When I used leopard/snow leopard I always kept Mail open and I could tell it was running because of the indicator light, but in Lion Mail doesn't have an indicator light. I know you can enable them from system preferences, but then every app gets a light and I really like the lightless look. Is there anyway to know if Mail is running without clicking it every time. It gets pretty annoying.
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Is an indicator light needed for Mail?
- Thread starter Absolute-Zero
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The numbers changing on the dock icon indicating new messages will let you know it's still running
The numbers changing on the dock icon indicating new messages will let you know it's still running
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Pop accounts can be checked every min.
tkermit said:
Pop accounts can be checked every min.
I'm sort of surprised they haven't implemented a iOS style notifications system on the Mac. I don't really like having to have a web-browser open all the time, purely to regularly check for Facebook notifications from family. Haven't really found a third-party app that I like enough, yet.
Cheers
Oo, thanks, I'd forgotten about this one.
(my point still stands though)
Oo, thanks, I'd forgotten about this one.
(my point still stands though
)Push Notifications is coming, for App Store apps at least: http://developer.apple.com/technologies/mac/whats-new.html
Unless you are referring to an actual Notifications Center, like iOS 5? That would be nice.
Have you tried Facebook's Notifications app? They've stopped developing it, but it works fine for me: http://www.facebook.com/notifier
In 10.6 I used Growl and GrowlMail, along with the fix that this guy does every time Mail.app is updated.
Haven't tried setting it up in Lion, as I doubt it will work.
Well, yes, but I assume that the actual checking for mail is still handled by Mail.app and not a lightweight background process that the user isn't responsible for launching. So I guess you're only actually informed about new mail if you make sure that Mail.app is running. Which is totally fine of course, except that it seems different from the situation on the iPhone.
Correct, the OP was asking about the Mail app, which is a simple IMAP or POP email client. If the account is configured with POP it will check every min if set and check for new mail. The application has to be running to check for new mail. Some have stated you can use growl and it will pop up a message when new mail arrives. Bottom line, mail is not checked when the application is closed. It is completely different from the iPhone Mail client.
That's what the OP is doing. But with the indicator lights disabled, it is not necessarily obvious, whether Mail is open or not.
I also find this kind of annoying. Without a background process running, Mail's unread count doesn't get updated if the main program is closed. You could set Mail to run at start via System Preferences, but I've still managed to run into times when I thought it was open and it wasn't. In DP4, it's crashed often, and I might forget to reopen it after seeing the crash debugging info.