TruePreview plugin brings better previews to Mail.app
Jim Riggs has long been frustrated by Mail.app’s lack of options for previewing messages. So he has written the TruePreview plugin to fix it.
He writes:
One of the most common shortcomings/omissions/bugs/failures in Mail is the inability to truly preview messages. If the preview pane is displayed in the message viewer window, as soon as a message is selected and displayed, it is marked as read. Most every other e-mail client on the planet provides an option to delay marking messages as read.
TruePreview installs itself as a classic plugin bundle in your ~/Library/Mail folder.
It provides a new tab in Mail’s Preferences in which you can set a default time delay in each of your accounts for messages to be marked as read:
A very nifty piece of work!
Jim has tested this on the most recent version of Mail.app in 10.5.6, but is keen to get feedback from users with other configurations.
The plugin is open-source (BSD licence) and can be found on the SourceForge site 
(UPDATE: Or, if you are having problems with SourceForge, try here ).
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Tags: Apple Mail, mail.app, mark as read, plugin, preview
July 1st, 2009 at 4:50 am
I’ve been trying to download this for a bit now – but all I get are SourceForge errors and empty file lists. I even tried grabbing the source and I simply get blank pages.
Were you actually able to get this downloaded?
July 1st, 2009 at 5:04 am
Seems to be a general problem with SourceForge; I’m still getting a “400 Bad Request” page trying to download the latest version of phpMyAdmin.
July 1st, 2009 at 5:09 am
PS: Maybe this trouble will encourage the developer to host TruePreview elsewhere; SF isn’t a popular choice for OS X projects.
July 1st, 2009 at 5:36 am
OK I just got the SVN checkout and am building it now.
July 1st, 2009 at 5:40 am
http://download.pocketinformant.com/Mac/TruePreview.mailbundle.zip
July 1st, 2009 at 6:56 am
Alex, yes, I was. But that was before I blogged about it ;-)
Thanks for posting an alternative. I’ve linked to it in the main post. I hope that’s OK.
July 1st, 2009 at 7:01 am
Yeah, that’s fine. Its why I posted it in comments. I mean I guess I’ll see how much traffic that actually hits, but I think it should be OK.
July 1st, 2009 at 9:49 am
SourceForge downloads are working again.
July 2nd, 2009 at 6:09 am
Well darn, this sounded so promising.
Yes, you can configure a time delay so that simply selecting the message doesn’t mark the message as read, there’s nothing you _can_ do (short of the contextual menu selection, which is a hassle) to show it as read. I would have thought that double-clicking the message (to open in its own window) would then change status instantly.
I’d want the ability to travel up and down the list of messages without disturbing their status, but when I actually _do_ read a message (either by double-clicking or by scrolling through (with mouse wheel) the message in the Preview Pane) I want the status to change without having to wait for my pre-configured time to elapse. That’s more in line with how Eudora allows for timed status change configuration.
July 3rd, 2009 at 9:29 am
I’m told that this app has a 2 digit delay field to prevent the email being marked as read immediately. Is there a way to prevent it being marked as read at all unless I specifically open the email?
July 4th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
I use Mail-ActOn, which provides this functionality as well (but not for free, of course)
July 7th, 2009 at 7:36 am
> there’s nothing you _can_ do (short of the contextual menu selection, which is a hassle) to show it as read.
What about using the Shift-Command-U shortcut (for Message > Mark > As Unread)?
> Is there a way to prevent it being marked as read at all unless I specifically open the email?
Do you mean when the preview pane closed? Seems like a bug if TruePreview is marking messages as read when it is.
July 10th, 2009 at 5:08 am
just wanted to say… nice to see you back!
September 9th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Hi there. Just updated to Snow Leopard.
True Preview does not work with Snow Leopard, any ideas of forseen updates and times?
Thanks.
October 18th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Hi…nice to see you back.
Snow Leopard would be so much nicer with a true preview in Mail.
November 8th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Just downloaded TruePreview and love it. Here is a quick update to questions in the other comments:
1) Now works with Snow Leopard
2) There are now additional options including when to immediately mark a message as read
3) The SourceForge page tells you to go to the developer’s website for download
November 8th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Joe@ — thanks for the updates. I’ll check it out. Might be worth an update post.
November 10th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
TP 1.2 is compiled Intel-only:
http://christianserving.org/content/truepreview-1-2-released#comments
… and I haven’t gotten a response from the developer about it.
November 11th, 2009 at 2:36 am
Broken in 10.6.2 released yesterday
November 11th, 2009 at 4:55 am
TruePreview 1.3 is out. Unfortunately it’s still Intel-only and the developer hasn’t acknowledged my messages asking if there will be a Universal version.
January 6th, 2010 at 5:51 am
Great utility! Works perfectly for me on 10.6.2. Nice touch with per-account customisations too.
March 12th, 2010 at 4:29 am
This appears to fit a client’s needs and during testing I realized how much I was annoyed with the default behavior myself.
June 16th, 2010 at 9:36 am
Not compatible on 10.6.4 :(
June 17th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
Seems that it is NOT compatible with Mac OS 10.6.4 until today.
June 17th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
Sorry, ignore my last entry: There is a new version 1.5 that IS compatible with Mail 4.3 that comes with Mac OS 10.6.4.
http://www.christianserving.org/project/truepreview/release/truepreview-1-5
June 17th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
Sorry, ignore my last comment: the new version 1.5 IS compatible with Mail 4.3 ans Mac OS 10.6.4