Getting rid of message pane in mail.

By Khomus, 22 October, 2024

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Hi all.

So in Mail I have preview set to none. But if I'm on a message and Vo-right past the splitter, I get to an area that sometimes says "message group" and sometimes "message content area". The message text shows up in it.

How do I get rid of this? I think it marks single messages as read as soon as I arrow over them, just as if I had content showing in the preview pane. What I want, if possible, is that no message text or headers or whatever show up until I hit enter on a message to read it.

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Comments

By TheBllindGuy07 on Thursday, October 24, 2024 - 00:03

Put the scrollbar just before message preview pane to off and then you can press vo-space to read the message in a new window, and you won't have everything marked as read. I had this problem too :)

By Khomus on Thursday, October 24, 2024 - 00:03

If you mean the vertical splitter between the messages table and the message pane/group, it only goes down to 22%. I assume to do what you're saying,it should go to zero.

By TheBllindGuy07 on Thursday, October 24, 2024 - 00:03

My bad, put the horisontal splitter at 100% :) AKA after "mailboxes" you have a vertical splitter, then messages table, then horisontal splitter that you put at 100% so it should say something like horizontal splitter collapsed on bottom.

By Khomus on Thursday, October 24, 2024 - 00:03

Going left to right, I have close, minimize, full screen, inbox, the number of messages with number unread, the toolbar, the mailboxes table, a vertical splitter, the messages table, another vertical splitter, and then the message that's being displayed.

By Khomus on Thursday, October 24, 2024 - 00:03

Unless there's a different view, e.g. like cmd-2 in finder, that I need to set first? I could try Thunderbird, but I'm trying to stick to all the standard stuff, being new, and learn that before I just start changing things. I don't want to get into that mindset of trying to make it as much like Windows as possible because it's something I'm familiar with.

By Tyler on Thursday, October 24, 2024 - 00:03

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

I just tried it on my Mac, and was able to hide the preview pane by interacting with the second vertical splitter (the one to the right of the messages table) and pressing VO-Right-Arrow until VoiceOver announced it was at 100%. At that point, VoiceOver reported the splitter as "Collapsed on right" and the preview pane was no longer visible.

HTH

By Khomus on Thursday, October 24, 2024 - 00:03

That did the trick. Now I can just leave messages unread if I don't want to deal with them right away.

By Michael Hansen on Thursday, October 24, 2024 - 00:03

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

I appreciate reading these type of threads, as I am learning new things! I am a casual Mac user at best, but the Mac intrigues me and I realize there is a lot I do not yet know about it.

By Khomus on Monday, October 28, 2024 - 00:03

I'm not even sure if I'd call it a preview. If I'm in a thread/conversation, and I expand it and arrow to the first message and stop,Mail just starts reading the message. I'm pretty sure it's the whole message too. Anybody know how to stop that?

By Tyler on Monday, October 28, 2024 - 00:03

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

I haven't tried this myself, but if you haven't already, you may want to change the "List preview" setting to none to see if it makes a difference. To do this, choose Mail > Settings, (or press Command-Comma) click the "Viewing" button in the toolbar, and choose "none" from the "list preview" popup menu.

HTH

By Khomus on Monday, October 28, 2024 - 00:03

So it's kind of weird. Not a huge deal if I can't figure it out. I'd just like it to only read and thus mark messages when I explicitly tell it to read a message.