Secrets provides easy assess to many of Mac Os X’s settings that you can otherwise only change by messing around in Terminal with long command strings, which is not everyone’s cup of tea.

It includes tweaks for many Mac core and a wide range of third-party apps. The most popular tweaks across all the apps are listed separately as well.

Of course, here we are most interested in its options for Mail.app:

Secrets Mail Preferences

As you can see from the screenshot, Secrets allows you to

• specify a default BCC email address
• force Mail to display messages in plain text
• set the Bundle compatibility and enable bundles
• enable and disable the data detectors
• switch the new (annoying) Snow Leopard behaviour of including names in copied email addresses on and off
• set a sent mail sound
• specify a minimum for HTML messages and a preferred text encoding
• request read receipts
• set the interval for refreshing Mail’s RSS feeds
• Decide whether to display attachments inline or not.

And more.

Some people will think of it as a hack and might be wary. However it comes with the reassurance that Alcor, the developer also (once) behind Quicksilver, is its creator. That’s a strong pedigree.

Secrets is freeware and available from the Blacktree web site .

UPDATE: I read on TUAW that the Blacktree site is overloaded. Secrets is also available from the app’s page on code.google.com. secrets, preferences, hidden preferences, terminal, mail.app, apple mail, tweaks, tips, bundlesSimilar Posts:

• Secrets is back: Clever Preference tweaking
• Fixing a little annoyance in Snow Leopard’s Mail.app
• Snow Leopard Mail.app to be two thirds smaller!
• Mail Act-on gets Leopard installer
• Snow Leopard’s shrinking mail.app: Mystery solved

Developed by Alcor, who is also the brains behind Quicksilver , Secrets makes entering arcane text strings in Terminal a thing of the past.

It lists available tweaks by app. Here is the pane for Mail.app:

Once, in order to work around the minute font size in messages from email clients like Outlook Express, you had to open Terminal and type:

Now, it’s as simple as entering the point size you prefer into the text box of Secret’s “Minimum HTML Font size” option, restarting Mail and enjoying readable text.

The Mail section also lets you set a preferred text encoding for Mail, enable plugin bundles and more.

The Top Secrets pane lists the most popular tweaks:

Here you can (among many other things) set a nice Desktop picture for your login screen, show or hide hidden files in Finder, tweak the Dock and unlock dragging widgets out of the Dashboard.

Of course, this kind of power comes with a hint of danger. As Alcor warns, “Secrets is in Beta and many of these options can harm your system if used improperly.” Nothing very terrible has happened to me though.

Behind the scenes, Secrets allows clever users to create their own tweaks which are stored on the Secrets server and can be downloaded by normal people like you and me with the pane’s “Update Secrets” button, so the list of options is always growing and improving.

Get the latest version (1.0.4, Leopard-only) from Secret’s Google Code page . quicksilver, secrets, preferences, terminal, mail.app, apple mail, leopard mail, productivity, tweaksSimilar Posts:

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• Apple revises technote on printing in Mail
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• Setting a minimum HTML font size
• Incoming mail font size small

Mail.app offers an optional field in the Compose window for specifying a different Reply-to email address:

This is fine if you only need to do it now and again. But it’s a pain if you want to do this regularly, because you need to enter the email address each time you compose an email.

(Now former?) Mail Team Developer Cricket has created an applescript which will add a form of this header to every email by default. It also lets you add a default bcc: address (useful for quietly copying your emails to Gmail perhaps).

Running the script presents you with a list of options:

Select the Reply-to one and a dialog appears into which you can enter your desired Reply-to address:

Cricket provides another script to undo the change later on if you want to.

The scripts are freeware, unsupported by Apple and available from Cricket’s web site .

A poster on macOSXHints provides some Terminal commands to add a Reply-to or Bcc: email address if you prefer to do things that way.

[Thanks for the prompt, John!]mail.app, apple mail, tip, default reply-to address, Bcc, gmail, applescript, terminalSimilar Posts:

• Security flaw with scripts in Mail.app
• Quicksilver and Gmail, Thunderbird
• RCMail: Remotely control your Mac by email
• Set Gmail as default email app in Firefox 3.0
• ABGMerge: Sync Gmail and Address Book contacts

I was reading your new post on Address Book syncing and backup, and I noticed on the screen capture that you had a little Yojimbo icon on your Finder windows. I’m a Yojimbo user and a big fan too. How did you get this little icon and what does it do?

Fair question.

While the Finder Toolbar can be expanded with many useful pre-defined extras (Control-Click on Finder’s Toolbar and select “Customize Toolbar…”), you can also add your own favourite items:

I dragged some of the apps that I use a lot (TextMate, Terminal, Yojimbo) from the Applications folder onto the Toolbar. That creates a shortcut on the Toolbar. Now I can quickly launch the apps by clicking on these icons and, more importantly, I can drag files onto the icons to open them.

I’ve also added on the right some of the folders into which I often need to file things. When tidying up, I drag the files onto those folders and they’re filed.

Of course, there are other ways to do these things, not least Quicksilver, but another option is always welcome. not apple mail, finder, icons, shortcuts, productivity, yojimbo, terminal, textmate, toolbar, customizeSimilar Posts:

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Using these features and examining the output in the Console, you can discover how long it takes Mail to find a matching email address or to send an email, how long it takes to sort a mailbox or retrieve your POP mail or get some extra information on Mail’s Junk Filter.

Fascinating stuff. mail.app, apple mail, tips, console, logs, terminal, under the hoodSimilar Posts:

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• Chatalog – Integrating iChat logs into Mail
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1. Email clients, where most of the stuff that needs to get done arrives in the first place, tweaked to do the job.
2. Dedicated GTD apps like kGTD or Easy Task Manager provide more focussed collection and processing buckets.
3. Web-based solutions offer platform-independent tools for getting things done, especially good if you use a Mac at home and a PC at work.

After the jump, you will find some of the best options in each category.

Mail.app

Smart folders and excellent plugins like Mail Act-on and MailTags quickly turn Mail.app into a powerful productivity tool.

For starters see my Getting Things Done with Apple Mail and Got some things done with Apple Mail, Parts One and Two. Patrick Rhone also has an excellent plan of attack .

The app’s large and clever user base has produced additional tools like the Tickler file applescript and the MailTags Tickler.

Unsurprisingly, it’s my weapon of choice for Getting Things Done.

Thunderbird

Thunderbird users have also put its built-in labels and saved searches to work creating a GTD system.

Entropic Principal has a great post on how to do this (see his updated Thunderbird GTD post too). Katy Whitton’s post is another excellent resource, incorporating the Lightning calendar and other Thunderbird extensions.

Entourage

With its integrated calendar, contacts and other bits and pieces, Entourage is well placed to offer the grunt for GTD app.

Jorge Arango has posted his Entourage-GTD system, based in part of the GTD Projects with Entourage article at Slacker Manager. You can find an AppleScript to create GTD projects within Entourage on the 43 Folders Discussion Board.

David Allen sells an ebook of tips for implementing GTD with Entourage for USD 10.

kGTD – Kinkless GTD

Ethan Schoonover’s OmniOutliner Pro template and collection of AppleScripts is an outstanding GTD solution. If I didn’t use Mail.app to manage my workflow, this is what I would use.

All the processing and management features are there and the two-way syncing with iCal is very slick. An Applescript that transfers messages from Mail.app into kGTD’s Inbox brings added integration.

Amazingly, it is freeware, although it requires OminOutliner Pro (USD 69.95). Extra productivity-fu is provided by Ethan’s Quicksilver Action .

But don’t take my word for it; Merlin Mann is a hard-core fan .

Todo.txt

Gina Trapani of Lifehacker fame has created a clever script to manage a plain text todo file from the command line. It’s not as forbidding as it sounds (watch the movie ).

Recently updated (changelog ), it offers support for projects, prioritisation, GTD contexts and more.

You can pipe it through GeekTool so that it sits right in your face on the Desktop:

EasyTask Manager

This stand alone app (see a previous Hawk Wings review) offers a simple GTD framework without the learning curve (or the grunt) of kGTD.

Recent versions of the app have solved some of the initial teething problems, making it a good alternative in the dedicated apps department.

The interface is simple and efficient:

EasyTask Manager is shareware (USD 19.99) and available from the developer’s web site .

iCommit

iCommit is a web-based, PHP-scripted management tool for Getting Things Done. Think of it as a wiki without the pain.

It provides the standard contexts, project and next action tools, but also allows for attachments, printable views and other neat touches described in a review on 43 Folders .

The developer hosts the app on his server on a “first come, first served” basis. Great for people who need to use both Macs and some other OS.

Backpack

Jon Hicks loves Basecamp for getting his things done, but Backpack, the slimmed-down personal version of Basecamp, has almost all the things you need to run a GTD system.

Frank Meeuwsen has posted at length about implementing GTD in Backpack and maintains a de.licio.us links list of other people’s hacks.

Patrick Rhone recently posted a great description of how Backpack works for him.

Make it all even easier with Quicksilver, the Backpack widget and a Desktop Backpack app like Packrat (“Backpack Unplugged”).

Gmail

Bryan Murdaugh has written a white paper on using Gmail for GTD.

Liming Zhu thinks that system can be improved.

Jonathan Powers prefers “Slacker GTD” , a kind of anti-getting-things-done system using Gmail and Gcal, which is not entirely a joke.

wikis

I will mention this at the end of this piece, because if I don’t Ted Palvic will scold me.

GTDTiddyWiki is very clever, very cool, very open source, very flexible and innovative and a very attractive cross-platform solution to GTD that I have never used. Some people like it a lot.

Still not satisfied?

43 Folder’s wiki
A list of blogs that talk about Getting Things Done
GTD resources list at 52 Reviews
Joel Spolsky: How to get things done when you are not in charge
PigPog: GTD on a PDA GTD, getting things done, mac, apple, productivity, apple mail, mail.app, gmail, thunderbird, entourage, terminal, Web 2.0, backpack, wikiSimilar Posts:

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There are at least three options:

A. Address Book’s built-in ‘Look for Duplicate Entries’ Option

Select the ‘Look for Duplicate Entries…” option from the Card menu. This is less than helpful because it doesn’t give you any information about the cards it will merge. It only offers to do it, without telling you what it’s doing:

B. List duplicates with a Terminal command

The macOSXHints tip contains the text of a useful terminal command:

Type this text at the Terminal prompt (or cut and paste it, making sure that any ‘curly’ quotes are staight), and you are rewarded with a list of the offending cards (I had two) which you can resolve yourself:

C. Run a ‘Find Duplicates’ AppleScript

In the comments to the tip you will find an AppleScript for removing duplicates. You may wish to adjust the spelling before using it.

It will trawl through your cards and add any duplicates to a new group called “Duplicate Entries” (or possible “Dupelicate Entries”).

Needless to say, you would of course make a backup of Address Book first, using the “Back up Address Book…” option in the File menu.address book, duplicates, applescript, terminal, tips Similar Posts:

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Both apps will execute scripts without asking permission in certain circumstances.

As the report explains:

It suffices to disguise a script with the ending “jpg” and assign the Terminal application for opening it. If this script is then sent in the AppleDouble format as an attachment, the information is passed along so that the recipient’s system also opens it with the Terminal.

Apple Mail displays the attachment with a JPG file symbol, but when users click on it, the script executes within Terminal without further prompting. This has been tested on Apple Mail 2 and Mac OS X 10.4. Older versions display a warning.

You can experience the flaw for yourself. The Heise Online site provides an example email which demonstrates the problem. It arrives with what looks like a JPG attachment. Clicking on the JPG file executes a harmless script in Terminal containing the command /bin/ls -al.

It’s in German, but enter your email address in the text box on this page and click the button marked “Anfordern”. Then click on the link in the confirmation email and an example is on its way to you.

An immediate fix is to move Terminal into a different folder. The general fix, of course, is never to open attachments in emails that you are unsure about.

Thunderbird, the article points out, doesn’t fall for this trick.security flaw, scripts, terminal, mail.app, apple mail, attachments, AppleDouble, bugs Similar Posts:

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It involves a simple Terminal hack. Open Terminal and type (exactly):

This will reduce the delay from the one second default to a tenth of a second in all your Cocoa-based apps (‘-g’ stands for ‘global’).

You will, of course, need to restart them for the change to take effect.

I get caught out by this sometimes in Mail.app, and end up having to select the text I want twice. Not any more!Similar Posts:

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• Leopard Mail’s clever HTML formatting
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