SpamSieve for Mac

What's new in this version:

SpamSieve 3.0.5
Apple Mail:
- Preliminary testing shows that SpamSieve is compatible with macOS 15 Sequoia Developer Beta 2. Further updates may be required when Apple updates Mail in a subsequent Sequoia beta.
- Worked around some problems where Mail could temporarily hang during spam filtering if the network connection was very slow or when encountering a macOS bug where Mail redownloads messages that have already been downloaded. If SpamSieve detects that Mail is slow reading a message, it will postpone filtering for a while to give it time to finish downloading everything. It can also help to go to Mail > Settings > Accounts > Account Information and set Download Attachments to All for each account. This will encourage Mail to fully download messages right away.
- The Filter Now button in Settings > Apple Mail > Filtering can now be used to manually filter the Mail inboxes, even when automatic filtering is disabled or postponed
- Worked around an issue where sometimes filtering in Mail didn’t work because Mail was so bogged down that it couldn’t read the inboxes for SpamSieve in a timely manner
- The mailbox outline for Filter spam messages in other mailboxes now recognizes the lowercase spam and junk names as being for mailboxes that should not be filtered
- Fixed a bug where SpamSieve would try to repair files related to Mail plug-ins when running on macOS 14, which doesn’t support plug-ins
- Fixed a bug where updating certain settings could cause a spurious error to be logged if you were not using the Mail plug-in
- Improved the error reporting to track down a Mail AppleScript issue when finding new messages to filter

Microsoft Outlook:
- The Settings > Outlook > Setup window clarifies that, when using Enable spam filtering for Inbox, the non-spam messages left in the inbox are marked with the Good category after SpamSieve has processed them

Settings:
- Fixed a bug where the notification score slider was too narrow on macOS 10.13
- Modernized the editable text fields to use shaded bezels instead of solid lines
- Secondary label text throughout the user interface now uses the modern gray coloring

Icons:
- Due to a macOS bug, clicking the SpamSieve menu bar icon does not show the menu when the Mac has multiple displays, a window on the secondary display is full screen, and you are clicking the menu bar icon on that display. You can work around this by accessing the SpamSieve commands in another way (e.g. via the keyboard shortcuts or the menu bar icon on the main display) or by unchecking Show Dock icon in the settings.
- Fixed a bug where the application icon in the Dock or Command-Tab switcher could appear pixellated when it was badged to show that SpamSieve was in the process of filtering or training a message.

General:
- SpamSieve now disables automatic filtering for Apple Mail and Outlook when the Mac is not connected to the Internet, to avoid hangs that could occur when trying to read messages that can’t be downloaded from the server
- The Open in External Viewer command now works in the Corpus and Log windows when the table view has a selected message but doesn’t have keyboard focus
- Improved the error reporting when a database can’t be accessed because the disk is full
- Worked around a problem where SpamSieve could crash if Core Data’s conflict resolution failed because the database file was damaged
- Made various updates for macOS 15, Xcode 16, and Swift 6

Documentation:
Improved the following sections of the manual:
- Apple Mail Customization
- If Apple Mail Is Running Slowly
- Log
- Move it to the Trash if the spam score is at least
- Only Filtering Certain Accounts
- Show menu bar icon
- Uninstalling SpamSieve


SpamSieve 3.0.4
General:
- You can now use the Message submenu commands within the SpamSieve menu bar icon to train SpamSieve from Apple Mail or Outlook, for users who didn’t see the top-level commands inside the menu bar icon.
- Made some changes to improve performance on Macs with spinning hard drives
- Improved the way the Text to Match column in rules windows truncates text that doesn’t fit
- You can now press Command-C in the Statistics window as a shortcut for clicking the Copy Statistics button
- Toolbar buttons no longer shift position when the Flag label changes to Unflag.
- Updated the German localization and Settings window layout.
- SpamSieve now reports an error if the Edit Addresses button can’t access your card in Contacts
- Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when quitting SpamSieve while a window was in the process of reloading
- Fixed an issue where SpamSieve could be double-launched after restarting your Mac, possibly causing the Settings window to be opened when it should have been hidden. Also, to avoid this problem, we recommend that you not add SpamSieve to System Settings > General > Login Items > Open at Login. It should only be under Allow in the Background.
- If a database file is damaged, SpamSieve now marks it as such and moves it aside. At the next launch, SpamSieve will create a fresh database so that you don’t continually run into the same error that prevents you from launching the app
- If a database can’t be saved, SpamSieve now logs the changes to a series of text files so that there’s a chance at recovering the data or figuring out what caused the problem

Apple Mail:
- Fixed a bug where filtering could be delayed for a long time after the Mac woke from sleep, if it had gone to sleep while SpamSieve was waiting for a response from Mail
- Fixed a problem where filtering or training a large batch of messages in Mail could be slow or cause SpamSieve to hang or crash
- SpamSieve is more responsive and better at reporting errors when Mail is not responding
- Worked around a macOS bug that could cause a hang while waiting for Mail to respond to a command
- When using the Mail plug-in, SpamSieve no longer wastes time checking for messages in the inbox that need to be unflagged
- SpamSieve is better at handling AppleScript errors when training from Mail
- SpamSieve reports a better error message if Mail filtering is slow and the problem can be fixed by switching from the Mail extension to the Mail plug-in
- Improved the error reporting when SpamSieve is unable to read the accounts from Mail
- Improved the error reporting when setting up the Mail plug-in
- Worked around a Mail bug that could cause a spam message on an Exchange server to lose its body when moving it to the Junk mailbox
- Fixed a bug where some of SpamSieve’s script error codes could possibly conflict with Apple ones
- Added AppleMailMarkGoodRead to the esoteric preferences, for those who want SpamSieve to mark incoming good messages as read
- The AppleMailMailboxListerExtraMailboxes option in the esoteric preferences can now be used with local mailboxes, to work around a Mail bug that hides certain mailboxes from SpamSieve

Microsoft Outlook:
- When training an Outlook message as spam, SpamSieve now removes the Uncertain Junk category
- When refiltering an Outlook message that turns out to be spam, SpamSieve now removes the Good category

Filtering:
- When using macOS 14.4 or later, SpamSieve uses Swift Regex instead of ICU for matching blocklist and allowlist rules
- Worked around a macOS bug that could cause a crash when using a regular expression to process message text
- Worked around a macOS bug that could cause a hang when detecting the language of some message text
- Improved the handling of non-breaking space characters within words

Log:
- Fixed a problem where SpamSieve could hang when reporting an error if the log database couldn’t be saved
- Log text that’s copied to the clipboard (or included in diagnostic reports) now uses consistent number formatting for message and word probabilities and has better descriptions for migrated rule predictions
- Diagnostic reports now include summary information about the objects in each database
- Diagnostic reports now include information to track down problems with the preferences not being saved

Documentation:
Improved the following sections of the manual:
- Checking the Apple Mail Setup
- Checking the Outlook Setup
- Move it to the Trash if the spam score is at least
- Security & Privacy Access
- Use Outlook/Entourage contacts
- What can I do if the corpus is damaged?
- Why are Apple Mail inbox messages not being processed?
- Why are messages marked as spam in Apple Mail but not moved?
- Why does a message disappear or go back to the Junk mailbox after I train it as good?
- Why is SpamSieve not catching my spam?
- Improved the layout of 4th-level section headers in the PDF version of the manual.


SpamSieve 3.0.3
Apple Mail:
- Fixed a problem where, with certain unusual account configurations, SpamSieve would not see the new messages that needed to be filtered, so they would stay in the inbox
- SpamSieve is better able to continue filtering messages when Mail is temporarily unable to look up account information
- Worked around a macOS bug that could cause Mail to hang if it was preparing to send a message to the SpamSieve Mail extension while SpamSieve was filtering another mailbox
- Fixed a bug where the Settings > Apple Mail > Training window could be out-of-sync with the stored settings that SpamSieve was using, leading to trained messages not moving where you expected.
- Removed the Including in the inbox setting. The Add green flag to unread good messages setting now controls the green flags for all mailboxes.
- Improved the error handling when reading the selected messages
- Improved the error handling when reading the inboxes

Improved the Filter spam messages in other mailboxes feature:
- Added a safety feature where SpamSieve will no longer filter messages that were received before SpamSieve was installed or before this feature was activated, to avoid reprocessing lots of old messages that happen to still be marked as unread.
- The checkboxes in the mailbox list for TrainGood and TrainSpam are now disabled, as these mailboxes should not be selected for filtering
- SpamSieve is now able to continue finding mailboxes to list even if Mail returns invalid information for some of them

General:
- Worked around a macOS bug that could cause a crash when updating the Dock icon
- Worked around a macOS bug that could cause SpamSieve to hang at launch or when opening the Settings window
- The Print… command is now disabled for large table views, as it would overload the macOS printing system and cause a hang
- Fixed a bug where a damaged corpus database could cause a crash
- Fixed a bug where the hotkeys didn’t work with certain keyboard layouts
- Fixed a bug reporting errors during Outlook filtering
- Worked around a Core Data bug that could cause a crash
- Updated the German localization

Improved the following sections of the manual (amongst others):
- Esoteric Preferences
- If Apple Mail Is Running Slowly
- Setting Up GyazMail
- Setting Up MailMate


SpamSieve 3.0.1
Highlights:
- SpamSieve 3.0 brought a new way of integrating with Apple Mail—using a Mail extension—that’s compatible with macOS 14 Sonoma. Most customers have had success with this simpler system, where there’s no plug-in to install or rule to set up. Unfortunately, some customers encountered a macOS bug where Apple Mail stops sending new messages to SpamSieve’s Mail extension. This would cause spam messages to be left in the inbox, not because SpamSieve thought they were good, but because it hadn’t actually seen them.

- We were aware of this problem affecting a small percentage of customers, and SpamSieve 3.0 included a built-in workaround: you could enable the Filter spam messages in other mailboxes feature and select your inboxes, and then SpamSieve would periodically check them for any new messages that Mail hadn’t sent to the extension. This worked, but there were a few downsides. You had to know—or see in the Log window or FAQ—that you needed to configure this. Also, there could be a slight delay before SpamSieve would detect the new messages; you could optionally enable a green flag to indicate to you when a message in the inbox had, in fact, been processed.
- The main focus of SpamSieve 3.0.1 is improving this workaround so that everyone can get their mail filtered, even when Apple Mail is misbehaving. SpamSieve 3.0.1 adds a Check inboxes for new messages not sent to Mail extension feature that will automatically filter all of your inboxes, without your having to configure anything. Currently, this feature only kicks in if your inbox has fewer than 5,000 messages. We found that trying to read a larger inbox could cause Mail to freeze. If there are too many messages in the inbox, SpamSieve will skip it and tell you this in the Settings > Apple Mail > Setup window and in the Log window. Filtering will automatically resume if you move some messages to the Archive mailbox (or to another mailbox that you create, such as Inbox2) to get below the limit.
- We undestand that needing to move messages is not ideal, but most customers are below the limit and we wanted to get the fix to them as soon as possible. If you have a fast Mac, it may be able to handle a higher limit, and you can adjust this in the esoteric preferences. For SpamSieve 3.0.2, we’re working on another way of accessing the messages, which will work for larger inboxes and with a much shorter delay.
- To be clear, all of this only applies for customers impacted by the macOS bug that prevents new messages from being sent to SpamSieve’s Mail extension. For most people, Mail does send messages to the extension for filtering. If your inbox has a large number of messages but is being filtered properly by the extension, you can ignore any error messages that SpamSieve reports about there being too many messages. The error just means that SpamSieve couldn’t double-check that all the new messages were processed.

Apple Mail:
Added the Check inboxes for new messages not sent to Mail extension feature:
- In the event that a macOS bug prevents Apple Mail from sending new messages to SpamSieve’s Mail extension for filtering, this will automatically find and filter new messages in the inbox.
- This is enabled by default and will check the inboxes periodically using the same schedule that you’ve set for Filter spam messages in other mailboxes.
- Inboxes with more than 5,000 total messages (shown as orange in the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet) will be skipped, to avoid slowing down or freezing Apple Mail.
- We recommend reducing the size of the inbox by archiving older messages or moving them to another mailbox. This will ensure that your inbox is eligible for automatic filtering and also make inbox checks faster.
- If you really want SpamSieve to try filtering a large inbox (shown in orange), you can manually select it in the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet or adjust the esoteric preferences.
- Otherwise, you can remove any inboxes that you had added to the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet (to avoid duplicate checks).
- To avoid disturbing old, unread messages that you may be purposely leaving in the inbox, Check inboxes for new messages not sent to Mail extension only processes messages received after the first time you launch SpamSieve 3.0.1. If you need to filter older messages in the inbox, you can select them and use the Filter Messages menu command.

Improved the new filtering system:
- The Mail extension no longer overwrites the background color of good messages, so you can once again have Mail rules that set background colors for other reasons.
- Worked around an Apple Mail bug that could prevent trained or filtered messages from moving to the trash.
- Restored the prior behavior of leaving spam messages totally uncolored (rather than gray) when Color the background according to how spammy it is is unchecked.
- If there’s an error moving a message to the Junk mailbox, SpamSieve now tries various fallback methods of moving it.
- If the Mail extension encounters an error communicating with SpamSieve, it now flags the message orange instead of gray, since gray is now used for another purpose (see above).
- If Apple Mail erroneously provides empty data for a message, SpamSieve will now always classify it as good, just to be safe, and it will also log some information about the location of the problematic message and then try again later.
- Added an esoteric preference (click to enable/disable), which makes the Mail extension flag spam messages gray. Message background colors don’t sync between devices, but flags do, so this makes it possible to see on another device which messages in the Junk mailbox were put there by SpamSieve (rather than by a server filter). Also, the flag can be useful for separating spam messages from good ones in Apple Mail if Mail is for some reason unable to move the spam messages to the Junk mailbox.
- Worked around an AppleScript error checking whether an account was enabled.
- Fixed a bug where the details for some AppleScript error messages were lost.

Improved the Filter spam messages in other mailboxes feature:
- This is now enabled by default, to avoid the problem of selecting mailboxes to filter but forgetting to enable the feature
- Previous versions of SpamSieve would warn you not to select a mailbox that was orange in the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet (having 5,000 or more messages) or red (10,000 or more messages). If you disregarded its advice, SpamSieve would respect your choice, but sometimes this could lead to Mail freezing and confusion as to what caused this. Now, SpamSieve will strictly enforce the red limit and skip filtering such mailboxes to avoid slowing down Apple Mail or causing it to freeze. If you think your Mac is super speedy and can handle more messages, you can raise the limit using the esoteric preferences.
- If reading a particular mailbox causes a timeout error, SpamSieve now reports this in the log and recommends archiving some of the old messages to another mailbox that’s not selected for filtering.
- SpamSieve will no longer try to filter mailboxes in accounts that are marked as disabled.
- If a mailbox can’t be found because there are multiple mail accounts with the same name, SpamSieve will now try to figure out which account you meant and, failing that, show an error message saying that you should rename one of the accounts.
- Fixed a bug where the wrong mailbox could be filtered if a top-level mailbox had the same name as a nested one.
- Worked around an Apple Mail bug that could prevent moving POP messages to the Junk or Trash mailbox.
- SpamSieve is better at handling errors from Mail when setting a message’s flag or read status.
- Made some optimizations to speed up filtering

Improved the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet:
- SpamSieve is better at handling and reporting errors that Mail reports when reading the mailbox list
- The special mailboxes are now sorted to the top, like in Apple Mail
- Improved the recognition of special Junk and Archive mailboxes
- The special Archive mailbox is no longer selectable as filterable, since it doesn’t receive new messages
- Mailboxes that are not eligible for filtering are never shown in red or orange, even if they contain a large number of messages

Improved the Add green flag to unread good messages feature:
- Including in the inbox no longer tries to remove green flags from inboxes in accounts that are disabled
- In order to prevent Including in the inbox from causing slowness in Mail, SpamSieve will skip unflagging for large inboxes that show up as orange in the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet. It will also log an error if it looks like unflagging failed because there were too many messages in the mailbox.
- Fixed a bug that could cause spurious errors to be logged when unflagging messages
- Improved the responsiveness of Mail during filtering and unflagging

Improved the Mail plug-in:
- Updated some error messages to account for SpamSieve’s new Settings window
- Fixed an error moving a trained spam message to the Trash mailbox
- In rare cases, SpamSieve asking Mail to deactivate its rules on macOS 14 can cause a crash, so you can now click here to tell SpamSieve not to do that. In that case, you should be sure to deactivate or delete the rules yourself.

General:
- Fixed a bug where the training hotkeys sometimes didn’t work in Apple Mail or Outlook.
- When you train a message as good in Apple Mail or Outlook, SpamSieve no longer marks it as unread if it’s not in a Junk mailbox. Also, clarified the labels in the Settings window to say that the message is only moved if it’s in the Junk mailbox. In other words, you can train messages in other mailboxes (e.g. as part of the initial training) without messing up how they are filed.
- Worked around a Swift bug that could cause a crash when parsing an e-mail message’s address list
- Improved the filtering accuracy through more precise message parsing
- Added Danish and Swedish localizations
- Updated the Dutch, French, German, and Spanish localizations
- You can now access the the release notes from the Help menu
- Improved SpamSieve’s launch time by preloading scripts in the background
- Many sections of the manual have been revised or updated
- SpamSieve will now log at launch if it thinks the menu bar icon is set to be visible but doesn’t actually fit on screen due to other menu bar icons or the Mac’s camera housing. There is now an esoteric preference (click to enable/disable) to see in the log how it determined this.
- Added an esoteric preference to suppress badging of the Dock icon, as in rare cases that can trigger a Core Image bug that causes a crash (click to disable/enable badging)
- Fixed a bug where SpamSieve wouldn’t let you enter your license information into the Purchase window

Importing From SpamSieve 2:
- Worked around a Core Data bug that could cause an error saving the corpus when importing from SpamSieve 2
- Fixed a bug where SpamSieve could hang when importing certain malformed messages from SpamSieve 2
- Fixed a crash that could occur when importing from SpamSieve 2 if the corpus was damaged. SpamSieve will now just skip the damaged message
- Fixed a bug where certain settings migrated from SpamSieve 2 would make it show in the Settings window that trained messages would be moved to Junk, but actually they would not be moved

Settings:
- In the pop-up menu for the Move it to the Trash if the spam score is at least checkbox, the score of 50 is now labeled with all spam
- The menu item for opening the window is now called Settings, even on older versions of macOS, as having it called Preferences was confusing for people following the instructions in the manual
- SpamSieve will show a warning if Check inboxes for new messages not sent to Mail extension is disabled or if an inbox was skipped for filtering because it contained too many messages
- SpamSieve will now show a warning if you have Apple Mail mailboxes selected for filtering but Filter spam messages in other mailboxes is disabled
- SpamSieve will now show a warning if it skips filtering a mailbox because it’s too large
- Fixed the labels for the Uncertain spam messages slider, which were backwards
- Improved the display of Entourage and Postbox installation errors

Blocklist and Allowlist:
- Fixed a bug where changing whether a rule was enabled or locked from a rule list window didn’t work if the search field had focus
- Fixed a bug where the text to match in the rule editor sheet was unreadable in Dark Mode
- Worked around a Swift Regex bug that could cause a hang when matching a message against the blocklist or allowlist
- Fixed a crash that could occur when using the Import Addresses… command on macOS 10.15 or earlier

Log:
- SpamSieve is better at reporting whether a server filter thought that a message was spam
- When you copy a log entry to the clipboard, it now includes the sender’s name
- If the same error occurs multiple times when communicating with Apple Mail or Outlook, SpamSieve now only logs it once per hour
- Fixed a bug where viewing a partially deleted log entry could cause a crash
- Fixed a bug where some emoji were not available on macOS 10.14


SpamSieve 3.0
Highlights:
- SpamSieve 3 is compatible with macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) through macOS 14 (Sonoma) and is recommended for all customers using those versions of macOS. SpamSieve 3 is required for customers using Apple Mail with Sonoma. We recommend updating SpamSieve before updating to Sonoma.
- When you launch SpamSieve 3, it will offer to automatically migrate all your old training data and accuracy statistics (so that you don’t need to retrain it), or you can choose to start fresh. Your SpamSieve 2 data is left untouched, so it’s possible to revert to the old version if necessary. The new version of the Apple Mail plug-in also works with SpamSieve 2. Training done with version 2 after updating to version 3 will stay with version 2 (and vice-versa).
- The Apple Mail integration has been completely rewritten for compatibility with macOS 14 Sonoma. On Sonoma, SpamSieve now uses a Mail extension rather than a Mail plug-in (as Sonoma no longer supports plug-ins). The extension needs to be enabled in Mail’s Settings > Extensions window. It is no longer necessary to install any files or to give SpamSieve Full Disk Access. You will now train SpamSieve from the SpamSieve menu bar icon at the top of the screen or from SpamSieve’s Dock icon, rather than from the Message menu in Mail.
- If you had previously used SpamSieve with Apple Mail, the first time SpamSieve launches on Sonoma it will explain how to make the transition to using the Mail extension. The new setup is also described in the Setting Up Apple Mail section of the manual. With earlier versions of macOS, you can continue using the Mail plug-in, as before. With macOS 13 Ventura and macOS 12 Monterey, you can choose whether to use the Mail extension (which is simpler to set up) or the Mail plug-in (which is more customizable). You can click Uninstall Plug-In… (which will also offer to delete the old Mail rule) in Settings > Apple Mail > Setup if you plan to switch all your Macs to using the extension.
- The Microsoft Outlook support has been rewritten to be simpler and easier to set up. It is no longer necessary to install any script files. The Outlook Filter Mailboxes helper app is no longer needed. If you don’t store large amounts of Mail in your inbox, it’s no longer necessary to create any rules in Outlook.
- If you had previously used SpamSieve with Outlook, you can continue to use the existing scripts and Outlook Filter Mailboxes, or you can remove the Outlook Filter Mailboxes app and switch to the new setup by following either the Setting Up Outlook or Setting Up Outlook (Large Inboxes) instructions.
- SpamSieve’s e-mail parser has been rewritten in Swift for better accuracy, stability, and speed. SpamSieve is better able to understand messages that use newer e-mail formats, as well as malformed messages that don’t follow the specification. Where previous versions might get confused and give up (ignoring parts of the message) or even crash, the new parser engine is more resilient. Being able to read and understand more of the e-mail message increases the filtering accuracy, since it’s able to see spammy content that was invisible to SpamSieve 2, either because of bugs in the e-mail sending software or because spammers were deliberately trying to evade filters.
- The corpus, blocklist, and allowlist have been rewritten to use a new database format. This greatly reduces SpamSieve’s launch time and memory use, while enabling lots of new features.
- The text-based log file and history database have been replaced by a new log database and Log window, which is easier to browse and search. The log includes lots more information about each message to help you understand what SpamSieve did and why, and what you might want to do in response. It should be your first stop when troubleshooting.
- The Settings window has been redesigned, consolidating options and commands that were previously in other menus, scripts, or esoteric preferences. Many of the labels have been reworded for clarity, and there are now links to open relevant sections of the help for more detailed explanations.
- There is now a Show Dock icon setting to more easily hide SpamSieve’s Dock icon. With the Dock icon hidden, you can access all of SpamSieve’s windows and commands from the new SpamSieve menu bar icon. If both the Dock icon and menu bar icon are hidden, you can still access the settings by opening SpamSieve from your Applications folder when it’s already running.

Apple Mail:
- Filtering is now controlled from within SpamSieve’s Settings window rather than from Mail’s settings. You can now choose to Enable spam filtering using Mail extension (for the newer, simpler setup) or Enable spam filtering using Mail plug-in (which works the same way as in SpamSieve 2). You can also select Disable spam filtering in Apple Mail to temporarily turn off filtering (without having to uninstall anything).
- The Settings window has new buttons to Install Plug-In or Uninstall Plug-In…. The latter will also uninstall any SpamSieve rules. To stop using the Mail extension, you can just select Disable spam filtering in Apple Mail, which removes SpamSieve’s launch agent. There’s nothing further to uninstall, aside from the app itself.
- There’s a new Filter Messages menu command to manually apply SpamSieve to the selected messages. This has a keyboard shortcut of Command-Control-L. Mail’s Apply Rules command has a keyboard shortcut of Command-Option-L, and it still works to apply the Mail rules, but it no longer applies SpamSieve when using the Mail extension (because there is no more SpamSieve rule).
- We have long recommended setting Mail to move the messages SpamSieve catches to the All Junk mailbox rather than to the Spam mailbox. This is still the case when using the Mail plug-in, and with the Mail extension the Spam mailbox is no longer an option. There remains a SpamSieve setting to control where spam messages move when you train them. If you had been using Spam, you may want to change this to Junk so that all your spam messages end up in the same place.
- SpamSieve normally moves spam messages to the Junk mailbox. When using the Mail extension, there’s a new Move it to the Trash if the spam score is at least option. This separates the more spammy messages (in Trash), which are less likely to be mistakes, from the less spammy ones (in Junk), so that you can concentrate your efforts on reviewing those. For example, if you set the score to 99, when you train a message as spam, its sender will go on SpamSieve’s blocklist, and future messages from the same name or address will go directly to the Trash.
- There’s a new Mark it as read setting to mark new messages as read if SpamSieve thinks they’re spam, e.g. so that you aren’t distracted by the unread count in Mail’s sidebar.
- The Color the background according to how spammy it is setting is now available in the Settings window (instead of via the Change Settings command). There’s now a legend so that you can see which spam levels the different colors correspond to.
- There’s a new Filter spam messages in other mailboxes option. This makes it possible for SpamSieve to filter messages that other rules (either in Mail or on your mail server) moved out of the inbox. This is especially important when using the Mail extension, because Mail only sends new messages to the extension if they remain in the inbox after processing your Mail rules. With the Mail plug-in, this was not a concern because the SpamSieve rule was at the top of the list, so it was applied first. However, even with the plug-in, Mail does not apply rules to messages that were moved out of the inbox by a server rule or by another device before they got to your Mac. With this option, it is now possible for SpamSieve to filter all new messages, no matter where they are.
- Filtering messages in other mailboxes is not immediate: SpamSieve needs to periodically check whether any new messages have arrived. If you receive lots of new messages and spend a lot of time in Mail, you may see a new message before SpamSieve does. It may not be clear whether a spam message is visible because SpamSieve made a mistake and thought it was good or simply because SpamSieve hadn’t had a chance to examine it yet. The new Add green flag to unread good messages option lets you choose to have SpamSieve mark messages that it has checked with a green flag. Messages with no flag are pending processing; they are not mistakes that need to be trained as spam.
- In rare cases, a Mail bug may prevent new messages from being sent to the SpamSieve extension for analysis. You can enable green flags for the inbox using the Including in the inbox option, and if this and the Log window show that SpamSieve is not seeing the inbox messages, you can add the inboxes to the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet to have SpamSieve filter them without relying on the Mail extension.
- You can now control from the Settings window whether messages that you train as spam are moved to the Junk, to the Trash mailbox, or to a custom mailbox; and whether they should be marked as read. You can also control whether messages trained as good are moved back to the inbox or marked as unread.
- SpamSieve now shows an error message and help link in the settings if it’s missing Automation access to control Apple Mail or Full Disk Access to use the Apple Mail plug-in.
- The new Setting the Junk Mailbox in Apple Mail section to the manual consolidates and updates several previous sections
- The Apple Mail - Rescue Good Messages and Apple Mail - Remote Training scripts are still supported. They do not need to be updated to continue working with SpamSieve 3. They work best when SpamSieve is set to move trained messages to the Junk mailbox.

Outlook:
- Filtering is now controlled by SpamSieve itself rather than using the Outlook Filter Mailboxes helper app. In SpamSieve’s Settings window, you can choose to Enable spam filtering for Inbox. This is a simpler setup that’s available for users who don’t keep lots of old messages in the inbox. You can also choose to Enable spam filtering for InboxSpamSieve, which uses Outlook rules to temporarily store messages in the InboxSpamSieve folder until they have been processed, as with previous versions of SpamSieve. You can also select Disable spam filtering in Outlook to temporarily turn off filtering or if you want to uninstall—there are no more extra files that need to be manually deleted.
- You can now train SpamSieve from the SpamSieve menu bar icon at the top of the screen or from SpamSieve’s Dock icon, rather than from the system script menu. The training commands now have keyboard shortcuts.
- There’s a new Filter Messages menu command to manually apply SpamSieve to the selected messages
- You can now set in the Settings window how often SpamSieve checks for new messages to filter. There’s also a Filter Now button that shows whether filtering is currently in progress and lets you tell SpamSieve to filter right away.
- The Settings window now has a Mark less spammy messages as “Uncertain Junk” checkbox. There are also checkboxes to control whether messages trained as spam (or good) are moved to the Junk E-mail folder (or to the inbox) or marked as read (or as unread).
- SpamSieve still supports Outlook 2011. This works the same way as in SpamSieve 2, except that the scripts can now be installed directly from the Settings window, and there are links to the setup instructions right there.
- SpamSieve now shows an error message and help link in the settings if it’s missing Automation access to control Apple Mail or Outlook

Other Settings:
- The Filters and Training settings have been consolidated. There are now buttons to open the various SpamSieve windows directly from the Settings window, along with links to open the relevant help sections. The old Use Habeas Safelist, “ADV” messages are spam, and Encoded HTML mail is spam filters have been retired. The old Allow good/spam duplicates in corpus checkboxes were not very useful and have been removed.
- The Update Address Book “Me” Card command has been replaced with an Edit Addresses button, as it no longer worked due to privacy restrictions in macOS. This is useful in conjunction with the Catch spam sent from my own addresses setting (which used to be called Exclude my addresses).
- Notification sounds are now shown without filename extensions and are remembered even if extension hidden flag is changed
- SpamSieve now supports Notification Center, with options for notifying for Good messages sent from Contacts, Other good messages, The number of new good messages, and Uncertain spam messages. There’s now a slider for controlling which messages are considered uncertain. The old support for Growl notifications has been retired.
- There’s a new Other Clients tab of the Settings, which offers installation buttons and links to the setup instructions for the other mail apps that SpamSieve supports.

Bayesian Filtering:
- SpamSieve is better able to understand Emoji and Asian languages, so that runs of these characters are properly tokenized into words even when they are not separated by whitespace. This greatly improves the filtering accuracy for messages containing such characters.
- SpamSieve also has a better understanding of Unicode normalization and of certain special characters, which improves recognition of words that had been seen before, but in a slightly different form
- Made various other changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy

Rules Filtering:
- Normally, when you train a message as spam, SpamSieve will disable any matching allowlist rules; and when you train a message as good, SpamSieve will disable any matching blocklist rules. This prevents such “incorrect” rules from causing filtering mistakes for future messages. SpamSieve now lets you lock certain rules, which prevents them from being automatically disabled in this manner. This is useful when you are really sure that a rule does what you intend, for example if you want messages matching a certain rule to always be classified as good, even if some spam messages also match that rule.
- SpamSieve is much faster at matching messages against mailing list rules
- Regex rules work better with Unicode text
- Added logging to help detect slow regexes that are slowing down rule filtering
- If you have a rule that has matched a lot of messages, SpamSieve no longer stops counting at 65,535 hits

Corpus Window:
- The Words tab of the Corpus window works much the same as before, but it’s much faster to open and to change the sorted column. A large corpus can take a while to reload after an update, and this now happens in the background, rather than blocking the user interface and filtering. The text is larger and easier to read.
- There are new tabs in the Corpus window where you can view the list of Good Messages and Spam Messages that SpamSieve has been trained with. In most cases, the full message data is not available for messages trained with SpamSieve 2, so in that case only placeholders will be shown. For messages trained with SpamSieve 3, you can view metadata about the message, as well as when and how it was trained. You can also view the message’s rendered content and its raw source and MIME structure.
- Messages can now be trained from the Corpus window. Normally, it’s better to train from within your mail client, but sometimes you can’t find a message in the mail client or it’s already been deleted, due to a client or server bug or another device moving the message to a local mailbox. Having the message available in the Corpus window lets you properly update SpamSieve’s training in such cases. Previously, the only way to fix an incorrect training if you no longer had the message was to reset the corpus. Also, you can view the lists of spam and good messages to make sure that SpamSieve has been trained properly, i.e. that there were no mistakes that you forgot to correct.
- You can flag messages of note to come back to them later
- You can open SpamSieve’s copy of a message into your e-mail client to reply to it there or to copy it back to the mail server
- You can drag and drop messages out of the corpus window to export them for backup or for reporting to customer support
- Searches now support wildcards (* and ?), and you can also search for messages by their subject, address, or SpamSieve identifier
- The Corpus window now supports secondary sorting

Rules Windows:
- The Blocklist and Allowlist windows work much the same as before, but they’re much faster to open, loading now happens in the background, and the text is larger and easier to read
- The “whitelist” has been renamed to “allowlist,” as recommended by the IETF and Apple.
- There are new columns to show when a rule was last Modified and when it last Matched a message. The Hits column has been replaced with separate columns to show the number of Correct and Incorrect times it was used to classify a message. This can help you identify rules that are not working as expected.
- Secondary sorting is now supported. For example, to find allowlist rules that you might no longer need, you could sort by Date Created and then by Correct, to see all the rules with 0 hits ordered by how old they are.
- Editing a rule now takes place in a separate sheet, where there’s more room to see the different options and to edit the text. You can now see live whether the regex that you entered is valid. The sheet also shows information about when and how the rule was created and how it has been used.
- There’s a space to enter comments for each rule, e.g. to help you remember why you created a rule or how a regex was intended to work. You can search for rules by comment.
- You can also flag a rule that you’re observing or tweaking or that you’ve put on probation to easily find it again later.
- Rules with invalid regular expressions are shown in red. Some rules created with SpamSieve 2 may need to be updated, as the regex engine has changed from PCRE to ICU.
- Changes that you make to rules are now undoable.
- Searches now support wildcards (* and ?).

Log:
- The new Log window shows all the message trainings and predictions, as before. They are now color-coded so that you can see SpamSieve’s accuracy: green means that it was correct, orange indicates a false negative, and red indicates a false positive.
- You can now view a message’s rendered content and its raw source and MIME structure, rather than just its metadata. There’s a new setting to control how long SpamSieve should store the full message data for old log entries, to prevent it from using too much storage.
- Log entries show more information about each message. You can see which mail client (and in some cases which account and mailbox) a message came from. You can see whether a server junk filter agreed with SpamSieve about whether or not a message is spam. It also shows more information about what SpamSieve did with the message and why. If a log message is for a training, and you’ve correcting SpamSieve, the training log entry will show you information right there about why SpamSieve made that mistake. You can also search the log for the message’s identifier to see all the log entries related to that message. The log will also try to alert you to unusual situations, e.g. if you trained a message that was not actually a SpamSieve mistake, or if the exact same message had been repeatedly classified or trained.
- The log also shows new types of entries. You can see changes that you or SpamSieve have made to rules. You can see errors reported by the mail client when SpamSieve asks it to do something—information that was previously only available in the system log.
- SpamSieve 2 recorded less extensive log and history information, but SpamSieve 3 imports it and updates it to the new format where possible. If you had enabled the experimental message backup feature in SpamSieve 2, to protect against the Mail data loss bug, any backed up messages will now be available in the Log window. Messages from the old Save false negatives to disk feature are also imported.
- As with the corpus, you can open messages from the log in Apple Mail and other mail clients or export them via drag and drop.
- If SpamSieve thinks that processing a particular message caused a crash, it will be shown in red in the log. You can drag the log entry into an e-mail to report the problematic data to us so that we can try to prevent the crash in the future.
- You can also see whether a particular message took an abnormally long time to process and report such problematic messages.
- The contents of the log are now localized.
- Log entries can now display context-specific links to help pages. For example, there is a particular link that’s only relevant when you are using Apple Mail and the Mail extension and you’ve trained a message in the inbox that SpamSieve had not seen before as spam.
- If you’ve enabled notifications for new messages, e.g. to see which messages SpamSieve is uncertain about, clicking the notification will find that message in the log.
- The log database is now stored as shards, so it works much better with backups (old shards rarely change and so won’t need to be recopied) and is more resilient (if one file becomes damaged, you don’t have to throw away the entire log).
- Message data is no longer stored in plaintext, to avoid problems with anti-virus software deleting data out from under SpamSieve, even though it was inert.
- Diagnostic reports now include a fixed number of recent log entries, whereas previously there could be too much or too little data depending on when the log file had last rolled over.

Statistics Window:
- The accuracy statistics now ignore duplicate classifications of the same message
- Calculating the corpus and rules statistics no longer blocks the user interface
- Show Statistics Since now uses a date picker rather than a free-form text field in a separate sheet

General:
- SpamSieve has a new Dock icon. The top-left of the icon shows an envelope when SpamSieve is idle, a downward pointing arrow when SpamSieve is classifying a message, a check mark when it’s training a message as good, and an x mark when it’s training a message as spam.
- You can now open the Settings window from the Dock menu.
- The SpamSieve menu bar icon changes color while an operation initiated by the menu or a hotkey is in progress (blue when filtering messages, green when training as good, and brown when training as spam).
- AppleScript support for the corpus and rules has been rewritten to be faster and use less memory. You can now use considering case and ignoring case blocks when looking up words and rules.
- The Setting Up Airmail instructions now have screenshots.
- Each help page now has a link to a Google translation so you can view it in a different language.
- Removed support for PowerMail 4.x; versions 5.x and 6.x are still supported.
- Updated the Dutch, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish localizations.
- Removed the Danish, Italian, Korean, Russian, Swedish, and Vietnamese localizations, which are out-of-date. If you’d like to help update the localizations (or add a new one)


SpamSieve 2.9.52
- Added support for Apple Mail on the forthcoming macOS 13.3. We recommend updating SpamSieve before updating macOS. SpamSieve 2.9.52 should automatically update the installed version of its Apple Mail plug-in, and the plug-in should stay enabled. However, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu and to enable the plug-in.
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy
- If you are using Apple Mail on macOS 13, we recommend going to Mail > Settings > Accounts > Account Information and setting Download Attachments to All for each account. This can work around a Mail bug that causes a hang when training a message.
- Added an experimental workaround for an issue on macOS 13 that could cause Apple Mail to take a long time to launch. For information on how to enable the workaround, please see the If Apple Mail Is Running Slowly section of the manual.
- Improved the speed of filtering the first message after SpamSieve launches
- Improved the error reporting for the Apple Mail plug-in installer

Added the following sections of the manual:
- Turning Off the DreamHost Spam Filter
- Turning Off the HostGator Spam Filter
- Turning Off the Proton Mail Spam Filter

Improved the following sections of the manual:
- Granting Full Disk Access
- If Apple Mail Is Running Slowly
- Install Apple Mail Plug-In
- Setting Up Airmail
- Turning Off the Yahoo Mail Spam Filter
- Why do good messages keep going to the Junk or Spam mailbox?
- Why is SpamSieve not catching my spam?


SpamSieve 2.9.51
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy
- When using Apple Mail, SpamSieve installs a launch agent, and this now shows up as SpamSieve rather than as C-Command Software in System Settings > General > Login Items > Allow in the Background on macOS 13
- Renamed Preferences to Settings for macOS 13
- Improved the diagnostic report on macOS 13
- If training a message doesn’t work due to an AppleScript failure, the error message now explains how you may be able to fix this by removing problematic legacy component files from your Mac
- Improved the erro reporting when the Apple Mail plug-in cannot be installed due to a file permissions problem.
- The Apple Mail - Rescue Good Messages script now has an option to remove colored flags that were added by the server junk filter, as these can make spam messages show up in Mail’s special mailboxes even after they’ve been deleted
- The Apple Mail - Remote Training script now skips accounts that are disabled in Mail to avoid spurious errors
- Added a workaround to the Apple Mail - Remote Training script for some users whose messages were not being moved out of the TrainGood mailbox
- Made various code modernizations
- SpamSieve now requires macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) or later

Improved the following sections of the manual:
- Apple Mail Customization
- Checking the Airmail Setup
- Filtering Spam During Power Nap
- How should I configure the junk filter on my mail server?
- If Apple Mail Is Running Slowly
- Only Filtering Certain Accounts
- Setting Up a Spam Filtering Drone
- Setting Up Airmail
- Setting Up Apple Mail
- What can I do if my Spam or Junk mailbox in Apple Mail disappeared?
- Why are messages marked as spam in Apple Mail but not moved?
- Why do good messages move to the wrong inbox when trained in Apple Mail?


SpamSieve 2.9.50
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy
- Fixed an issue where, on macOS 12.5, sometimes Mail would move e-mails received immediately after launch to the Junk mailbox without asking SpamSieve whether they were spam
- Fixed an issue where, on macOS 12.5, sometimes SpamSieve would disable its Apple Mail rules because it looked like Mail hadn’t loaded the plug-in, but actually Mail was just slow to launch
- Made a change to prevent potential problems setting up the Message menu in Apple Mail on future versions of macOS 13 Ventura
- Fixed a bug where SpamSieve could incorrectly report that another copy of the Apple Mail plug-in was installed in the wrong place, when that copy might be necessary for another macOS user account on a different volume
- Fixed a bug that in rare cases could prevent SpamSieve from detecting that two copies of the Apple Mail plug-in were loaded at the same time
- SpamSieve is better at handling damaged rules files
- Reduced the size of the app by removing a helper tool that was only necessary for Apple Mail on macOS 10.7, which is no longer supported


SpamSieve 2.9.49
- Added support for Apple Mail on the forthcoming macOS 12.5 and macOS 13 Ventura. We recommend updating SpamSieve before updating macOS. SpamSieve 2.9.49 should automatically update the installed version of its Apple Mail plug-in, and the plug-in should stay enabled. However, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu and to enable the plug-in.
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy
- Updated the Outlook Filter Mailboxes helper app to work around a problem where macOS 12.3 would report an error at launch. It also now helps you figure out if Outlook Filter Mailboxes doesn’t have Automation access to control SpamSieve.
- Worked around a macOS bug that could prevent a rules file written on macOS 12 on an M1 Mac from being properly read on macOS 10.15
- Fixed a bug where certain Unicode character sequences in a message’s address list could cause SpamSieve to hang when matching against a rule list
- Updated the Read Me

Improved the following sections of the manual:
- Does SpamSieve stop Web bugs?
- Separate Spam Mailboxes for Each Account
- Setting Up Apple Mail
- Setting Up Outlook
- Using a Spam Mailbox on the Server
- Why do good messages keep going to the Junk or Spam mailbox?


SpamSieve 2.9.48
- Change log not available for this version


SpamSieve 2.9.47
- Added support for Apple Mail on the forthcoming macOS 12.1. We recommend updating SpamSieve before updating macOS. SpamSieve 2.9.47 should automatically update the installed version of its Apple Mail plug-in, and the plug-in should stay enabled. However, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu and to enable the plug-in.
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy
- Worked around a bug in Apple Mail that could prevent messages trained as good from moving back to the inbox or messages (particularly POP ones) trained as spam from moving to the Junk mailbox. If you continue to see either of these problems, choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu.
- Updated the Open Window script to work around an issue on macOS 12 where some windows didn’t open due to an AppleScript error
- Improved the error handling when Apple Mail reports an error determining whether a message trained as spam is already in the Junk mailbox
- Improved the diagnostic report on macOS 12
- SpamSieve now declares notch compatibility for the new MacBook Pros

Improved the following sections of the manual:
- Checking the Outlook Setup
- Filtering Spam During Power Nap
- Keeping Spam Messages Out of Gmail’s Archive
- Turning Off the Gmail Spam Filter


SpamSieve 2.9.46
- Added support for Apple Mail on the forthcoming macOS 12.0. (An additional update was required due to late changes in Monterey Developer Beta 9.) We recommend updating SpamSieve before updating to Monterey. SpamSieve 2.9.46 should automatically update the installed version of its Apple Mail plug-in, however if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu and to enable the plug-in.
- Updated the crash reporter for macOS 12 Monterey
- Added AppleMailTrainGoodMoveAlways to the esoteric preferences, which can work around a problem with Gmail where Mail does not report the trained message as being in the right mailbox, so SpamSieve decides not to move it.
- When you train a message as good, and SpamSieve is moving the message back to the inbox, it’s better at handling localized inbox names
- The Train as Good command in Apple Mail now moves messages out of spam/junk mailboxes that have a leading space in the name for sorting
- Worked around a problem where an internal Apple Mail error could prevent messages from moving to the inbox when you trained them as good
- The Apple Mail - Remote Training script is now able to find training mailboxes that are nested in other folders
- The Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox script is better at handling errors
- Fixed a bug where the Apple Mail - Remote Training script could fail after Switching From the Spam Mailbox to the Junk Mailbox

Improved the following sections of the manual:
- Sending in a “Sample” Report
- Switching From the Spam Mailbox to the Junk Mailbox


SpamSieve 2.9.45
- Added support for Apple Mail on the forthcoming macOS 12.0. (An additional update was required due to late changes in Monterey Developer Beta 6.) We recommend updating SpamSieve before updating to Monterey. SpamSieve 2.9.45 should automatically update the installed version of its Apple Mail plug-in, however if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu and to enable the plug-in.
- Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy
- On macOS 10.15 and later, we now recommend configuring Apple Mail and SpamSieve to move spam messages to the special All Junk mailbox rather than to the Spam mailbox. This simplifies many setup procedures and works around some Mail bugs that, in rare cases, can cause spam messages that SpamSieve has caught to appear in the inbox as well in as the Spam mailbox or to be deleted instead of moved to the Spam mailbox.
- New installations of SpamSieve will use the Junk mailbox by default, and the manual has been rewritten with this new setup in mind
- If you are already using SpamSieve with a Spam mailbox and are not encountering the bugs mentioned above, you can continue with your current setup. It will keep working the same way as before, without your having to change anything
- The Switching From the Spam Mailbox to the Junk Mailbox section of the manual explains all of this in more detail and describes how you can update an existing SpamSieve setup if desired.
- When you enter Deleted Messages as the spam mailbox name for training in Change Settings (Apple Mail), SpamSieve now moves the messages to the account-specific trash mailbox instead of to the local one, working around a macOS bug in that could cause the message to be deleted instead of moved.
- Added the Separating Spam Caught by SpamSieve and Server Filters section of the manual
- Added the Apple Mail - Rescue Good Messages script, which moves good messages that were incorrectly caught by a server junk filter from the Junk mailbox to the inbox. This is similar to the old Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox script but is easier to set up because you can just install the script file without having to edit it first.
- The Apple Mail - Remote Training script now works when SpamSieve is configured to use the special Junk mailbox. In such cases, you can now download the script and use it directly. There is no need to edit it, as with previous versions.
- The Apple Mail - SaneBox script now works when SpamSieve is configured to use the special Junk mailbox
- The Apple Mail - Move If Spam script now works when SpamSieve is configured to use the special Junk mailbox
- Improved the error reporting when you’ve launched an incomplete copy of SpamSieve from a Carbon Copy Cloner SafetyNet folder

Improved the following sections of the manual:
- Resetting Mail’s Private Plug-Ins Folder
- Sending in an Error Report
- Setting Up Apple Mail