How do I stop marking mail as read caused by looking at the preview pane?

Question

I use Mountain Lion.

How do I prevent Mail.app (6.0) from marking a message as read automatically, just because I have looked at it in the preview pane?

SaxDaddy · Answer 1 · 2012-08-28 17:36:05Z

up vote 3 down vote

You can change the mark as read delay to a great value, for example 30 seconds, by typing the following in the Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Mail MarkAsReadDelay 30

(NB: A value of -1 will disable marking as read from Preview if the preview window is hidden. Tested on Mail 5.2/OSX 10.7.4)

edited Aug 28 '12 at 17:36

SaxDaddy
31

answered Aug 1 '12 at 6:23

Bas Leijdekkers
1412

bmike · Answer 2 · 2012-08-28 17:42:36Z

up vote 3 down vote

An other way to do do (without using the Terminal), is installing TruePreview. It's an 3th party app which allows you to do exactly what you expect.

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Do check for a recent version of TruePreview as older versions don't work well with Mountain lion.

edited Aug 28 '12 at 17:42

bmike♦
54.5k1166178

answered Aug 1 '12 at 6:55

Michiel
6,77621556

	The defaults write isn't being recognized by Mail.app in Mountain Lion. Recent versions of TruePreview weren't working either, but the latest build now works. – sprotsman Aug 21 '12 at 17:33
	The latest release 1.8a4 supports ML - christianserving.org/project/truepreview/releases – Richard Tasker Aug 24 '12 at 16:56
	I don't want to install that plugin though. What defaults write command will work in ML? – stantonk Dec 4 '12 at 18:31

2 Answers