Can I add my own commands/scripts to the mail.app toolbar?

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  •  22-10-2019
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Question

Is there a way (or an add-on) that lets me customize the Mail.app toolbar beyond "View -> Customize Toolbar"? At a minimum, I want to add buttons that do "Move to <somefolder>".

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Solution

Read CocoaDev: HowToAddButtonsToAppleMail. It references a page of links to articles/examples on writing Mail.app plugins. You will also need to do some programming of Mail.app, e.g. using AppleScript - which you can learn more about here.

Here is a year-and-a-half old blog post by a guy who managed to get some useful control over Mail.app from AppleScript. You might use it as a model. He built his with a third-party module but you might find a way to write your own, if necessary.

The scripting of Mail.app might be stable. However, from what I have read - the rules for how to construct a Mail.app plugin may be in flux from one major version of Mac OS X to the next.

That could be enough to discourage you from writing what you want for wide distribution but it might not be much of a handicap for personal use.

OTHER TIPS

I think you can use Mail Act-on for this, it provides Shortcuts for doing stuff with various mails. Not a Visual Shortcut, but a Keyboard one.

Move messages by keystroke only Mail Act-On’s interface includes the ability to move or copy messages to any folders by keystroke, even if you don’t have an Act-On rule for a particular mailbox.

http://www.indev.ca/MailActOn.html

Hope it helps,

Karl

  1. Open Automator
  2. File -> New -> Service -> Choose
  3. Service receive no input in Mail.app
  4. From library select Utilities -> Run AppleScript
  5. Insert the code provided below and save under name Move to trash [Gmail] enter image description here
  6. Edit the script and change your account name. Name of the account could be found at Mail -> Preferences... -> Accounts
  7. Open Mail.app and select Mail -> Services -> Service Preferences...
  8. Assign a shortcut to the service Move to trash [Gmail]
  9. Restart Mail.app
  10. (Optional) You should be able to see the assigned shortcut in the menu enter image description here
  11. Open inbox, select messages to be moved to trash and press the keyboard shortcut*. Messages will be moved to [Gmail]/Trash

*Note: For the first time the script works quite long, but all the following times it should proceed much faster.

AppleScript:

on run {input, parameters}
    tell application "Mail"
        set s to selection
        repeat with i from 1 to the count of s
            set msg to item i of s
            set box to mailbox of msg
            if name of box is not "[Gmail]/Trash" then
                move msg to mailbox "[Gmail]/Trash" of account "<Your account name here>"
            end if
        end repeat
    end tell
end run

This approach does not allow to add a button to the toolbar, but it's very close to what you are looking for.

Useful links:

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