The new mail alert sound in Mail.app was broken when Leopard was released last year. Three updates later, and it’s still broken.

[UPDATE: In deference to posters in the comments below, I should point out that not everyone experiences this problem. It only affects most/many/some/a few users. Like me.]

Fortunately, there is a work-around which you can use until Apple gets around to fixing the problem. It’s a bit fiddly, but not too forbidding.

First download this zip file from Hawk Wings which contains an applescript and the default “new mail” audio file.

Unzip it, and place the audio file in your ~/Library/Sounds folder (where “~” is shorthand for your user directory).

Then open up the script in place the script in Script Editor. You will see that all it does is execute a shell script — do shell script "afplay /Users/timbo/Library/Sounds/NewMail.aiff > /dev/null 2>&1 &". You will need to edit it to replace the name of my user directory with yours.

Then save it in your ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Mail folder. If you don’t have such a folder, it’s worth creating one.

Now you need to create a rule in Mail.app that triggers the script whenever a new email arrives.

Open up the Rules pane in Mail’s Preferences:

Create a new rule. Call it something creative like “New Mail Alert Work-around” and fill out the rest as per the screenshot. I like to restrict it to people who are in my list of previous senders–it’s a quick and dirty way to rule out being alerted to the arrival of spam. Obviously, there are other ways to select conditions here which restrict when the alert will be triggered.

Also, in the “Perform the following action” field, you will need to select “Run AppleScript”, then navigate to ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Mail and select the NewMailAlert.scpt that you saved there earlier.

All done. Send yourself a test email, and rejoice. Mail.app is talking to you again.

For extra spice you could use one of the hundreds of mail alert sounds listed at Email Gifs and Sounds (Or perhaps Scully is more your thing?) but have compassion on your work colleagues. That could get really annoying after a while.

[With thanks to the original posters in an Apple Discussion thread ] mail.app, leopard mail, apple mail, bugs, workarounds, tips, new mail alert, applescript

John Maisey (it’s John Maisey Day here at Hawk Wings) has also spruced up his applescript for deleting duplicates in iCal.

I’ve just moved to all my calendars to Zimbra’s CalDAV service, and even with every imaginable backup and every care, I ended up with duplicates all over the place.

iCal Dupe Deleter came to the rescue. It is now packaged inside a slick interface that offers more options and control over the deletion process:

It lists the available calendars and offers you the option to test it for duplicates before doing anything drastic.

iCal Dupe Deleter is Leopard-only, although John continues to provide earlier versions of the applescript that work on Tiger along with the new Leopard version on his web site . It is donation-ware.

There are lots of other good scripts there too. ical, duplicates, dupes, caldav, applescript, productivity, appointments, calendars

John Maisley has updated his YAI (You Are Invited!) plugin for Leopard.

YAI converts invitations from MS Exchange, Google Calendar and Zimbra users into something that iCal can better understand.

It fixes annoying problems with shifting time zones, messages saying “you are not invited” and other blips that making working in a mixed-platform so annoying.

The utility comes packaged as an installer which unpacks its files into a folder in the Scripts folder in your user directory. When it’s installed, invitations are transferred straight into iCal as if they were created in iCal itself.

Further options in the installer allow you to set the background colour of a processed email invitation, mark it as flagged or not or to move it to another folder:

The updated version is not only available to Leopard users, it also improves the modification and deletion of duplicates, fixes a quirk in the way invites from some time zones without daylight saving are handled and improves the app’s option for subsequently moving the invitation to another folder.

YAI is similar to another plugin, OMiC , although the feature sets of the two plugins do not overlap completely. OMiC does more, and costs more (USD 29.95). For the extra money you get the ability to browse the inscrutable winmail.dat file in which attachments from Outlook users are sometimes packaged and more.

YAI is shareware (£3 per computer — c. USD 5.85) and has a fourteen day free trial period. You can get it from John’s web site .applescript, ical, mail.app, apple mail, invites, meetings, invitations, productivity, outlook, windows, zimbra, ms exchange

As MailTags forges it way towards an official Version 2.2, Scott Morrison has released the fourth public beta of the plugin.

In addition to a bunch of the usual improvements and bug-fixes (improving the reliability of the Spotlight Importer, tweaking some Preference options and settings, a nice resizable keyword token field which now displays all your tags), this latest release addresses a quirk with the way Gmail implements IMAP. In order to prevent problems, it now saves tags only to the local cache of Gmail accounts in Mail.app.

MailTags looks more polished, as Scott makes it into the most “native” plugin going around. It almost seems built-in to the app, rather than an added extra.

The pop-up dialogs for to-dos and events created on a Leopard Mail Note are now a fetching dark brown colour, which blends in nicely with the yellow lined-paper of the Note itself:

I missed the third public beta, being at the beach, so haven’t yet had a chance to note a change in the way MailTags is constructed.

Some elements are now split off as optional “extras” — plug-ins for the plug-in, so to speak — which promises a more efficient, more flexible, more user-customisable future.

It also provides a easy invitation for third-party developers to create specific MailTags plug-ins for their apps (OmniFocus, Yojimbo, Things, iGTD?).

Its iCal integration features are now a separate “extra” and a new feature, the Quick Message Colour Picker is another. It lets you colour-code the selected email with a single mouse click. A new Extras Preference Tab in the MailTags Pane controls their behaviour.

For example, in the Message Colour extra preferences, you can chose your preferred swatch colours and decide whether or not to delete the message colour when all MailTags info is deleted from an email.

If you don’t want an option to colour emails on the fly, you can just disable the extra in the Preferences:

Another small but useful feature in the new beta is the welcome return of the red icon to mark a tag that hasn’t been uploaded to the IMAP server yet. Mail users on dial-up connections at the beach (and probably elsewhere) will be pleased to see this back.

You can read more about MailTags for Leopard and download the newest, fourth public beta from Scott’s web site , where you will also find a forum for any questions, bug reports or comments. mail.app, apple mail, imap, tagging, productivity, mailtags, public beta, ical, applescript, events

After switching to mail.app from Thunderbird, the blogger at 48-Hour Days found that that she (or he) couldn’t live without Thunderbird’s F8 keyboard shortcut for showing and hiding the Preview Pane.

As everyone knows, you can show or hide it in Apple Mail by double-clicking the small dot in the separator between the Mail Viewer and the Preview Pane — Apple’s Technote shows you how.

But if that is not quick enough for you, 48-Hour Days provides an applescript that will automate the process and which can be bound to a Quicksilver trigger or FastScript’s shortcut.

Only hardcore keyboard fanatics will want to use this, but there are people like that out there, and this post is for them. mail.app, apple mail, thunderbird, keyboard shortcuts, applescript, preview pane, tips

Aral Balkan has written a clever applescript that makes it possible for mail.app to reply to multiple emails.

By default you can’t do this. If you select multiple emails in the Mail Viewer, the Reply and Reply All buttons in the Toolbar grey out.

Aral’s script, based on a previous example posted on macOSXHints.com, saves time and effort by giving you the power to respond to a bunch of emails about a similar problem in one hit; especially useful if you have been on an extended break at the beach and have returned to an inbox heaving with emails.

Copy the text of Aral’s script , paste it into Script Editor, compile it and save it somewhere clever like ~/Library/Scripts/ Applications/Mail so that it is always at the top of the AppleScript menu when Mail is the active app.

Then select all the emails you received about new cutting edge “Getting Things Done” (GTD) apps that knock every other previous GTD app into a cocked hat, or how frustrating it is that the background of emails in Mail.app can’t be changed or whatever, and run the script.

Mail produces a new message addressed to you with all the senders of the original emails in the BCC field:

Promise to check out all the new GTD apps right away, hit send and suddenly your inbox is fifteen emails smaller.

For extra-speedy multiple replies, you could bind the script to a Quicksilver trigger or use a utility like FastScripts to bind it to a keyboard shortcut of your choosing. mail.app, apple mail, replies, applescript, productivity, time-saving, GTD, tips,

John Maisey has updated his AppleScript for deleting duplicates in iCal, so that it works with Leopard.

Syncing and sharing calendars often produces duplicates. Removing them manually is a pain. John’s script makes it easy.

When you run it, it will prompt you to select which of your calendars you want to clean up:

Then is does its business quietly in the background, popping the result when it is done:

One note of warning. It doesn’t offer you a second chance or an option to review the deletions. Once you select the calendar and tell it to clean up, that’s exactly what it does.

So, back up your calendar data first, using the File > Backup iCal menu option.

Delete iCal Duplicates is freeware (donations not refused) is available, along with some other interesting scripts for iCal and Address Book, from John’s web site ical, duplicates, events, productivity, calendars, applescript, leopard.