Automatically marking junk mail as read

Question

Is there any way to automatically mark junk mail as 'read' in OS X (10.6.5) Mail? A free or shareware utility would be nice.

My mail provider supports junk filters that automatically moves selected messages to the junk folder, but does not mark them as read. OS X Mail picks them up (IMAP) and displays the headers in the Junk folder as unread.

I would like to continue to use my mail provider's filters instead of just the 'Rules' in OS X Mail because otherwise I show tons of messages in my iPhone inbox, since it does not support filtering.

Answer 1

Go To Mail -> Preferences -> Junk

When junk mail arrives, say: Perform Custom actions

Click on the Advanced button at the bottom, which just turned up to be active.

Then say "Mark as read" in one of your actions:

Answer 2

The link in the accepted answer is dead. I've been able to solve this using the following AppleScript:

using terms from application "Mail"
    on perform mail action with messages theMessages
        tell application "Mail"
            set read status of messages of mailbox "Bulk Mail" of account "Yahoo!" to true
        end tell
    end perform mail action with messages
end using terms from

Using Script Editor, edit the above with the name of your Junk mailbox and account. Save it as "Mark_Junk_Read.scpt" in ~/Library/Application Scripts/com.apple.mail. Then, in Mail, go to "Preferences", "Rules", "Add Rule". Make the rule apply to "Every Message" and tell it to run your script, like so:

Answer 3

You could add a Mail.app Rule that mark every new mail in the "Junk" folder as read.

Answer 4

You could create an AppleScript that does this.

I haven't looked into it much, but this link appears to have a promising solution.

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8350917

Answer 5

I don't really trust SPAM headers. I've seen messages from mail-lists I subscribed to be labeled as SPAM and end up in that folder where I don't see it for ages.

As a result I bought a copy of SpamSieve which, after training, does a much better job filtering out the garbage.