Herald is a notification plugin for Mail.app, Apple's Mac OS X email client. Inspired by the excellent Mail.appetizer plugin, Herald shows you popup notifications whenever you receive new Mail. It also allows you to perform common actions directly from within the notification window, including deleting messages, initiating replies, viewing messages in Mail, or marking messages as read.
Herald's appearance is highly customizable, allowing you to change the background color, text color, size, shadow, transparency, and position of the window. Herald even provides a scrolling text view so you can read full messages without having to switch back to Mail.
Herald is a free download and requires Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.
Note: Mail plugins are not officially supported by Apple. While Herald has been thoroughly tested, it's possible it may cause unintented conflicts with Mail or with other unofficial Mail plugins, especially after OS updates. It's recommended that you backup your computer before installing Herald or any other Mail plugin, and always before installing any updates to Mail or OS X.
Features
- Quick Action Toolbar. Easily perform actions on messages: mark as read, view in Mail, initiate replies, or delete right from within the notification window.
- Customizable Appearance. Adjust window size, position, color, shadow, and transparency.
- Enable Specific Mailboxes. Enable notifications for all mailboxes or only specific mailboxes of your choosing.
- Message Grouping. Messages are grouped into a single notification window to prevent clutter. Flip through messages with a single click.
- View Full Message. A scrollable message window means you can view your full message without having to switch to Mail.
- Automatic or Manual Dismissal. Configure Herald to dismiss notifications after a set period of time or stay on screen until the window is clicked.
- Snow Leopard Compatible. Fully compatible with the latest version of Mac OS X.
FAQ
I installed Herald but the notification window isn't showing up. Why not?
Keep in mind that the Herald notification window only shows up when Mail.app is in the background. It won't show up if Mail.app is the active application.
Why does the main Mail window come forward every time the notification window appears?
This will only happen if you've hidden Mail. Since the Herald window is a part of Mail, when it gets shown Mail must come out of hiding. To prevent this from happening, you can choose to either minimize the Mail window or close it (instead of hiding it).
Does Herald work with Spaces?
Yes! As of version 1.1, the notification window can be shown on all spaces.
I see that multiple messages are grouped together. How do I go to the next message?
Just click anywhere in the message body to advance to the next message. If there is only one message, clicking the message body will dismiss the notification window.
Herald isn't showing up in the preferences!
It's possible that your Mail bundles were disabled somehow. Open terminal and type:
defaults write com.apple.mail EnableBundles -bool YES
defaults write com.apple.mail BundleCompatibilityVersion 4
What do the buttons on the bottom of the window do?
From left to right: delete this message, mark message as junk, initiate a reply to this message, view this message in Mail, mark this message as read.