Apple Mail - Is it possible to force it to check mail when not open (on my Mac)?

[BeamupB]

I’m trying my hardest with my new M1 mini to use Apple Mail again, it’s been a while due to this very issue - it won’t check for mail unless the app is open.
…and this is not the desired method for me. I can’t believe they still don’t have a tiny background daemon running or cron scheduled that would at least check mail every x-minutes (again, when the app is closed - so all the time…actually open or closed).

On my old Mac, before this new Mini, I resorted to the mail client “Edison”, which has some nice features, but also misses a few features that Apple Mail has. Edison did check in the background, which was basically the sole reason I ever even tried it.

Sorry to rant on…this has just really been frustrating me.

I couldn’t really find another previous topic about this, but I’m new here (Hello!), I’m sorry if this is a duplicate topic and someone solved this before.

Long story short:
Does anyone happen to know of a way around this, possibly by running some “checking” script, and schedule it to run every 5 min via a CRON task or the like? Even AppleScript, I don’t think it would help without Mail being open, but if so - nice

Thank you in advance!

[ismh86]

A lot about Mail.app is old-school. I keep it hidden so it stays updated.

[rkaplan]

You could easily set up Keyboard Maestro to Activate Mail for 5 minutes each hour and then close it

But why not just keep it open all the time but hidden in a separate Desktop?

[dfay]

open -g is your friend here - see

Open app in background

[vco1]

As far as I know there is no full-fledged e-mail client - Mac or otherwise - with a background process or daemon for checking mail.

On the Mac there are (were?) a few menubar applications to check for new messages on IMAP accounts though.

P.S. I can’t find anywhere that Edison checks for new mail when the application is not running.

[anon54919170]

Does Mozilla Thunderbird check for emails in the background? I believe it can do so in Windows, but I’m not sure about macOS…

Favorite email client?

Edison Mail is one of them, but I would recommend against it due to a number of privacy scandals. My personal recommendation would have to be Mozilla Thunderbird. It is completely free and open-source, not to mention that it has a focus on privacy (like Mozilla Firefox). If you end up liking it, you should really consider donating. Mozilla no longer funds it for a number of reasons, so the Thunderbird team relies on donations from the community to keep it going. There’s also a beta channel …

[vco1]

@anon54919170

Does Mozilla Thunderbird check for emails in the background?

No. There is/was apparently an extension to minimize Thunderbird to the tray. But technically the application is still running. It’s (about) the same as hiding Mail.app or any other mail client on the Mac.

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=600541

In my definition background means a daemon (in unix terms) that checks for new messages, without the application running. As I said, as far as I know there is no such mail client. It would make things pretty complex too, as the mail client (the application that the user sees) would need to communicate with that background process. A bit like the way Hazel and Arq work nowadays, but slightly more complex due to the way mail clients are used.

There are menubar applications that check IMAP accounts for new messages. Personally I haven’t used these.

Mail Mini | MacMenuBar.com

[rkaplan]

That seems like a useful menu bar app but unfortunately appears to have been abandoned by the developer, with low ratings and with the latest update 3 years ago.

[JKoopmans]

@BeamupB

I can’t believe they still don’t have a tiny background daemon running or cron scheduled that would at least check mail every x-minutes (again, when the app is closed - so all the time…actually open or closed)

Have you tried this on an iPad? Works the same way… nothing happens until the app is active.
M1 appears to handle some file operations the same way.
Seems that’s where we’re heading

[anon54919170]

@vco1

No. There is/was apparently an extension to minimize Thunderbird to the tray. But technically the application is still running. It’s (about) the same as hiding Mail.app or any other mail client on the Mac.

Oh, well that’s disappointing…