Master your Mail
Get on top of your communications
Contacts you mark as VIPs get a special Smart Mailbox, and that enables you to focus on your most important contacts only. You simply click on the sender name in the main message window and select Add to VIPs. VIPs are shared on iOS too.
We love Smart Mailboxes too. Go to Mailbox > New Smart Mailbox and you can set up a mailbox that filters messages by specific criteria. So, for example, you can create a mailbox that only shows messages about a specific subject or from specific people between specific dates with specific kinds of attachments or that you haven’t replied to. It’s a brilliant way to focus when you have a really busy email inbox.
macOS Catalina introduced two particularly useful features to Mail: the ability to block specific senders, much as you can do with contacts in iOS, and the ability to automatically unsubscribe from mailing lists.
To block a sender, click on their name or email address in the message window to see a new menu. If the sender isn’t in your VIP list, you’ll see an option to Block Contact. If you choose that option a little red hand appears next to their name in the messages list, and the option to set preferences will appear at the top of the message window. This enables you to mark the message but leave it where it is or to automatically send future messages from that address to the trash. You can also add the address manually in Preferences > Junk Mail > Blocked.