Obnoxious noises in Apple Mail - how to silence?

This is gonna sound severely OCD, but... <shrug> So be it.

I recently started running Apple's 2.1.3 version of "Mail" after several
years of making due with web-based email. (This version ships with 10.4
- yes, I know, it's old. Unless you're volunteering to buy me a shiny
new Mac that can run the newer versions, don't talk to me about
upgrading to something newer)

It functions well enough, but it has a flaw that's right on the edge of
driving me back to the hell of web-based email: It makes cutesy noises.
I hear you already - "Wuddaya mean, it makes noises?" Exactly that! IT
MAKES NOISES! I hit send, and a jet plane whooshes by. It has trouble
talking to the server, and I hear something like an asthmatic foghorn.
It checks for mail but finds nothing, so it "plinks". And I have no idea
what other situations might make it decide to sound off. And less
interest! All I want is for it to shut up and silently handle my email
traffic.

Now, I'm sure there are folks who think it's cool, but so far as I'm
concerned, the *ONLY* acceptable noise for a mail program to make is
some sort of "New mail has arrived" signal. Aside from that, there's
never, ever, under any circumstances whatsoever, any good reason for a
mail program to make any sound at all. So I've gone looking for a way to
silence Mail. With no luck. I've looked *EVERYWHERE* that makes even the
most flimsy kind of sense to look, and come up with no way to make it
shut up! Nothing in system prefs, nothing in the Mail program itself,
nothing shows up on Google - NOTHING! Yet there MUST be a way to make
this program shut the hell up and do its job silently, rather than
having it trying to act like some sort of sound-effects program.

Yes, I know this sounds like an insane gripe. Sorry, it's just how I am.
Programs that make noises for no good reason bug me. SEVERELY. Even back
in the days of the Apple II, I hated it when my computer made noises
without my explicitly asking it to. So much that I literally wired in a
switch to totally disable the speaker on my //e. That dislike for
"chatty" computers hasn't changed a bit in all my years at a keyboard.

Never mind that, at 4 in the everlovin' morning, that jet plane whoosh
is (or at least seems) loud enough to wake the dead!

So I turn to the "group mind":
Can anyone tell me a way (that doesn't involve inane suggestions like
"don't run it" or "turn off your speakers") to make Apple's Mail program
operate in complete silence? The *ONLY* time I ever want to hear
anything from it is when new mail comes in. Other than that, it should
never, under any circumstances, make a sound. So how about it? Any ideas?

 

replace the sound resources in the app bundle with silent ones. it
might even work if you delete them.

 

Well, I have a solution for you but I question your technical ability to
follow or implement it.

You'll find 4 files in /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/Resources

Mail Fetch Error.aiff
Mail Sent.aiff
New Mail.aiff
No Mail.aiff

Use a Music editor to make them silent or duplicate them with the
Finder's COMMAND-D key after selecting them.

Then use the Terminal to zero out the files
cd /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/Resources
for i in Mail\ Fetch\ Error.aiff /
Mail\ Sent.aiff \
New\ Mail.aiff \
No\ Mail.aiff; do
cat /dev/null > $i
done

This will permanently silence Mail from making these sounds.

OR you could just use this pencil, paper, an envelop and some stamps.

Jesus, if such things bother you, just dump your computer and don't let
the door bang you on the ass when you leave.

 

Here's something cut and pasted from a Web forum dealing with something
similar. Maybe it will work for you:

"Sounds like your preferences icon toolbar is missing, which can happen
in Mail 2.1.3 alone and was removed from Mail 3.0. In the upper right
hand corner of the window you opened by going to the Mail menu and then
Preferences, along the title bar, is a light white/gray oval. Click on
it once to reveal the different items you can change. You may have
Accounts selected at the moment, click to Rules and make your changes."

 

<goes to prefs, looks for oval, finds it, clicks it>
<BLINK BLINK>
I wish I'd realized that was there... All I've ever seen was what I now
know is the "Accounts" sub-window. And on "General" is exactly what I've
been trying to find - a checkbox to kill the sounds.

How in the world did I manage to miss that oval gadget? <sigh>

Thanks Bill!

 

Here's something you'll find useful, if you're using IMAP -

http://www.rothwell.us/imap-idle

Billy Y..

 

I'm running POP3/SMTP with the outfit I'm going through now. I *THINK*
they offer IMAP, but haven't bothered to look past the (for me)
plenty-functional POP3/SMTP combination.

While I've heard folks talking about IMAP for years, I haven't seen any
particular reason it's better/worth my effort to try to use it - Wanna
try to "sell me"? I know very little about it beyond its existence and
the fact that some people seem to think its the greatest thing since
sliced bread, while others think it sucks, and still others fall
somewhere between.

 

IMAP gives you access to your mail on several devices simultaneously. If
idle is supported by your server you can get push like functionality.

 

Yep, I've never bothered with IMAP either, plartly because it's
pointless when you only have one device to do email on anyway.

 

The main advantage of adding support for IMAP Idle is you get new
mail delivered immediately, without polling for it. Other than that,
if you're happy with what you have, and are leaving a copy of mail on
the server until you back up (IMAP keeps copies), there's no need to
switch.

Apple Mail didn't support IMAP Idle until OS 10.5.

Billy Y..

 

Which e-mail clients handle very well, automatically and at any period
you like. Personally I set POP to 30 minutes. If it's important that I
get it quick, they'll call or text and I'll pull it.

 

(One reply to all the responses)

Thus far, it sounds as thought the main "features" of IMAP over
POP3/SMTP are "multiple device support" and "no need to poll", with a
side of "Server keeps backups for you" (Which POP3 can do easily enough,
though I've never liked working things that way - Logical or not, I've
got this "thing" about leaving my mail laying where somebody else can
get to it).

I read mail on precisely one device - the one on which I'm typing
currently.

Anything so urgent as to need to be "pushed" at me, or polled for more
often than my normal schedule can/will get to me via text message or
phone call.

Backups are taken care of routinely through other methods.

Which, I guess, adds up to "I probably won't be bothering to switch to
IMAP anytime soon - For me, POP3/SMTP ain't broke, so I'm not going to
bother trying to fix it."

 

No, IMAP is better than POP even if you only have one device. You have
your mail, and your server has your mail. Even the most clueless moron
will have a backup of sorts of their mail with IMAP.

IMAP also (almost) always allows you to access mail via a web browser,
so if you happen to be somewhere else and need to look up an email, not
only can you, but the email is there on the server.

 

Which means, that there are many more potential pitfalls (different
default folder names, sync-problems, etc.)

POP3 is lean and easy, IMAP is big and (if you´re unlucky) troublesome.
Sure, it works, mostly, ... until it doesn´t.

Plus (for the paranoid amongst us): I don´t like to have all my mail
lying on a server where the snoops can get to it.
Yes, I know, if they really want it, they´ll get it, but at least the´ll
have to try harder.

 

Although they have been getting larger, email providers usually have a
limited mailbox storage space (and in some cases that limited space
also has to include your website data, cloud backup, etc.), whereas the
amount of space on your own computer is virtually unimited. A big email
or many emails left sitting on the server can cause new emails to be
bounced back with a "mailbox full" error.

 

I switched to IMAP a long time ago, when I first got a phone with email
capability. When you access your email from different devices, having a
central mail store accessed/shared by all your devices makes things much
simpler.

I happen to run my own server, so it is not much different from NSA/CSEC
coming into my server to get my imap mail store, then they would any
other mail store on my server.

 

They don't have to come into your email server. By secret government
law copies of *ALL* emails are sent direct to their servers for keyword
analysis ... just ask the tin-foil wearers. ;-)

 

Good point.
My mail-archive dates back into the last century and has a size of about
100000 mails / 3GB.

 

Which government is that?