PostfachSee what a full mailbox is made of.
An inbox with thousands of unread messages is too much to go through, so nobody does, and it grows. Statistics is a second view of a mailbox, beside its messages: it sorts the mail into three kinds and lists each kind's senders, the largest first, with how much of their mail you have read. A sender's messages are one step away, as the list you know.
Three kinds of mail, and none of them a guess.
Statistics does not read your mail to decide what matters. It sorts a mailbox by two things that are simply known. The people are the addresses you yourself have sent mail to. Newsletters and lists are the messages that say so in their own headers, the lines mailing software adds for lists and for unsubscribing. Everything else is what remains: receipts, notices, and senders you never answered.
Each kind says how many messages it holds and how many of them you have read, and the line over them counts the mailbox: its messages, its unread, its size.
- People you have written to: a row for each person
- Newsletters and lists: by what a message's own headers say, whoever sent it
- Everything else: shops, notices, strangers
- A sender can stand under two kinds: someone you write to who also posts to a mailing list
The largest first.
Pick a kind and its senders are listed, the largest first: by messages, by unread, or by size. A row has the sender's figure and a bar, how many of its messages you have read, and the year the first one came. A row that says “read 3 of 23” is your own verdict on a sender, given one unopened message at a time.
- Sort by Messages for the pile, by Unread for the number on the icon, by Size for a mailbox near its quota
- A company that writes from several addresses is one sender, named by its domain
- A mailing list is one sender, however many people post to it
- Addresses at a mail provider, such as gmail.com, stay a sender each
- Beside the list, the picked sender's share of the mailbox, its unread and read mail, its size on the mail server, and the day of its first message
One sender among hundreds.
Where a kind has more than twenty senders, a field over them narrows the list while you type. It looks in the name, the addresses, the domain, and a mailing list's id, whatever the capitals and the accents, and marks what it found.
- Several words, each found anywhere: “rene muller” finds René Müller
- A sender found by its address shows that address under the name, with the word marked
- The kinds keep their figures: the field narrows the list, not the count
- It holds what you typed while you look at a sender's messages, and is there when you come back
Then it is the list you know.
Statistics shows, and what is done is done in the list. Show Messages opens a kind's or a sender's mail as the ordinary message list, exactly the messages the row counted, with a line over it that leads back to Statistics as you left it. There you read, archive, move, or delete with the commands you already use. On the iPhone and the iPad, a tap on a sender opens its messages at once.
- Newest first, with the list's own filter for unread, flagged, or with attachments
- On the Mac, Select All and one more click select every message of a large group, also those the list has not loaded yet
- Delete asks first, and names how many
- Nothing in Statistics itself acts on your mail: it has no button to press by mistake
A switch over the list.
A mailbox has two views, its messages and its Statistics, and a switch over the list goes from one to the other. On the Mac they are in the View menu too: ⌘1 for Messages, ⌘2 for Statistics. Pick another mailbox in the sidebar and its mail is counted in its turn.
- A folder, an account's inbox, or All Inboxes over every account
- Sent, Drafts, Flagged, and smart folders have no Statistics
- The figures follow the mail: what arrives while you look is counted within seconds
- On the Mac by keyboard: the arrow keys between kinds and senders, Return to show the messages, Escape to leave Statistics
On the iPhone and the iPad.
On a phone the Mac's three columns are one list: the mailbox's totals, the three kinds, and under them the picked kind's senders, the largest first. A tap on a sender opens its messages, and the line over them leads back to Statistics. On an iPad the same list stands in the middle column, with the picked kind's figures beside it.
- The switch stands on the line under the bar on the iPhone, and at the head of the list on the iPad
- Show Messages opens a whole kind
- The field that narrows a kind of more than twenty senders is a row of the list
- Pick another mailbox, and its mail is counted in its turn
What Statistics does not do.
Statistics is a way into a mailbox that has grown too large, not a cleaner. It has no button that empties a kind, and it unsubscribes you from nothing: a newsletter you delete will write again.
- No unsubscribing from within the app yet
- Selecting every message of a large group at once is on the Mac only, for now
- Mail that arrived before you had 1.7.0, and whose text is not kept on the device, is not recognised as a newsletter: it counts under one of the other two kinds
- A company that writes from two domains is two senders
Good to know.
Counted on your device
Every figure is a count over the mail Postfach has already stored on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad. Nothing is sent anywhere to be sorted, and no service is handed your mailbox to read.
It shows, you decide
Looking changes nothing: no message is moved, deleted, or marked as read. Statistics does not rate what is important, and it proposes nothing to delete.
From the first day
A new account's mail is counted as soon as the message lists of its folders have arrived, before the messages themselves are downloaded: everything Statistics needs comes with those lists.
Get Postfach.
A mailbox you can see into, on Mac, iPhone, and iPad. From the App Store, one purchase for all three.
