Leopard Mail.app and plugins: Trial and error
Leopard Mail disables plugins when it is installed (as Tiger Mail did before it). That means all the productivity and eye-candy goodness that plugins provide is taken from you. Nasty! A poor bargain in return for Leopard Mail’s bling-bling HTML stationery.
However, not all hope is lost. Developers are scrambling to get Leopard-ready plugins into your hands.
And, in the meantime, you can try for yourself whether your favourites still work. Or not.
The Terminal commands that are needed to “re-enable” bundles and plugins in Leopard Mail are two
defaults write com.apple.mail EnableBundles 1
defaults write com.apple.mail BundleCompatibilityVersion 3
Close Mail. Type these into Terminal. Load up your bundles. Start Mail. Watch and see what happens.
Some work. Mail Act-on 
works after this Terminal trick. The current version will break the link to any Leopard Mail to-do created on the message, when the email is moved. But that’s a small price to pay. Scott Morrison is probably beavering away to fix this as I type.
MailAppetizer gives mixed results. It works, but no longer parses the HTML in the message properly:
So, it’s trial and error. I don’t have the patience to go through the whole list of plugins for Mail.app and report what’s working. But I’d be glad to hear from you in the commments if your favourites work. Or not.
Who dares wins!
Tags: Apple Mail, Bundles, mail.app, plugins, ProductivityRelated posts
October 30th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
Letterbox does work (sort of) until you try to resize the Mail window. Then everything gets cluttered.
But the developer says he will have a new version ready by… three days ago (yes, the news was already up last Friday). ;-)
GPGMail doesn’t work (internal error). :-(
October 30th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
Growl Mail not working…
October 30th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Good to see you back, Tim!
The Mailtags Leopard Public Beta has been working flawlessly for me, and I was about to go nuts without it.
Other plugins that I can’t live without include Act-On and Letterbox, although I’m content to wait a few days in the hopes that they show up in Leopard-skinned versions, rather than risk my mission-critical mail with the Tiger-striped ones… :-)
Both Mail.appetizer and Growlmail have not yet been ported to Leopard, but I’m starting to appreciate the non-interrupt-driven day without having them installed (that having been said, I’m sure I’ll be caving and installing them once they’re Leopardized).
Other than those omissions, I’m enjoying the Mail.app 3.0 experience, although I’ve found some of the new features a bit underwhelming…. (for instance, I can’t seem to find any way to hide completed to-dos… :-/ )
October 30th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
Good to be back.
I agree. I’m underwhelmed. I think I haven’t yet got over my feelings of betrayal about note-syncing the iPhone. I know it was only a rumour, but it would have been so useful!
October 30th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
Yes, the notes syncing to iPhone is a bit of a disappointment as well, particularly considering they look so similar. The lack of tasks continues to be another major disappointment.
At least with the notes stored in the IMAP Inbox I can get a one-way sync, so it is somewhat useful to jot reminders for myself to take with me, and has the added advantage of not requiring a cabled sync to do so.
That doesn’t mean I’m not hoping that iPhone firmware 1.2 won’t bring more to the table, of course.
On another note, however, they did bring in a few nice little features under the radar that will probably only appeal to the power-users…. Subscribed IMAP folders are finally a reality (indispensable if you want to use Mail.app with a Microsoft Exchange Public Folder Store), and they’ve also finally brought IMAP IDLE support, obviating the IMAP-IDLE plug-in that was previously required.
Ironically, for me these two core features are far more useful than all the eye-candy they’ve thrown into the superficial things like Notes and Tasks (half-baked at best IMHO) and Stationary (considering most of my friends and acquaintances would disown me if I ever sent them such an HTML-heavy message :-) ).
October 31st, 2007 at 1:17 am
SpamSieve works fine, thankfully.
October 31st, 2007 at 1:32 am
Mail in Leopard is looking in good shape. There are a few nice updates to its IMAP capabilities that have already been mentioned. I think SMBs might like the Notes and Todos that integrate with iCal, as well. I was a something of a sceptic before I saw them and understood how they were implemented. I think Apple insider has it right when it says:
“This isn’t just some catch up features applied to check off a box of “add To Do events in Mail,” but a well thought out system for linking your messages and calendar together”
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/29/an_introductory_mac_os_x_leopard_review_mail_and_ical.html
The feature should help Apple sell iPhones, too, once they get Mail’s Notes synching with the iPhones.
The data detectors sound like quite something, too.
I think all this is worth a few broken hacks. :-)
Anyway, the one thing that still isn’t there is PGP/GPG support. Apple — or, at any rate, its Mail people — seems to prefer S-MIME. Consequently, those who need/want PGP will still, unfortunately, need to use a 3rd-party client or install Sente’s hack. Sente’s GPGMail doesn’t work on Leopard yet. See here for an estimated time on getting it working:
http://www.sente.ch/software/GPGMail/English.lproj/GPGMail.html
October 31st, 2007 at 3:01 am
Ooh, so close. GrowlMail seems to make Mail crash every time I open it. Bummer. And I can’t quite figure out how to get it uninstalled so I can put Letterbox in. But I look forward to compatibility updates soon. Thanks, Tim!
October 31st, 2007 at 10:05 pm
Tim, good to see you back. I wonder if I can ask you a slightly off-topic question?
Before installing Leopard I had somehow persuaded the system calendar to begin its weeks on Mondays. Since I’ve installed Leopard the system calendar has defaulted to the American standard of weeks beginning on Sundays. While I can change this in iCal, say, it impacts on other apps that don’t allow the user to specify whether weeks begin on Sundays or Mondays.
I feel sure there must be a solution to this, but I can’t find it. Help?
November 1st, 2007 at 7:29 am
I’m definitely missing Mail Act-on, Mail Appetizer, and GrowlMail. I can’t seem to get any of these to work. Even with the terminal hack suggested, when I re-install the features, Mail still disables the bundles on startup. Maybe I’m missing something.
November 1st, 2007 at 7:44 am
I had the same problem as Erik. I could install MailTags and Mail Attachments Iconizer and they worked fine, but as soon as I tried to install Mail Act-On, Mail disabled all the bundles and I had to start again. My solution was to install MailTags and Mail Attachments Iconizer using the installers, drag Mail Act-On from the Disabled Bundles folder into the Bundles Folder, run the two commands in Terminal, and then relaunch Mail. Now I have all three plugins working.
November 1st, 2007 at 7:50 am
@Erik: Are you installing Mail Act-on with its installer? That, of course, will run the Tiger bundle commands as part of the install process, and nuke Leopard bundle compatibility in the process.
Quite Mail. Install Mail Act-on first, then use the public beta installer to install MailTags, which will automatically enter the right commands for Leopard into the Terminal. Then you can delete the MailiTags mail bundle from the ~/Mail/Bundles directory if you want to, but other plugins installed first will still work.
Hope that’s helpful,
Tim
November 1st, 2007 at 8:22 am
Thanks. Switching the order worked. The instructions in the post seem to suggest installing the bundles after entering the terminal commands.
November 1st, 2007 at 8:26 am
No worries. Yes, the text is not well written. I was imagining dragging the bundles into the bundles directory, not using the installers. Sorry about that.
November 16th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Loved this plugin in tiger but until the new leopard compatible version is out its not worth the trouble.
until then:
http://www.opbarnes.com/blog/Mac/leopard_growlmail_dont_play_nice.html
November 23rd, 2007 at 11:33 pm
Any clue why none of my plugins will install AFTER I installed Leopard? I’ve tried to install a number of plugins for both Mail and Safari and none seem to “take”. I’ve repaired permissions with Disk Utility. Still nothing. Any idea?
November 29th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Have you tried installing one with its own installer - say the Leopard friendly version of MailTags. it will run the enabling commands for you. You can uninstall the bundle afterwards if you like, but at least you will know that you can get them working.
April 27th, 2008 at 6:41 am
A beta version for Leopard is now available from the Bronson Beta website.