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The Ultimate Guide for switching from a PC to a Mac
(Part 2 - coming soon)

Saturday, September 1, 2007

A bouncing Mail icon!

This is a great tip submitted by Andrew McKay: A bouncing Mail icon! There are many ways of getting a notification when you get a new email in Mail. Most of them involve third-party modifications that sometimes remove the simplicity of OS X. The red dot that is on the Mail icon might not be enough to divert your attention from your work. If you want something that really alerts you, but that is very simple and built-in the OS, the bouncing icon is probably the easiest way. It is not possible at first when looking at the Mail preferences. There is a very easy way however. It is to add a Mail rule:

1. Go to Mail and choose Preferences.
2. Click on the Rules tab.
3. Click on "Add rule".
4. In the description, write "Bouncing Icon".
5. In the condition, choose "Any Recipient" and "Contains".
6. Right after that, write your email address.
7. In the "Perform the following actions", choose "Bounce Icon in the Dock".


What it will do is it will check for any new message that you get and if the recipient is your email address (it has to be your email address for you to receive it!), it will bounce the icon in the Dock, alerting you that you got a new message. Thanks for the great tip Andrew!

15 Comments:

Blogger Schmoops said...

In the photo, you can see a + on the right side of the window (next to recipient). Clicking this allows for you to add additional email account that you may have. I do not know of a limit to this (I don't have that many email accounts).

August 31, 2007 at 9:53 PM  
Blogger Bracken said...

I'm curious if this works for emails sent to listserves. I get a lot of emails from the hospital sent to a list, thus not including my email address.

Would choosing "Every Message" work better?

August 31, 2007 at 11:16 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Cheers for another great tip. I have only been using a Mac for about 10 months and your website for about 2, so I have found many of your tips invaluable. Keep it up. I look forward to learning the potential of OS X

September 1, 2007 at 2:17 AM  
Blogger paul said...

I agree with Michael. I'm new to Mac and most of the comments add to my miniscule store of knowledge.
When the afficionados are dismissive, I'm just grateful.
Thanks, and keep them coming.

September 1, 2007 at 2:48 AM  
Blogger Lex said...

in thunderbird, it bounces the icon by default :)

September 1, 2007 at 2:55 AM  
Blogger Jim said...

Not a bad tip. Personally, I can't stand bouncing icons in the dock - I find them annoying. But I can see where for some people it would be a real help.

September 1, 2007 at 7:58 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

I would like to ask all comment posters to refrain from 'voting' comments. I absolutely don't care if you knew it already or not. If this is too simple for you, ignore it and go browse for more geeky websites. And although I understand you want to cheer MacGeek for bringing these tips. I still couldn't care less. Send him a private email.

I believe comments are for an addition or correction to a website. This way we are keeping this site the high quality source it has been for so long.

September 1, 2007 at 10:45 AM  
Blogger viphard said...

Cool but i not going to do it

September 2, 2007 at 2:00 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

i have the same question with bracken. what if i'm part of some list or groups, how i get the icon to bounce on those?

September 2, 2007 at 7:17 AM  
Blogger Oliver said...

@ A. and Bracken

I would suggest that you just select "Every Message". However, if you only want "Account 1" and "Mailing List 1" then I would suggest that you put in:

Account: "Account 1"
Subject (contains): {Mailing List 1]

Substituting "Account 1" with your account and "{Mailing List 1]" with whatever every message contains.

Hope This Helps,
MacTipper
My Mac-Tipping Blog

September 2, 2007 at 1:48 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I Just Got The Widget A New Mac Tip Every Day.

September 2, 2007 at 3:37 PM  
Blogger Mike said...

I am brand new to mac... long time PC user. up the creek without a paddle! any and all comments or helpful suggestions will make the mac experience a family welcome! is there a way to play .wav email attachments in mac mail, or is that totally a PC thing?

thank you mac users......

September 3, 2007 at 10:32 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Thanks for the tips guys ....Keep goin like this....

September 5, 2007 at 2:33 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Brilliant. Thank you!

April 30, 2008 at 2:25 PM  
Blogger claidheamdanns said...

I have done a slightly different variation on this. At work, my Mac checks both work and home email, but it's really only important for me to know when a work email comes in, so I set it to:

From - Contains - ashospitality.com

This way it is listening for any email coming from someone with my company's email domain.

April 5, 2012 at 11:50 AM  

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