re coming from, this isn’t quite fair. Mail.appetizer gives you a more full-fledged notification, but I don’t see why this necessarily interrupts your work. It’s not a modal dialog box, and it gracefully fades away after a short (user-adjustable) period of time. The pop-up in the photo is unusually large — I make my notification box large enough that it can convey substantive information but small enough so that if I’m working on something else, I can easily ignore it.
My one complaint about Mail.appetizer is that it hasn’t been updated in quite a while despite lacking a critical feature — the ability to exclude certain mailboxes from the notify list. I may switch to Growl notifications for this reason.
December 19th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
dumb question, sorry, but I don’t understand the point of these. Can’t you just see your unread mail count in the dock?
December 19th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
Thanks Tim!
December 19th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
ny: yeah, it’s kind of hard to state in just the one line i allot myself for the read me. but Tim had it exactly right. when you install the bundle, it just runs those two terminal commands.
and a.r.: the mail badge will only show unread messages in the inbox. these other programs will show unread messages in all of your mailboxes. so if you have some rules that automatically move messages to other mailboxes or you want to count all of your unread messages in all of your folders (for whatever reason), these apps will do that.
thanks again, Tim, for the post and update. now that I’ve got some more free time, I do plan on doing even more updates. thanks!
Logan Rockmore, developer
Mail Unread Menu
December 19th, 2006 at 8:48 pm
@a.r. — good question. Yes, of course, you can. But with these utilities you can choose to watch mail in one account only (say, work emails, but not Hawk Wings emails) and jump more quickly to the mailbox you want.
May 7th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
I cannot read my messages and am not notified of my unread messages, I need help.