Herald
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. The latest version requires OS X 10.7 Lion, but an older version (1.3.2) is still available for 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 unintended 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, style, font, 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.
- OS X 10.7 Lion Compatible. Fully compatible with the latest version of OS X.
Screenshots
FAQ
I just installed Herald. Where is it? Where are the preferences??
Once Herald is installed, open Mail and go to the "Mail" menu and choose "Preferences..." From there, click the little arrow icon in the upper right and a dropdown menu will appear with Herald as one of the options. Click that and you will be brought to the Herald preferences (see screenshot below).
Help! I sent myself a test email but the notification window didn't show up! Why not?
Keep in mind that by default the Herald notification window only shows up when Mail.app is in the background (i.e., when Mail is not the active application). You can change this setting in the preferences.
Why am I getting duplicate messages sometimes?
This can happen if the same message is being duplicated in multiple mailboxes. Try enabling the "Mailbox" header in the Herald appearance preferences and seeing which mailboxes the duplicate messages are going into. Then you can uncheck those mailboxes in the Herald mailbox preferences to disable them.
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.
Can I dismiss the notification window without performing any action on the message?
Yes, you can just click the message body (see the answer to the previous question). Also, you can always click the close button in the upper left corner to dismiss the window no matter how many messages there are.
Can I change the position or size of the window?
Yes, you can move it by dragging the titlebar like a normal window, and resize it using the resize widget in the lower right corner.
How do I uninstall Herald?
You can't. Just kidding! There's an uninstaller in the Herald.zip download.
Release Notes
2.1
- Added an archive button.
- New option to delay showing notifications until a specified time period has passed. For example, you could choose to only show notifications every hour so that you won't be interrupted too often.
- New installer.
- Changed option-clicking to command-clicking for reply-all and flag.
2.0.3
- Support for OS X 10.7.2.
- Font size can now be reduced down to 10pt.
2.0.2
- Fixed an issue where duplicate notifications could appear.
- Fixed some potential memory leaks.
- Added credits.
2.0.1
- Reduce automatic update checking interval.
2.0
- New release for OS X 10.7 Lion.
- Option-clicking the "Mark as Read" button will mark as read and flag the message.
- Option to hide notifications while Mail is active, but keep existing notification window visible when switching back to Mail.
- Now automatically checks for updates.
1.3.2
- Support for Mac OS X 10.6.7
1.3.1
- Support for Feb. 2011 MacBooks
- Uninstaller now removes Herald preferences
- Fixed an issue where Herald would fail to mark messages as read when Mail Act-On was installed
1.3
- Fully customizable header; show/hide "From," "Subject," "To," "Mailbox," user icon, and header labels.
- Option to hide message body (if hidden, Herald won't fetch the body text from the server)
- Many more font sizes
- Option to play a sound when Herald notification appears
- New button for forwarding messages
- Option to hide any of the action buttons
- Two new window styles: "gradient" and "flat"
- Option for light or dark buttons
- Deactivate any mailboxes named "Spam" or "Junk" by default
- If a top-level account is unchecked in Herald, new mailboxes created underneath it will no longer be checked by default
- When Herald is set to show while Mail is active, there is now an option to automatically advance to the next message when "View" or "Reply" is clicked
- When Herald is set to show Mail in a new window, there is now an option to not also select message in the main viewer
1.2.3
- Notification window can now be resized small enough so that the entire message body is hidden.
1.2.2
- Added support for Mac OS X 10.6.5.
1.2.1
- Added support for Mac OS X 10.6.4.
1.2
- Added an attachment indicator icon in the upper right of the notification window.
- Added an option to keep the notification window visible even when Mail is the active application.
- Added an option to use a monospaced font.
- Mail is no longer brought to the front if the notification appears while Mail is hidden.
- Changed the behavior of auto-hiding notifications when there is more than one message. Now after the specified time has elapsed, the next message will be displayed rather than hiding the window. Once all messages have been viewed, the window will hide.
- Fixed a bug where notification window could automatically hide even when the mouse was over it.
- Fixed a bug related to Spaces where Mail would become the selected application instead of Finder.
1.1
- Added a button for marking a message as junk.
- Added option for showing notification window on all spaces.
- Added option for changing font size.
- Option-clicking the reply button now initiates a reply-all.
- Fixed a bug where window was not remembering its size after quitting Mail.
- Fixed some bugs relating to replying.
- Added support for Mac OS X 10.6.2.
1.0
- Initial release.