macOS Monterey to Support All-New Mail App Extensions, Plug-Ins Will Stop Functioning in Future Release
As part of WWDC this week, Apple introduced a new MailKit framework for macOS Monterey that enables developers to create Mail app extensions that block content, perform message and composing actions, and help with security.
/article-new/2021/06/mail-app-extensions-macos-monterey.jpg?lossy)
There will be four main categories of Mail app extensions, according to Apple:
- Compose: Extensions that provide new workflows when composing emails
- Actions: Extensions that apply custom rules to incoming emails, such as an email being color coded, moved to a separate inbox, marked as read, or flagged
- Content Blocking: Extensions that serve as WebKit content blockers for emails based on specific criteria in an email's HTML code
- Message Security: Extensions that sign, encrypt, and decrypt emails when sending and receiving mail, with signed and encrypted icons below emails
Xcode 13, available in beta, includes a template for developers looking to create Mail app extensions on the Mac. The extensions can be built into existing Mac apps and can also be distributed through the Mac App Store, according to a WWDC session about MailKit, which is available on macOS only and not iOS or iPadOS.
In the WWDC session, Apple indicated that older Mail app plug-ins will stop functioning in an unspecified future macOS release.
macOS Monterey is available now in beta for developers, with a public beta to follow in July.
Top Stories
Tracking when you've opened up an email and what you've read is something that many companies and advertisers rely on for their marketing efforts, plus there are email clients out there designed to let users know when the emails they've sent have been opened up.
Much of this tracking is facilitated by remote images that load when viewing an email, and some of it is even sneakier, with...
Apple today seeded a new public beta of the macOS 12 Monterey beta to public beta testers, allowing non-developers to test the new macOS Monterey software ahead of its public release. The updated beta comes just a day after Apple released the sixth macOS Monterey developer beta.
Public beta testers can download the macOS 12 Monterey update from the Software Update section of the System...
Apple today informed developers that the beta version of TestFlight for Mac is now available and can be used to test Mac apps.
Registered developers can download the TestFlight for Mac beta and can use the app to test their own apps and apps from other developers on macOS Monterey beta 5. TestFlight for Mac, like TestFlight for iOS, will make it simple for developers to test beta versions of ...
Apple today seeded the sixth developer beta of macOS Monterey, the newest version of the macOS operating system. The sixth beta comes three weeks after Apple released the fifth macOS Monterey beta.
Registered developers can download the beta through the Apple Developer Center and once the appropriate profile is installed, betas will be available through the Software Update mechanism in...
DuckDuckGo today announced its brand new Email Protection feature that will allow users to save themselves from being tracked by trackers embedded into emails by forwarding them to a free and personalized DuckDuckGo email before being sent to their actual email.
DuckDuckGo's Email Protection comes as an alternative to Apple's Hide My Email part of iCloud+, allowing users to direct emails for ...
Apple today seeded the release candidate versions of iOS and iPadOS 15 to developers for testing purposes, with the updates coming two weeks after Apple released the eighth betas.
Registered developers can download the profile for the iOS and iPadOS betas from the Apple Developer Center, and once the profile is installed, beta updates will be available over the air.
iOS 15 is a major...
Starting with iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS Monterey, users with a paid iCloud+ storage plan can personalize their iCloud email address with a custom domain name, such as johnny@appleseed.com, and the feature is now available in beta.
iCloud+ subscribers interested in setting up a custom email domain can visit the beta.icloud.com website, select "Account Settings" under their name, and select ...
Apple today seeded the eighth betas of iOS and iPadOS 15 to developers for testing purposes, with the updates coming one week after Apple released the seventh betas.
Registered developers can download the profile for the iOS and iPadOS betas from the Apple Developer Center, and once the profile is installed, beta updates will be available over the air.
iOS 15 is a major update that...
Apple today seeded a new public beta of the macOS 12 Monterey beta to public beta testers, allowing non-developers to test the new macOS Monterey software ahead of its public release. The fourth beta comes two weeks after Apple released the third macOS Monterey public beta.
Public beta testers can download the macOS 12 Monterey update from the Software Update section of the System...
With the introduction of iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, Safari extensions that previously only worked on the Mac can also run on the iPhone and iPad. While the feature won't be widely available until the fall when the new updates roll out to the public, 1Password, a popular password management app, has already teased a functional Safari extension on iPadOS 15.
Shared by 1Password developer Andrew...
Top Rated Comments
As for the mail plug-ins, they were never a great solution. Apple will continually move away from systems like mail plug-ins that live in the memory space of another application to inter-application communication systems like extensions that allow an application to extend another application visually without sharing memory space MacOS Classic style. I, for one, am looking forward to having a mail extension system that provides a stable API and that doesn’t break with each point release.
But this is also a change that needed to occur. Previously, mail bundles would break between point releases. Not major releases, mere patches. Every time Mail.app got updated, these bundles needed to get updated, too, and, until they did, the bundles wouldn’t work. Now we have a stable API guaranteed not to break on point releases and that will likely be stable across multiple major releases. We’ll probably see more mail extensions as a result of this, while previously, it was only worth the effort to devs who were absolutely serious about email extensibility. This API could also be ported to MobileMail.app, which, until now, hasn’t had any extensibility (except maybe for jailbreaking, but even then, I don’t think Mail was a common target for jailbreakers looking to tweak the system).