Apple Mail bug, found and logged!

[Promostyle]

There’s a bug in Apple Mail that “randomly” deletes emails - locally and on the server. Completely. It’s been going on for years and drives me CRAZY. It just seems to happen randomly. I live in email, it’s where I work. So Mail is open with an email that I’m reading as I’m making changes in Illustrator, Excel, After Effects, or whatever. Making changes, sips of coffee, going back to the email, more sips, back to the email, but is GONE. Nowhere to be found. Anywhere. And this repeats, sometimes daily, sometimes monthly, for at least five years.

I found one way to reproduce the bug this evening. For just a few seconds after watching it happen and knowing what I had done to initiate it, it was like what I imagine one of those gold miners back in the day who sold everything and walked across the country to dig in the ground for years must have felt when they heard their pick axe make contact with metal rather than stone.

I pulled over and called Apple Support for the first time in my life.

I’ve reinstalled macOS, reformatted disks, and have moved both my domain and dedicated server hosting provider, three times over the last few years. I have a house full of Macs in various versions of macOS and Mail, and almost 30 years of macOS troubleshooting. But this bug has evaded my every move.

Until tonight.

An hour into the call with Apple Support, escalations, screen sharing, me duplicating on multiple Mac’s, them duplicating on multiple Mac’s, and then hearing those words…. “Wow, looks like we have a solid bug here”.

They’ll get back in a few days with an update on the patch schedule.

Knowing there’s a bug sucks because nothing can be done without steps to reproduce it. That was the magic moment tonight, the clink of my pick axe on the gold.

So, a little story with some hope for those out there suffering, swinging away, still hitting dirt. don’t give up 5 minutes before the miracle.

 

[BrianBaughn]

That's great but what was the "one way to reproduce the bug this evening"?

 

[Promostyle]

Steps to reproduce this bug in Apple Mail:

Have an inbox with multiple email accounts, and all connected via imap not pop.

Step 1) viewing all inboxes.
Step 2) mark any message as junk.
Step 3) cmd-z to undo.

When you undo, the message will briefly return to the inbox for one second and then will disappear entirely. From the local machine and the server.

So frustrating

 

[IngoX]

I could not reproduce the bug on 14.3.1, M1-mac. Message returns to inbox and stays.

Step 2) mark any message as junk.

With "mark as junk" do you mean "move to junk"? (or whatever it is in english) Either from clicking the Junk button in the toolbar (picture below) or choosing the "move to junk" from the contextual meny (right click).

I do not usually have Mails own junkfilter activated in the settings, i let the mailservers do the filtering. But I tried both settings, with Mails junk mail filter on and off.

 

[Promostyle]

I could not reproduce the bug on 14.3.1, M1-mac. Message returns to inbox and stays.


With "mark as junk" do you mean "move to junk"? (or whatever it is in english) Either from clicking the Junk button in the toolbar (picture below) or choosing the "move to junk" from the contextual meny (right click).

I do not usually have Mails own junkfilter activated in the settings, i let the mailservers do the filtering. But I tried both settings, with Mails junk mail filter on and off.

It's a specific condition: you need multiple IMAP inboxes. Then viewing All inboxes in Favorites. Then click on any email message and hit the Junk button in the menu bar. Right after than do a cmd-z on your keyboard nd you'll see that email briefly return for one second before disappearing forever. Doing this on the most up to date Mail, MacOS, on M2 Ultra Studio

 

[IngoX]

Yes, I have five IMAP-accounts together in the "All inboxes" view in favorites. I tried the procedure with mails from Rackspace-, Gmail- and iCloud-accounts. After cmd-z the message reappears in the all inbox-view (from presumably the junk folder) and stays in place.

Now I tried again with an IMAP account from One.com I didn´t try earlier. On the first run Mail.app unexpectedly quit, a fraction of a second after I hit cmd-Z. So maybee this is the bug? I sent the crash-report to apple with a message linking to this thread.

But when I reopened Mail the very One.com-message I had marked as spam and then "undone" was found in the inbox, it had not vanished. And subsequent attempts on my setup could not reproduce the bug or get Mail.app to crash.

 

[adrianlondon]

Steps to reproduce this bug in Apple Mail:

Have an inbox with multiple email accounts, and all connected via imap not pop.

Step 1) viewing all inboxes.
Step 2) mark any message as junk.
Step 3) cmd-z to undo.

When you undo, the message will briefly return to the inbox for one second and then will disappear entirely. From the local machine and the server.

So frustrating

It can happen without marking as junk; just by deleting then cmd-z at the wrong time. The mail re-appears in the inbox briefly then vanishes. Like you, I use the "All inboxes" favourite.

Except it doesn't vanish. Well, mine don't. They end up in an "On My Mac" mailbox called "Recovered Messages (xxxxx)" so I drag it back to the inbox while muttering about crappy software.

Thanks for getting it reproduced by Apple and flagged as a bug which will be fixed!