Hawk Wings » workarounds

Fix for Leopard Mail’s broken new mail alert

Tim Gaden — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 13:25:50 +0000

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, applescriptSimilar Posts:

Hiding to-dos in Leopard Mail

Tim Gaden — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 11:17:41 +0000

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, the lack of options for displaying to-dos in Leopard Mail is disappointing. And frustrating.

A poster in the macOSXHints forums has come up with a good work-around for avoiding that long list of finished tasks.

He has created a Smart Mailbox called “Not Done” which is set up to display all to-dos that are incomplete:

Simple, really. Why didn’t I think of that? mail.app, apple mail, leopard mail, to-dos, tips, productivity, smart mailboxes, workaroundsSimilar Posts:

Complicated solution to Mail.app’s broken hyperlinks

Tim Gaden — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 21:24:48 +0000

As everyone knows, Mail has an annoying habit of formatting hyperlinks so that they “break” when viewed in many other email clients.

You can read about this and why it happens in an earlier Hawk Wings post.

A poster on macOSXHints offers a complicated way around the the problem.

He recommends pasting in the hyperlink, then hitting space to turn it into a hyperlink. (This only works if you are composing in Mail’s “Rich Text” format).

Then he suggests typing “Click here” somewhere within the resulting hyperlink and deleting the rest of the hyperlink text to leave a hyperlinked “Click here”. He calls this “a small amount of work for a better presentation”.

There is an easier way. Just type “Click here” (or possibly something short but more informative) to begin with, highlight the text and then choose “Add Hyperlink…” from Mail’s Edit menu (or “Edit link” from the Contextual Menu that appears when you Control-click or right-click on the highlighted text). Paste in your URL. You’re done.

This is Hawk Wings’ Work around number two for broken hyperlinks, and will work well for people who use Rich Text. If you are composing in Plain Text, it will automatically switch your message to the Rich Text format.

People like me, who prefer to compose in plain text will want to consider Work around number one, using a service like TinyURL or SnipURL .

Some of my Windows-using workmates dislike clicking on SnipURL links as they can’t see in advance where the link will go, but they dislike it less than the broken links Mail otherwise produces in Thunderbird and Outlook.broken hyperlinks, URLs, delsp=yes, mail.app, apple mail, workarounds, tinyURL, productivitySimilar Posts:

Address Book and nicknames: three work-arounds

Tim Gaden — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 12:46:32 +0000

Unlike the contact lists in other email clients, Mail.app can’t grab nicknames out of Address Book when auto-completing email addresses.

If your heart is set on using them, or if you have switched over from Eudora and never adjusted to their disappearance, here’s three things you could try:

Dan Moren has published a work-around on MacUser that involves creating an Address Book Group titled with the nickname and dropping the contact into the group. Mail.app will them find the nickname and auto-complete the email address.
Another option is making that contact into a company with the nickname as the company name and placing the person’s real name underneath:
Grieve the passing of nicknames for an appropriate period and then get over it. After all, most people with nicknames also have first names that Mail.app can easily find and match. It’s not such a big deal.

UPDATE: As Howard explains in the comments, Quicksilver has no problems with nicknames, so you can use it to start an nickname-friendly email:

mail.app, apple mail, address book, contacts, nicknames, tips, workarounds, group, companySimilar Posts:

Broken Hyperlinks – Work-around

Tim Gaden — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 11:24:55 +0000

One way to solve the broken hyperlinks annoyance in Apple Mail 2.0 is to make your URLs and hyperlinks so short that they can’t break. A free service on the web called TinyURL can help you do this. Here’s how it works:

1. Go to the TinyURL web site – http://tinyurl.com.
2. Find the link to the little javascript applet on the front page which looks like this

onto the bookmarks bar of your browser (Safari in my case) like this:

3. Now whenever you want to send the hyperlink of a page you are browsing, click on the bookmark and it launches a new window with a short URL. For example, say you found a great tip for working around the broken hyperlink problem in Apple Mail. You click on the bookmark and it turns this URL

http://www.hawkwings.net/2005/08/08/broken-hyperlinks-work-around/

into this:

http://tinyurl.com/7gcjw

4. Cut and paste, or drag-and-drop the short URL – http://tinyurl.com/7gcjw (it does work. Click it and see!) – into your Mail message and you are done.

Now everyone can click on the links you send with ease. It’s not elegant, it’s not transparent, but it does work!broken hyperlinks, URLs, delsp=yes, mail.app, apple mail, workarounds, tinyURL Similar Posts: