Mail app windows disappear in macOS 11.1

[EllenCV]

Okay, maybe this helped better. I used the terminal and found these. Should I delete one of more of these?

/Users/ellen/Library/Application Support/CloudDocs/session/containers/com.apple.mail


/Users/ellen/Library/WebKit/com.apple.mail


/Users/ellen/Library/Application Scripts/com.apple.mail


/Users/ellen/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/.Trash/com.apple.mail


/Users/ellen/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail


/Users/ellen/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/WebKit/com.apple.mail


/Users/ellen/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Application Scripts/com.apple.mail


/Users/ellen/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Caches/com.apple.mail


/Users/ellen/Library/Caches/com.apple.mail

 

[elsiehupp]

Okay, maybe this helped better. I used the terminal and found these. Should I delete one of more of these?

Okay, so, this one probably doesn't have anything to do with your problem, but I can't say for sure. You could try adding the .bak suffix to it to see if it helps, and then remove the suffix if it causes breaking changes.

~/Library/WebKit/com.apple.mail

The following ones are probably safe to delete, but I would use the .bak suffix first just to be on the safe side.

~/Library/Application Support/CloudDocs/session/containers/com.apple.mail
~/Library/Application Scripts/com.apple.mail

The following ones ones you should definitely not just delete. You could rename ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail to com.apple.mail.bak if you want to try setting up Mail.app from scratch. The two results after it are actually inside the first result, so just renaming the first one should suffice.

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/WebKit/com.apple.mail
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Application Scripts/com.apple.mail

The following ones are completely safe to delete. The first two are caches, and the third one is actually in your Trash already.

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Caches/com.apple.mail
~/Library/Caches/com.apple.mail
~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/.Trash/com.apple.mail

By the way, the tilde, ~ is just an abbreviation for your home folder.

The weird thing here is that your command-line search results seem to include results that weren't there when you looked using the Finder. Again, quite slippery! If they still aren't visible in the Finder, you could do the renaming using the command-line command mv. My previous set of command-line instructions got held for moderator approval, so I'll put the instructions in a second post just in case that happens again.

 

[elsiehupp]

Okay, so the way mv works is you use the syntax mv <old_name_or_location> <new_name_or_location>, so for each search result you want to rename, you could copy the full path into the clipboard and use the syntax mv <paste> <paste>.bak.

If you're curious about these commands, you can view the manual pages for them with the syntax man <command_name>. You can then scroll through the manual page with the arrow keys or two-finger swipe, and when you want to exit the manual page, you type the letter q. (The q is a non-standard keyboard shortcut for exiting command-line applications, which always annoys me, lol.)

 

[EllenCV]

Thank you Elsie, that worked! I am almost afraid to close my mail app.

 

[elsiehupp]

Thank you Elsie, that worked! I am almost afraid to close my mail app.

You're welcome!

Which folder was the culprit? I think it would be useful to share in this thread, just in case anyone else finds their way here via google...

 

[EllenCV]

I'm not certain as I changed these to .bak (~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail)
~/Library/Application Support/CloudDocs/session/containers/com.apple.mail
~/Library/Application Scripts/com.apple.mail

I deleted the ones you said were safe to delete.
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Caches/com.apple.mail
~/Library/Caches/com.apple.mail
~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/.Trash/com.apple.mail


It's working correctly now! You are brilliant.

 

[Unsupported]

Since I'm not experiencing the issue with missing notifications, I'm not in a position to test ways of resolving it.

[...]

The only complication you might run into with the thermonuclear approach is if you have being using POP instead of IMAP, in which case you'd need to export and then reimport your "On My Mac" mailboxes. If you're using POP, before you move/rename the existing Mail folders, go Mailbox -> Export Mailbox... for each of the Mailboxes in the "On My Mac" section in the sidebar. Then, after you've set up Mail.app from scratch, go File -> Import Mailboxes... to bring them back in.

[...]

If the problem is notifications, either you might have to set them up from scratch, or they might get reimported from iCloud. Mail.app rules seem to be separate from iCloud.com rules, which is kind of annoying, but server-side rules (whether iCloud or another provider) have the advantage of being applied even if, say, your MacBook is powered down. I used to use Mail.app rules much more extensively, but they've always been somewhat janky.

Thanks again for your suggestions!

I only use POP and have dozens of mailboxes, some within mailboxes, dating back to 1995 when I was using Eudora, so exporting them all is a daunting thought.

Part of the problem is that not everbody is experiencing the issue with missing notifications, but it is something that has effected many users on various machines and OSs over a number of years, which convinces me that it is something that Apple engineers need to fix.

It is very possible that a fresh install on a newly erased and reformatted drive may resolve the issue, but in all the discussions I've seen nobody has claimed to have gone that path with a positive result.

On one discussion somebody mentions exactly what also happened to me:

Created a new user account to test. In System Preferences -> Notifications -> Mail there is an option to switch on Sounds. Launch Mail - check option in Mail prefs to play sounds. Go back to System Preferences -> Notifications -> Mail and that option has dissapeared. Which leads me to think that perhaps the bug lies somewhere in how System Preferences -> Notifications -> Mail is not playing nicely with Mail's preferences.

Meanwhile, I think I'll just hang on and wait for Big Sur 11.3 with fingers crossed 🤞🏻

 

[elsiehupp]

Part of the problem is that not everbody is experiencing the issue with missing notifications, but it is something that has effected many users on various machines and OSs over a number of years, which convinces me that it is something that Apple engineers need to fix.

[...]

Created a new user account to test. In System Preferences -> Notifications -> Mail there is an option to switch on Sounds. Launch Mail - check option in Mail prefs to play sounds. Go back to System Preferences -> Notifications -> Mail and that option has dissapeared. Which leads me to think that perhaps the bug lies somewhere in how System Preferences -> Notifications -> Mail is not playing nicely with Mail's preferences.

It is entirely possible (if unfortunate) that Apple has all but abandoned this feature. In general I've found server-side rules to be substantially more stable than client-side ones, though what you can do with them is much more limited.

I only use POP and have dozens of mailboxes, some within mailboxes, dating back to 1995 when I was using Eudora, so exporting them all is a daunting thought.

If your Mail.app is stable despite the notifications not working, you can use it to upload your POP data to an IMAP server (if you so choose). Basically you would just set up an IMAP account alongside your POP account, create the same folder/mailbox hierarchy, select-all the contents of each mailbox, then copy-and-paste or drag-and-drop it to its IMAP counterpart. It can take a while for everything to transfer (and it may be quite finicky), but it does work; I'm on like my fifth email provider since 2002, and I've been migrating my emails via IMAP the entire time.

(Of course, I always recommend having a redundant backup before you embark on any process like this. I actually recommend having a redundant backup regardless, and one of the advantages with IMAP is that it can fulfill that purpose by fully mirroring your email archive on an offsite computer, i.e. your IMAP server.)