Yes, if you are already using the rules and plug-in, it’s simplest to just keep doing that. However, some people have already updated to Sonoma, so I’m explaining how to work around the bug there, so you don’t have to wait for Apple.
I have the same problem as well. 2 computers running Ventura: M1 MacBook Pro and M2 Mac Studio. They don’t both run at the same time. And set up exactly the same way. The laptop works perfectly but the Mac Studio stopped working using the extension. It’s like SpamSieve doesn’t even see the emails. So I set up the "filter other mailboxes (inboxes) for my 5 accounts and it now works perfectly again. Weird that it still works on the laptop.
Yes, exactly. We have logging that shows that sometimes Mail just stops sending new messages to the extension. And then sometimes it starts up again without anything being changed. Apple says that this can happen when there are multiple copies of the app installed at the same time, but I have also seen it occur when that is not the case. Anyway, with Filter spam messages in other mailboxes you can just set it once and it will keep working.
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Changing the “filter spam messages in other mailboxes” worked for me (I am running Sonoma RC2, build 23A344).
Thanks for the quick reply and the excellent product. I was happy to pay the upgrade!
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Thank you Michael! Update: my laptop now has the bug and won’t filter unless I set it up filtering other mailboxes. Thanks for such a great update!
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+1 to this problem for me. Enabling the “Filter Spam Messages in Other Mailboxes” setting has proved to be a (partial) work-around.
Two notes on the work-around:
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When the “Other Mailboxes” sheet opens, it doesn’t immediately populate–I’m assuming because SS needs to work its way through the mailbox hierarchy to display the proper information. I have a LOT of mailboxes, so it took some time. I did eventually see the tiny ‘waiting’ spinner, but it was not immediately obvious. Perhaps it could be made more prominent?
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I will open a separate thread about my issues with moving spam messages, but with the “Filter Other Mailboxes” option enabled AND when messages caught as spam are not removed from the Inbox, SS keeps ‘finding’ them and making entries in the log (and in Notification center, since I have that enabled too). This might be an unintended consequence of intended behavior
Thank you for the DECADES of filtering!
Brad
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Yes, it can take a while (usually a few seconds, unless you have a ton of mailboxes) to read the mailbox information from Apple Mail. It should immediately show the progress spinner in the top-right of the mailboxes outline. I’ll see if I can make this more prominent, though.
OK, I will look for that thread. This is the first I’ve heard of messages not moving. You would only get notifications for spam messages if they are uncertain, which most wouldn’t be.
Thanks. I ended up turning off the time-based polling work-around because it seems to hang Mail up while the checking is happening (8 Inboxes, though there is usually only mail in my ‘main’ Inbox).
In other things to look at, when I trigger a manual filter, (“Select All” of my Inbox messages, then the SS command “Filter Messages”) it seems to take a while to work through the message list. I can see the menu bar icon turning blue as it works, but it seems to take more than a second a message to process them. There are usually only a dozen or so messages to work through. I will keep an eye on this behavior to see if I can be more specific about length of time.
The total number of message in a given mailbox (not just the unreads) is what matters for Mail’s performance. If you have a lot of old messages, you could archive them to a different mailbox to speed up inbox filtering.
The Filter Messages command (and others in that menu) may wait a bit before doing its thing if another background operation is already asking Mail to do something.
Just for performance reference, triggering a manual filter from the SS menu took ~78s to process 14 messages.
Thanks!
Currently, if you are using Filter spam messages in other mailboxes and a mailbox is currently being filtered, it will wait until that mailbox is done before responding to the menu command. I hope to be able to support concurrent operations in the future, but it’s a bit tricky because AppleScript is still single threaded internally.
I wanted to report that although it worked initially, SpamSieve has stopped filtering emails in my accounts. I have gone through all of the troubleshooting steps and double-checked all settings. In addition, the “Filter in other mailboxes” and “Add Green flag” workaround doesn’t seem to correct the situation either.
This is under Sonoma using Apple Mail and the Extension.
I can’t report on anything in particular that changed in my settings to cause this change, but I will reiterate that everything worked nicely for the first day or so after I updated everything.
Sorry to hear that. Could you confirm that you do have your inboxes selected in the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet and that Filter spam messages in other mailboxes is checked? Or are the unfiltered messages not in your inboxes?
Hi - yes I can confirm that the mailbox is selected in the list, and that I am working with the regular INBOX for my primary mail account. I also have the inbox for another less-used account selected in the same list, but no other mailboxes in either account. Note that both of these are regular IMAP accounts, not GMail accounts.
That being said, I’m not 100% sure what the expected behaviour is in both cases. If possible, can you confirm that if it’s working “normally”, email will be filtered as soon as it hits an inbox, while conversely if I have checked this setting, it only does so on the schedule specified (which I have kept at the default 60 seconds)? In other words, if this setting is checked, is it normal that there might be a slight delay of up to 59 seconds?
Yes, that is possible. It could also be longer than 59 seconds because if you have large mailboxes selected it may take longer than a minute to check all of them. When it’s done with one check it will wait for the specified amount of time and then check again. So, hypothetically, if you have a ton of mail that takes 10 minutes to check, if you have it set to 60 seconds it will actually check about every 11 minutes.
This is why we offer the option to add a green flag to checked messages so that you can see which have been processed. Of course, you can also look in the Log window to see which messages say Predicted. You can also see which mailbox is currently being processed from the Settings ‣ Apple Mail ‣ Filtering window.
OK, thanks. I can confirm that with the “Filter in other” setting checked, the application is now working as expected. To be frank, I probably wasn’t waiting long enough to assess whether that was the case last night.
I would love it if I could get it working without this setting toggled on - i.e., to filter as email hits the inbox - but I understand that if this is a Mail problem and not a SpamSieve problem that may be out of your hands.
Thanks for the terrific software, which I have been using for years and years now.
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It’s a really strange bug, as for at least 95% of people Mail does send new messages to the Mail extension when the messages hit the inbox. For others, it seems to start and stop working at random (without other changes being made to Mail or SpamSieve settings/installation). I filed a bug with Apple about this in July and sent them diagnostic information from many of the affected customers, but they don’t have a solution yet. It may help prioritize the issue if they receive more reports. If you have access to file bugs with Apple, that’s probably best, and you can reference bug FB12819637. Otherwise, you can use the regular Mail feedback form.
Circling back that my discovery in the other thread (about SS-caught messages not moving) seems to have ALSO sped up the processing when doing manual filters. For folks hitting this thread only, the slow processing was related to a Gmail account. Going back to 1st principles (Section 4.7 of the manual) and making sure that some of Gmail’s special mailboxes were UNchecked to “Show in IMAP” helped a lot.
This is still running under Ventura (13.6) with SS 3.0.
Thanks!
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+1
I have the same problem (w/ Sonoma). If I uninstall SpamSieve and then reinstall SpamSieve it works. However, as soon as I quit Mail it’s over, and then it doesn’t work anymore unless I resinstall everything again. It’s a real shame because I think it’s much more elegant and simple than the old system with the plugin and the rules.
The “Filter in other” workaround works, but it’s not very satisfactory in that spam will appear in the inbox, which is rather annoying when you spend a lot of time processing your mail.
I understand that the bug seems to be on Apple’s side, but that doesn’t reassure me. History has shown that they are not very reactive to fix this type of bug…
I’m going to play along and file a bug report, hoping that the volume of feedback will be enough to get them moving.
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