The time has finally come to say goodbye to macOS Mail Plug-ins. macOS 14 Sonoma has removed support for Mail Plug-ins like MsgFiler. I wrote an extensive blog post on the history of Mail Plug-ins and MsgFiler on my personal blog.
In the coming months, I will communicate more with the MsgFiler community on what will happen with the app. It will continue to work as-is on macOS Big Sur and below. But be warned that if you upgrade to Sonoma, MsgFiler will cease to function as-is.
This is your opportunity to email Apple at: mail-app-extensions@apple.com and encourage them to do one of two things:
- Enhance the Mailkit framework so developers like myself can get a list of mailboxes and file messages programatically.
- Incorporate the functionality of MsgFiler directly in the macOS Mail client itself.
MsgFiler has been around since 2006, nearly 17 years! That’s a long time for a piece of software to be in existence. I hope it has saved you countless hours and days from manually moving messages from the inbox to your nested mailboxes. It certainly has for me. I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do without it! Thank you for your support over the years!
MsgFiler 
I’ve tried to duplicate some of this functionality in AppleScript. I gave up.
Msg filer is essential to my business! It save me hours
“I wrote an extensive blog post on the history of Mail Plug-ins and MsgFiler on my personal blog.”
The link doesn’t work for me. It says “This site can’t be reached”.
It works for me. Can you try again or use a different browser? You can also go to tow.com and check the first post.
Hey Adam. Heartfelt thanks to you for your dedication and commitment to this app!! About 10 years ago I made a NY resolution to reduce my inbox to 0 each week (it was regularly in the 1000s!). Your app was a critical part of me achieving and sustaining that goal since then! I’m sad to know that it’s time has come. (Though I plan to delay upgrading the OS.) Thank you again!
I can’t thank you enough for your support over the years. And I’ve given feedback any number of times to Apple about supporting a feature like that. Many email apps, like Outlook, do. But I keep coming back to Mail + MsgFiler.
Anyway, I just sent feedback to the email address you gave. I hope they will change their minds.
You’re welcome! I hope Mail adds the feature; it’s so easy for them to do, and like you said, other mail apps already have it.
They may have something like it, but none of them are as comprehensively fast and convenient as MsgFiler. God knows I’ve tried to find alternatives on the PC, and just then tried to use the Command+Shift+M thing on Outlook Mac and it’s really stunted in comparison. You simply cannot move a message from the inbox of one account to the folder of another, which of course happens in the blink of an eye with MsgFiler. Really fail to see how it could possibly be that hard!!!!
I just contacted Apple via the provided email. MsgFiler is probably the single most irreplaceable and useful tool to support my daily productivity. Without it I will either not upgrade to Sonoma or have to find a different mail app. Neither of these are good options. Fingers crossed.
I’ve tried so many other mail apps I can’t count them anymore. When it comes to things like being able to mark up images, read conversations in a legible view, etc., Apple Mail is really great. Outlook has it’s own weird quirks, like not being able to reply inline in message. (That’s why Outlook users mark up their inline replies to me in red). I’ve tried Spark, Mimestream, oh, and a bunch of others. They ALL do message filing easily like with MsgFiler. Only Apple Mail doesn’t.
Interestingly the standard iOS Gmail app doesn’t have filing shortcuts either, like they do via the web.
Dear Adam, thank you very much for such a great plug-in. I filled over 60 000 emails with it. It is my most used application (and I am in IT). Really sad to hear it comes to an end. I just wrote an e-mail to Apple with the details provided. Lets see if I get some answer.
Adam,
Thank you so much for your support of this invaluable app for so long. I wouldn’t be able to get through my day without it! I’ve sent the email to apple as recommended. If the needed enhancements are made available so MsgFiler can live to see another day, I’d love to re-purchase or contribute in some way. I purchased it on the app store in 2011, and I’ve gotten so much value from it. I looked for a tip jar link on your website but couldn’t find one. Cheers.
Email sent. No other tool has been as useful and essential to me as Msgfiler. Thank you Adam.
I think MsgFiler should be made open source as this would allow people to port it to other mail clients of their choosing.
I’d also suggest submitting feature request here: https://www.apple.com/feedback/mail.html to suggest they add the functionality in.
Here’s what I wrote (had to break it into several submissions since the text field in their form has limited space:
Most other mail apps do offer quick keyboard filing into nested mailboxes…but none of them do it quite as well as the MsgFiler plugin for Mail.app. If you would consider adding this functionality into Mail.app, here’s how to do it better than all the other apps:
1) Quick key command to file a selected message or messages to a nested mailbox
2) ability to type any characters from the destination mailbox name to dynamically present a list of mailboxes. Even if phrases in mailbox name are not adjacent.
ie if I want to file something in a mailbox called “Craig Design Project”, I could start typing CR then DE then PR and it finds those strings of characters as they appear in any mailbox that has them (most other mail apps let me type any characters from a mailbox, but only if they’re adjacent to each other to call up that mailbox)
(Then quick “Return” to file the selected email(s)
3) Ability to create a new mailbox on the fly when filing.
ie I’ve got an existing client folder named “Craig” and Craig gives me lots of work so I put each project’s correspondence in its own mailbox. So after the initial key command to call up the msg filing capability, I’d type “Craig” and see the main folder…then a new key command combination could be typed (Command Shift N, for example) and it would allow me to create a new mailbox nested under the “Craig” one I had called up. Then continue to file the selected email(s) into that folder.
4) Ability to not just file, but navigate to email folders. So I’d enter the initial command to call up the message filing dialog…type the keys to get to the mailbox I wanted, then enter a new key command combination (Command Shift O for example) and that mailbox would open.
This is the functionality that the current MsgFiler plugin offers…some of which is available natively in other mail apps, but not as robust or slick.
Thanks for considering this, again I use these functions hundreds of times every day and it’s a real bummer that this will go away when Sonoma comes a long.
Thanks,
Rick Lupert
Hi Adam.
Sent a note to Feedback and also to some Apple colleagues of mine FWIW… Sometimes it feels like the more people ask them for stuff, the less they think they should do it, but that’s all part of the love/hate relationship we Mac users tend to have with this brand. As you know, I will not use Mail.app without MsgFiler. It makes up a significant proportion of my personal professional responsiveness, and is the main reason nothing slips through the cracks or goes through to the keeper. Without it, I’m as useless as an Outlook user, be it on a Mac or a PC.
In any case, I want to thank you again and again for this incredibly beautiful bit of software that, as you well know, I love to use and will dearly miss when Sonoma wipes out a significant argument I have for using a Mac at work.
Cheers,
em
Thanks for the kind comments! Best case scenario is for Mail to add MsgFiler-like functionality right into Mail. But, unless there’s a way to fast-track a feature into Sonoma, the earliest this will come in will be in macOS 15 in 2024. MailKit’s action list can only mark read/unread, color, send to trash/junk/archive, or flag messages right now. Maybe I can do something with AppleScript, but we’ll see.
Hey Adam, I would 100% be willing to contribute to a gofundme or whatever to help cover your costs in creating an Applescript version of MsgFiler. You’ve kept this product basically free after initial purchase for essentially my entire life. Let us know what’s possible and what you need.
What Rick said … GoFundMe or WHATEVER … make it $20 or $30—I’ll immediately preorder.
This summer, I’ll be conducting some investigations on what’s possible. I’ve find a small hole, and I’m looking to see if it will become a rabbit hole that could become something actually usable.
Carrots available if needed.
I have a huge one looking at me right now, since I desperately don’t want to lose MsgFiler functionality in Mail for Sonoma. Best thing for you is to let me hack away and see what threads I can pull from Mail, MailKit, AppleScript, etc. I have a busy summer ahead of me!
I hope so, Adam. I think we all agree that a paid for upgrade is definitely worth all your time and trouble to keep this going.
P.S. I’ve been glancing at some of Mail.app’s built in functionality. There’s a keyboard shortcut listed Shift-Command-O (the letter o) – that supposedly opens a field that let’s you type any characters to quickly navigate to a mailbox. BUT this doesn’t seem to actually work (pressing the command doesn’t do anything.) I’ve got a call scheduled with Apple support to see if it’s a bug specific to my system.
Also, they let you add a “Move” command to the tool bar which sort of works like Msgfiler…though if you have lots of nested mailboxes, they have to be expanded already to get to the sub-boxes. And there’s no key-command to activate it. https://capture.dropbox.com/lpWUhwC3j8Cuji4E
So it seems like some of the functionality of Msgfiler is almost kind of there.
Finally got a replacement for my aging work laptop and realized that I can’t use MsgFiler. What a bummer. I should have known this because SmallCubed sent out an email explaining that Mail plug-ins are no more, but never connected that with MsgFiler. Adam, thanks for this great app, sorry for this to end.
Hi Adam,
Is there any potential progress to maintain the MSNFiler in Sonoma? The time is getting tighter.
KInldy share any positive feedback 🙃
No update yet, unfortunately. I’ve yet to find a way to file messages accurately and quickly without using the plugin.
Thanks for trying.
I came across this thread on Reddit for someone who created an Apple script that is launched with the Alfred app to enable some of the MsgFiler functionality we love so much. I haven’t tried it but thought I’d post it here in case there are any clues in it to help keep MsgFiler alive in some way: https://talk.macpowerusers.com/t/apple-mail-keyboard-shortcut-to-move-to-folder/27572
I don’t think this handles nested folders nor as the OP stated folders with the same name. I have been looking at a similar method but there are a lot of cases to handle.
I continue to salute your efforts, Adam!
Came across a comment in another plugin’s thread suggesting that maybe there will be a way to use a Terminal command to turn plugin functionality back on. I’m probably showing my complete lack of knowledge on how anything like this works, so forgive me if my comments are getting annoying…but throwing that out there in case there’s a glimmer of anything possible to look into.
I haven’t heard anything about this from the plug-in developers Slack community that I belong to. From what I understand, Mail team removed plugin functionality altogether, so no amount of Terminal commands will bring them back.
I hope you, at least, enjoy the straws I am reaching for.
Hi Adam,
Many thanks for the heads-up and for your fabulous software!
I have just sent an e-mail (complaint) to the Apple mail address given.
It absolutely would be a sad sad day, if MsgFiler would no longer be supported.
I do not recall exactly when I started using MsgFiler, but it must have been at least 10 years ago.
Without it, I simply do not know how I would be able to manage my mails.
Here’s hoping that our mails will have an effect on Apple HQ, but I’m fearing the worst!
Cheers!
Gert
Desperately searching for fallbacks when MsgFiler is no longer available, I came across this from 12 years ago, which amazingly still works in Ventura. Hoping Sonoma is the same:
https://philipm.at/2011/mail_quickly_file.html
It would never have occurred to me to think the Help function could do this. It has the advantage over the built in “Move to” that (like MsgFiler) it will find your folder even if you give it a word that is not initial in the folder name.
I never knew about this as well. A very interesting workaround. Good find.
I just tried it with CMD+? followed by MsgFiler. I don’t see the Move To or Copy To options in the results. just a few listings of MsgFiler.
Type in the name of a mailbox when the help menu appears. You will still need to press an arrow key to select one of the options that appears.
There are no options that appear per se. For example, there’s not an option to move and an option to copy. Just repeated listings of the MsgFiler folder. And there is no option for sure to “open” the folder.
If I just select one of the options it does get moved to the folder though.
Oh, now those Move and Copy options do appear. And you don’t need to use the arrow key. You can just hover the cursor over the option you want and it gets highlighted.
The trick is parasitic on the “Move to” and “Copy to” menu items within Mail, which produce a pull-down menu with all your mail folders in them. So the Help trick is really just finding “Move to > Mailfolder” and letting you click within Help rather than within the pull-down menu.
As I wrote, what is truly better about the “Help” route is that it does partial matches with the folder name, whereas in the pull-down menu it will skip to what you type, but always letter-by-letter.
I like this. I think I could learn to work this way. Now we just need someone to find a different tricky way to navigate directly to a searched mailbox and we’re set!
I have a TSI with Apple to discuss this technique to of accessing the Move to mailbox menu to get it working with MsgFiler.
I have a tech support request with Apple to discuss this technique for MsgFiler. I am able to get access to the menu items but don’t have a way to distinguish them to the user (if mailboxes have the same name).
And don’t forget Open! That’s also useful. There are lots of things that are useful about MsgFiler. The memory of the last items. Limiting to current account…
I already have the ability to open with a version of MsgFiler that works on Sonoma. Filing is more important for me, so cross fingers that Apple will be able to help me get there!
My fingers are so crossed I’m going to need get new gloves to accommodate.
Re the Open…there is a published keyboard shortcut, but it just happens not to work. Shift-Command-O is supposed to open a Spotlight-like window that allows you to navigate to a folder by typing in the field that opens. But, again, it doesn’t work. I have an open tech support ticket on this one.
But hearing you’ve got MsgFiler some of the way there is encouraging.
The problem that I’m looking for a solution is if you have multiple mailboxes with the same name but under different folders. Consider:
Account 1 > Misc > Test
Account 1 > Misc > Test > Test
Account 1 > Test
Account 1 > TestMailbox
Account 2 > Test
Account 2 > Misc > Test
Account 2 > Test > Test
Using the Help menu trick, this shows up as:
Misc > Test
Test > Test
Move to > Test
Move to > TestMailbox
Move to > Test
Misc > Test
Test > Test
So, it doesn’t look like you have a way to distinguish between Accounts 1 and 2 from the Help menu. MsgFiler would need a way to 100% determine the correct mailbox every time if I use the Accessibility method.
Furthermore, if you expand all the folders and subfolders in your mailbox list sidebar, the Help menu becomes even more difficult to parse:
Move to > Test
Move to > Test
Move to > Test
Move to > Test
Move to > Test
Move to > TestMailbox
Move to > Test
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, Adam, YOU ROCK! Thanks so much for trying, mate. You are indeed a legend. Thank-you again and again for not giving up on your little life-saving tool and us users.
Thank you David. I have tried this in Monterey. I can get the Help Menu, and easily find my folders by typing in the search box. But selecting the ‘move–>folder’ and hitting return, doesn’t move the email. It just generates a msg telling me where the folder is. (Which isn’t very helpful!)
Strange! For me on Ventura, it successfully moves the item, with no message.
Say it ain’t so !
I don’t know how I will survive without msgfiler !
I am profoundly disappointed in Apple and not sure what to do .
Thanks so much for all you did for so long.
Cross posting from a comment to the Support Page – another user mentioned MsgFiler App was still working in Sonoma for him – I just installed Sonoma on my MacBook Air (intel) – Not my main work machine – and added the Mac App Store version of MsgFiler and it does indeed work.
I tried adding MsgFiler Engine but the terminal commands don’t work so not sure I’ve accomplished anything there…but it seems the basic functionality of the MsgFiler app works in Sonoma.
Good news?
You may find the app seems to work but in fact does strange things. For instance, you might file a message and watch it disappear only to see it reappear in your inbox seconds or minutes later. Again, I don’t recommend using MsgFiler on Sonoma long-term for filing. The workaround is to use the Help menu method until further notice. Opening mailboxes might still work properly in MsgFiler on Sonoma.
Plug-ins are 100% gone, so no amount of Terminal commands will bring back the Manage Plug-ins button or allow MsgFiler Engine and the Original MsgFiler Mail Plug-in to work on Sonoma, sad to say.
Being able to use the Open Mailbox functionality is a pretty huge win for me while using the wonkyish workarounds for filing in the mean time. Thanks Adam.
Sadly I will move to outlook. It has all of the keyboard filing capabilities that our favorite tool offers. Just not as elegant. But hey beggars can’t be choosers
With regards to Outlook – I’ve tried it multiple times over the years while getting obsessed with finding the best email app for my Mac. I always end up returning to Mail. With Outlook (correct me if I’m wrong) when you reply to email you can’t reply inline. Your reply always gets quoted at the depth of whatever you’re replying to. So recipients can’t easy distinguish your replies unless you change their color.
Also, I think Outlook does do nice image markup like Mail does.
You can file though.
Adam – why would the Open feature continue to work in MsgFiler while the filing features won’t? Thanks. You’re still trying to find a way, right?
AppleScript can open mailboxes and file messages, BUT AppleScript’s move to mailbox function is hit or miss. Sometimes it files, and sometimes the messages disappear and then reappear in the inbox. I would watch it VERY carefully to see if it works, but I would still recommend the Help menu workaround.
Thanks, Adam. I guess the path from here may be in investigating why the AppleScript actions are unreliable. If you’re confident that you’re doing everything as per the book, then perhaps we need to raise a bug report and have Apple commit to fixing the fault? Surely they’d be interested in fixing a repeatable bug in AppleScript, right?
Also, for those of you tempted to switch to Outlook, one thing that makes this impossible for me, is that Outlook will not allow you to move mail messages received in one account be filed in a folder in a different account. Something I do repeatedly every day.
I don’t often move mail messages between accounts, but I sometimes do. So that’s another thing to add to my Outlook list, in addition to no reply “inline” and not good image markups.
Have you folks found any other mail client that’s half way decent?
I did a bit of a deep dive into a lot of the mail apps when we learned about the potential of MsgFiler going away. Mainly looking for something that I could set up to look as close to how I have Mail set up as possible, and with as much of the functionality of MsgFiler as possible.
The closest I came were with Postbox and Outlook. I ended up working more with Outlook as it’s free. (Postbox has a limited trial period.) The new version of Outlook has a more Mac-like look than Postbox. (Some of the other apps look really beautiful (Spark, Airmail) but are more limited in terms of functionality and flexibility in setup for my preferences.
Most of them have some form of moving messages around, though typically it’s 2 separate commands, ie one to move and a different one to file and few have the wildcard functionality MsgFiler has (ie type any characters from multiple words to locate your box.)
The big problem for me in switching to another app is none of them have any kind of decent import function. I have hundreds of “on my mac” mailboxes which are not cloud based (Jobs / Clients / Individual Projects for Clients). New Outlook has an import function but it doesn’t really work well with larger databases and though I’ve been trying to work with Microsoft support to figure that out, it hasn’t been solved yet.
So having spent a good amount of time in a lot of the other mail apps over the last couple months, nothing really has everything I need with years of muscle memory, usage and set up as I have with Mail.app…and with the activity here the last few weeks and discovery of the Help Menu trick, and the possibility to use the MsgFiler app to open mailboxes (plus knowing Adam is still on the case) I’m holding off on switching.
Oh one other thing I just discovered, the current plugin / soon to be standalone app MailButler is about to add tagging ability to messages. I’ve been using them for SendLater (which Mail now has) and Snooze (which Mail, embarrassingly, does not have) through a lifetime deal I purchased years ago…Tagging messages is a different way to look at filing into folders and would require an abandonment of existing folder structures I think, but depending on how they implement it, it might be a good way to go while staying in mail.
oh nooooo! just upgraded to sonoma and learned about this change the hard way. emailed apple, training myself to adopt the workaround. many thanks for all your work!
As I have mentioned elsewhere, for whatever reason, MsgFiler works just fine for me on Sonoma… so I’m not touching anything as long as it keeps working.
For a brief moment, I did switch to Outlook. And promptly switched back to OSX Mail with Msgfiler…
Didn’t Adam say that it’s possible that it “looks like” it’s working but really isn’t filing right?
If Mail plugins are completely disabled in Sonoma how can it be working right?
I haven’t upgraded to Sonoma yet, mainly because of this. And mainly because… why? I don’t even know what’s new. 🙂
MsgFiler Engine is the plug-in that gets disabled, but the Classic MsgFiler app, that uses AppleScript is still working, somewhat, on my system. This is the way MsgFiler used to work before Adam came up with the MsgFiler Engine, which was the Mail.app plug-in that can no longer be used. But like Adam said, it appears to file messages, but then they intermittently reappear in the Inbox after looking like they had moved.
I’m right now using that MsgFiler Classic app only to find and open folders for me. It still works great for that, but then I use the neat help menu trick for filing. Just until Adam comes up with a more elegant solution. I’m sure that if there’s a neat, fast and elegant way of doing it, this very smart dude is going to find it! 🙂
Yeah. Dang. You’re right :(.
Sonoma is good. 👍 I like some of the new features…!
I’ve been using App Store version of MsgFiler for years but haven’t bothered with the plug-in since transitioning to a M1 MBP two years ago. Despite comments here, it’s been working fine for me since then even after upgrading to Sonoma (macOS 14). Perhaps I’m just living right!😀
I’m curious about the person’s experience in using MsgFiler without the plugin from the App Store. How does that work, and is it possibly the simplest solution?
doug
>
Hi Adam, thanks so much for the many years of awesomeness MsgFiler has brought all of us. I owe most of my productivity to your tool — not having MsgFiler is an extinction-level event for me!
Thankfully, you have the fallback classic AppleScript version and I’ve been using it on Sonoma. Though it isn’t 100%, it is still indispensable and better than all the other ways I’ve tried (and believe me, I’ve tried almost everything). Its failure mode (missed filing) is rare and manageable. So I just wanted to chime in and give some encouragement in the hopes that you’ll keep the classic version available as it still has immense value to the community. Thank you again!
Just came here to say another thankful user who got blindsided upgrading to Sonoma losing MsgFiler. Between this and the loss of MailHub a few years ago I just don’t get what is broken at Apple. The ability to easily file messages is obviously a critical feature for so many people, and one I’m sure so many don’t even know is doable, yet instead of making this workable we get crap like live stickers. And of course the “Move to” command in mail is one of those that you can’t simply keyboard shortcut.
Thank you for keeping this going. Hopefully a fix presents itself sooner rather than later.
You can try the Help menu workaround in the meantime. It’s not as elegant as MsgFiler but it does work.
I’m a bit confused. I’m on Sonoma 14.1 and I still seem to be able to use MsgFiler as before. I hit command-9 and up pops the menu of folders, and I type the name of the folder and it correctly filters. Then I file as usual. It’s not as fast as it was, but it still works.
I’m hopeful you’ll be able to update the software to work natively in Sonoma, though, so it’s faster!
MsgFiler 3 when running on Sonoma reverts to a pure AppleScript method to file messages. I would just be on the lookout for disappearing messages (messages that appear to be filed but aren’t) and re-appearing messages (messages that are filed only to return to the Inbox after a few seconds). I’ve personally seen this happen, which is why I caution people to think that everything works fine on Sonoma without the Engine. I will start work on a Sonoma-compatible version of MsgFiler in 2024, and I hope the workaround that I’ve found will bring back fast filing. Fingers crossed!
I’ve still not upgraded to Sonoma – because I like MsgFiler too much. Are you saying it actually does work, though some people report messages getting lost or not filed, but it works for you?
By the way, I join the group more than willing to pay for an upgrade!
I feel like it’s more a case of “your mileage may wary” and “use at your own risk.” I actually have been testing out Ike Nassi’s Keyboard Maestro scripts, which he is continually updating, as I continue to plan out how MsgFiler 4 will work in Sonoma.
What does it look like when using Keyboard Maestro? I’ve never used that before. Also, do you sleep? It’s 1 pm here, but I’m in Tokyo.
Running the script will display a search box not unlike Spotlight. You type in the mailbox and hit return and the message is filed. One limitation of the script is that you must have your mailbox hierarchy collapsed for the script to be able to “find” the right menu item.
Live in the SF Bay Area, so it’s only 20:00 for me right now.
Is there a keyboard shortcut to collapse the email hierarchy?
It’s the shank of the evening for you.
That’s what we’re trying to figure out. It’s not straightforward obvious how to do it.
Before switching to MsgFiler I used SmallCubed’s software which had a similar feature. MsgFiler was easier to use so I switched. I see SmallCubed has the same problem with their plugins no longer working on Sonoma. It seems they are working on a new email client! But I am very skeptical, having tried Outlook and Spark and others and never finding a more suitable email client.
Count me as another one who isn’t upgrading to Sonoma until a fix for MsgFiler is made…I’m willing to pay for the upgrade as well.