SpamSieve Changelog

What's new in SpamSieve 3.0.3

Dec 27, 2023

Apple Mail:
Fixed a problem where, with certain unusual account configurations, SpamSieve would not see the new messages that needed to be filtered, so they would stay in the inbox.
SpamSieve is better able to continue filtering messages when Mail is temporarily unable to look up account information.
Worked around a macOS bug that could cause Mail to hang if it was preparing to send a message to the SpamSieve Mail extension while SpamSieve was filtering another mailbox.
Fixed a bug where the Settings ‣ Apple Mail ‣ Training window could be out-of-sync with the stored settings that SpamSieve was using, leading to trained messages not moving where you expected.
Removed the Including in the inbox setting. The Add green flag to unread good messages setting now controls the green flags for all mailboxes.
Improved the error handling when reading the selected messages.
Improved the error handling when reading the inboxes.
Improved the Filter spam messages in other mailboxes feature:
Added a safety feature where SpamSieve will no longer filter messages that were received before SpamSieve was installed or before this feature was activated, to avoid reprocessing lots of old messages that happen to still be marked as unread.
The checkboxes in the mailbox list for TrainGood and TrainSpam are now disabled, as these mailboxes should not be selected for filtering.
SpamSieve is now able to continue finding mailboxes to list even if Mail returns invalid information for some of them.
General:
Worked around a macOS bug that could cause a crash when updating the Dock icon.
Worked around a macOS bug that could cause SpamSieve to hang at launch or when opening the Settings window.
The Print… command is now disabled for large table views, as it would overload the macOS printing system and cause a hang.
Fixed a bug where a damaged corpus database could cause a crash.
Fixed a bug where the hotkeys didn’t work with certain keyboard layouts.
Fixed a bug reporting errors during Outlook filtering.
Worked around a Core Data bug that could cause a crash.
Updated the German localization.
Improved the following sections of the manual (amongst others):
Esoteric Preferences
If Apple Mail Is Running Slowly
Setting Up GyazMail
Setting Up MailMate

New in SpamSieve 3.0.2 (Dec 27, 2023)

Apple Mail:
Apple Mail filtering when using the Mail extension is much faster and is no longer limited by the number of messages in a mailbox.
This applies to the Check inboxes for new messages not sent to Mail extension, Filter spam messages in other mailboxes, and Add green flag to unread good messages features.
To enable fast filtering, make sure that you’ve granted SpamSieve Full Disk Access. SpamSieve will still work without it, but in some cases it will be slower or report an error if a mailbox contains too many messages. If you were previously using SpamSieve 2 with Apple Mail, it most likely still has Full Disk Access. Otherwise, or if it seems like filtering is slow, check System Settings ‣ Privacy & Security ‣ Full Disk Access to make sure SpamSieve is enabled there.
If you haven’t granted Full Disk Access, but SpamSieve thinks you would benefit from doing so, it will show a warning help link in the Settings ‣ Apple Mail ‣ Setup window.
Fast filtering currently requires macOS 13 Ventura or later. (On macOS 13 and earlier, it’s not really needed because the Mail plug-in is available.)
When fast filtering is available, SpamSieve now defaults to checking for new messages every 30 seconds instead of every minute. If you want, you can go to the Settings ‣ Apple Mail ‣ Filtering window and set it to check even more frequently, e.g. every 5 seconds, to minimize the time that spam messages spend in the inbox. In most cases, this doesn’t add much CPU overhead, however it might make Mail less responsive if you have a slow network connection or if Mail on your Mac takes a long time to fully download new messages for some other reason.
The Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet will no longer show large mailboxes in orange or red when fast filtering is available, because it’s now fine to select them.
The Mail extension no longer sets the background color at all on spam messages if coloring is off. This lets you set colors yourself for other purposes.
Improved the reporting of duplicate accounts when training from Apple Mail.
Clicking the Filter Now button will now filter the inboxes, too, not just the selected mailboxes.
SpamSieve will now log if Apple Mail is stuck reading a certain message.
Improved the error logging when listing Apple Mail mailboxes.
Added AppleMailMailboxListerExtraMailboxes to the esoteric preferences, which makes it possible to select mailboxes for filtering that Apple Mail failed to include in its mailbox listing.
Microsoft Outlook:
Training an Outlook message as spam now removes the Good category.
Fixed a bug where SpamSieve would auto-launch when Outlook launched if Apple Mail filtering was enabled but Outlook filtering was disabled (and vice-versa).
Log:
You can now click on the Date column header to reverse the sort order in the Log window so that the most recent log entries are at the top. (For memory and performance reasons, Date is the only sortable column in the log.)
When opening the Log window, if no log entries are selected, it now auto-scrolls to show the most recent ones.
SpamSieve is better at reporting whether a server junk filter thought that a message was spam.
Improved the error log entry when SpamSieve lacks privacy access for the Use macOS Contacts feature.
General:
Improved the auto-creation of From (name) blocklist and allowlist rules so that SpamSieve learns more quickly when you train a message.
The Uncertain spam messages notification is now disabled by default, as most people only want to be notified about good messages.
Fixed a bug where the training keyboard shortcuts didn’t work in Apple Mail or Outlook when using a Greek keyboard layout.
Work around a Core Data bug that could cause a crash when saving the corpus.
Updated the Danish, Dutch, French, Japanese, and Spanish localizations.
Fixed a crash that could occur when processing an e-mail message with an improperly encoded ZIP file attachment.
Fixed a crash that could occur when updating the Dock icon during a software update.

New in SpamSieve 3.0.1 (Oct 20, 2023)

Highlights:
SpamSieve 3.0 brought a new way of integrating with Apple Mail—using a Mail extension—that’s compatible with macOS 14 Sonoma. Most customers have had success with this simpler system, where there’s no plug-in to install or rule to set up. Unfortunately, some customers encountered a macOS bug where Apple Mail stops sending new messages to SpamSieve’s Mail extension. This would cause spam messages to be left in the inbox, not because SpamSieve thought they were good, but because it hadn’t actually seen them.
We were aware of this problem affecting a small percentage of customers, and SpamSieve 3.0 included a built-in workaround: you could enable the Filter spam messages in other mailboxes feature and select your inboxes, and then SpamSieve would periodically check them for any new messages that Mail hadn’t sent to the extension. This worked, but there were a few downsides. You had to know—or see in the Log window or FAQ—that you needed to configure this. Also, there could be a slight delay before SpamSieve would detect the new messages; you could optionally enable a green flag to indicate to you when a message in the inbox had, in fact, been processed.
The main focus of SpamSieve 3.0.1 is improving this workaround so that everyone can get their mail filtered, even when Apple Mail is misbehaving. SpamSieve 3.0.1 adds a Check inboxes for new messages not sent to Mail extension feature that will automatically filter all of your inboxes, without your having to configure anything. Currently, this feature only kicks in if your inbox has fewer than 5,000 messages. We found that trying to read a larger inbox could cause Mail to freeze. If there are too many messages in the inbox, SpamSieve will skip it and tell you this in the Settings ‣ Apple Mail ‣ Setup window and in the Log window. Filtering will automatically resume if you move some messages to the Archive mailbox (or to another mailbox that you create, such as Inbox2) to get below the limit.
We undestand that needing to move messages is not ideal, but most customers are below the limit and we wanted to get the fix to them as soon as possible. If you have a fast Mac, it may be able to handle a higher limit, and you can adjust this in the esoteric preferences. For SpamSieve 3.0.2, we’re working on another way of accessing the messages, which will work for larger inboxes and with a much shorter delay.
To be clear, all of this only applies for customers impacted by the macOS bug that prevents new messages from being sent to SpamSieve’s Mail extension. For most people, Mail does send messages to the extension for filtering. If your inbox has a large number of messages but is being filtered properly by the extension, you can ignore any error messages that SpamSieve reports about there being too many messages. The error just means that SpamSieve couldn’t double-check that all the new messages were processed.
Apple Mail:
Added the Check inboxes for new messages not sent to Mail extension feature:
In the event that a macOS bug prevents Apple Mail from sending new messages to SpamSieve’s Mail extension for filtering, this will automatically find and filter new messages in the inbox.
This is enabled by default and will check the inboxes periodically using the same schedule that you’ve set for Filter spam messages in other mailboxes.
Inboxes with more than 5,000 total messages (shown as orange in the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet) will be skipped, to avoid slowing down or freezing Apple Mail.
We recommend reducing the size of the inbox by archiving older messages or moving them to another mailbox. This will ensure that your inbox is eligible for automatic filtering and also make inbox checks faster.
If you really want SpamSieve to try filtering a large inbox (shown in orange), you can manually select it in the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet or adjust the esoteric preferences.
Otherwise, you can remove any inboxes that you had added to the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet (to avoid duplicate checks).
To avoid disturbing old, unread messages that you may be purposely leaving in the inbox, Check inboxes for new messages not sent to Mail extension only processes messages received after the first time you launch SpamSieve 3.0.1. If you need to filter older messages in the inbox, you can select them and use the Filter Messages menu command.
Improved the new filtering system:
The Mail extension no longer overwrites the background color of good messages, so you can once again have Mail rules that set background colors for other reasons.
Worked around an Apple Mail bug that could prevent trained or filtered messages from moving to the trash.
Restored the prior behavior of leaving spam messages totally uncolored (rather than gray) when Color the background according to how spammy it is is unchecked.
If there’s an error moving a message to the Junk mailbox, SpamSieve now tries various fallback methods of moving it.
If the Mail extension encounters an error communicating with SpamSieve, it now flags the message orange instead of gray, since gray is now used for another purpose (see above).
If Apple Mail erroneously provides empty data for a message, SpamSieve will now always classify it as good, just to be safe, and it will also log some information about the location of the problematic message and then try again later.
Added an esoteric preference (click to enable/disable), which makes the Mail extension flag spam messages gray. Message background colors don’t sync between devices, but flags do, so this makes it possible to see on another device which messages in the Junk mailbox were put there by SpamSieve (rather than by a server filter). Also, the flag can be useful for separating spam messages from good ones in Apple Mail if Mail is for some reason unable to move the spam messages to the Junk mailbox.
Worked around an AppleScript error checking whether an account was enabled.
Fixed a bug where the details for some AppleScript error messages were lost.
Improved the Filter spam messages in other mailboxes feature:
This is now enabled by default, to avoid the problem of selecting mailboxes to filter but forgetting to enable the feature.
Previous versions of SpamSieve would warn you not to select a mailbox that was orange in the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet (having 5,000 or more messages) or red (10,000 or more messages). If you disregarded its advice, SpamSieve would respect your choice, but sometimes this could lead to Mail freezing and confusion as to what caused this. Now, SpamSieve will strictly enforce the red limit and skip filtering such mailboxes to avoid slowing down Apple Mail or causing it to freeze. If you think your Mac is super speedy and can handle more messages, you can raise the limit using the esoteric preferences.
If reading a particular mailbox causes a timeout error, SpamSieve now reports this in the log and recommends archiving some of the old messages to another mailbox that’s not selected for filtering.
SpamSieve will no longer try to filter mailboxes in accounts that are marked as disabled.
If a mailbox can’t be found because there are multiple mail accounts with the same name, SpamSieve will now try to figure out which account you meant and, failing that, show an error message saying that you should rename one of the accounts.
Fixed a bug where the wrong mailbox could be filtered if a top-level mailbox had the same name as a nested one.
Worked around an Apple Mail bug that could prevent moving POP messages to the Junk or Trash mailbox.
SpamSieve is better at handling errors from Mail when setting a message’s flag or read status.
Made some optimizations to speed up filtering.
Improved the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet:
SpamSieve is better at handling and reporting errors that Mail reports when reading the mailbox list.
The special mailboxes are now sorted to the top, like in Apple Mail.
Improved the recognition of special Junk and Archive mailboxes.
The special Archive mailbox is no longer selectable as filterable, since it doesn’t receive new messages.
Mailboxes that are not eligible for filtering are never shown in red or orange, even if they contain a large number of messages.
Improved the Add green flag to unread good messages feature:
Including in the inbox no longer tries to remove green flags from inboxes in accounts that are disabled.
In order to prevent Including in the inbox from causing slowness in Mail, SpamSieve will skip unflagging for large inboxes that show up as orange in the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet. It will also log an error if it looks like unflagging failed because there were too many messages in the mailbox.
Fixed a bug that could cause spurious errors to be logged when unflagging messages.
Improved the responsiveness of Mail during filtering and unflagging.
Improved the Mail plug-in:
Updated some error messages to account for SpamSieve’s new Settings window.
Fixed an error moving a trained spam message to the Trash mailbox.
In rare cases, SpamSieve asking Mail to deactivate its rules on macOS 14 can cause a crash, so you can now click here to tell SpamSieve not to do that. In that case, you should be sure to deactivate or delete the rules yourself.
General:
Fixed a bug where the training hotkeys sometimes didn’t work in Apple Mail or Outlook.
When you train a message as good in Apple Mail or Outlook, SpamSieve no longer marks it as unread if it’s not in a Junk mailbox. Also, clarified the labels in the Settings window to say that the message is only moved if it’s in the Junk mailbox. In other words, you can train messages in other mailboxes (e.g. as part of the initial training) without messing up how they are filed.
Worked around a Swift bug that could cause a crash when parsing an e-mail message’s address list.
Improved the filtering accuracy through more precise message parsing.
Added Danish and Swedish localizations.
Updated the Dutch, French, German, and Spanish localizations.
You can now access the the release notes from the Help menu.
Improved SpamSieve’s launch time by preloading scripts in the background.
Many sections of the manual have been revised or updated.
SpamSieve will now log at launch if it thinks the menu bar icon is set to be visible but doesn’t actually fit on screen due to other menu bar icons or the Mac’s camera housing. There is now an esoteric preference (click to enable/disable) to see in the log how it determined this.
Added an esoteric preference to suppress badging of the Dock icon, as in rare cases that can trigger a Core Image bug that causes a crash (click to disable/enable badging).
Fixed a bug where SpamSieve wouldn’t let you enter your license information into the Purchase window.
Importing From SpamSieve 2:
Worked around a Core Data bug that could cause an error saving the corpus when importing from SpamSieve 2.
Fixed a bug where SpamSieve could hang when importing certain malformed messages from SpamSieve 2.
Fixed a crash that could occur when importing from SpamSieve 2 if the corpus was damaged. SpamSieve will now just skip the damaged message.
Fixed a bug where certain settings migrated from SpamSieve 2 would make it show in the Settings window that trained messages would be moved to Junk, but actually they would not be moved.
Settings:
In the pop-up menu for the Move it to the Trash if the spam score is at least checkbox, the score of 50 is now labeled with all spam.
The menu item for opening the window is now called Settings, even on older versions of macOS, as having it called Preferences was confusing for people following the instructions in the manual.
SpamSieve will show a warning if Check inboxes for new messages not sent to Mail extension is disabled or if an inbox was skipped for filtering because it contained too many messages.
SpamSieve will now show a warning if you have Apple Mail mailboxes selected for filtering but Filter spam messages in other mailboxes is disabled.
SpamSieve will now show a warning if it skips filtering a mailbox because it’s too large.
Fixed the labels for the Uncertain spam messages slider, which were backwards.
Improved the display of Entourage and Postbox installation errors.
Blocklist and Allowlist:
Fixed a bug where changing whether a rule was enabled or locked from a rule list window didn’t work if the search field had focus.
Fixed a bug where the text to match in the rule editor sheet was unreadable in Dark Mode.
Worked around a Swift Regex bug that could cause a hang when matching a message against the blocklist or allowlist.
Fixed a crash that could occur when using the Import Addresses… command on macOS 10.15 or earlier.
Log:
SpamSieve is better at reporting whether a server filter thought that a message was spam.
When you copy a log entry to the clipboard, it now includes the sender’s name.
If the same error occurs multiple times when communicating with Apple Mail or Outlook, SpamSieve now only logs it once per hour.
Fixed a bug where viewing a partially deleted log entry could cause a crash.
Fixed a bug where some emoji were not available on macOS 10.14.

New in SpamSieve 3.0 (Sep 22, 2023)

Highlights:
SpamSieve 3 is compatible with macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) through macOS 14 (Sonoma) and is recommended for all customers using those versions of macOS. SpamSieve 3 is required for customers using Apple Mail with Sonoma. We recommend updating SpamSieve before updating to Sonoma.
When you launch SpamSieve 3, it will offer to automatically migrate all your old training data and accuracy statistics (so that you don’t need to retrain it), or you can choose to start fresh. Your SpamSieve 2 data is left untouched, so it’s possible to revert to the old version if necessary. The new version of the Apple Mail plug-in also works with SpamSieve 2. Training done with version 2 after updating to version 3 will stay with version 2 (and vice-versa).
The Apple Mail integration has been completely rewritten for compatibility with macOS 14 Sonoma. On Sonoma, SpamSieve now uses a Mail extension rather than a Mail plug-in (as Sonoma no longer supports plug-ins). The extension needs to be enabled in Mail’s Settings ‣ Extensions window. It is no longer necessary to install any files or to give SpamSieve Full Disk Access. You will now train SpamSieve from the SpamSieve menu bar icon at the top of the screen or from SpamSieve’s Dock icon, rather than from the Message menu in Mail.
If you had previously used SpamSieve with Apple Mail, the first time SpamSieve launches on Sonoma it will explain how to make the transition to using the Mail extension. The new setup is also described in the Setting Up Apple Mail section of the manual. With earlier versions of macOS, you can continue using the Mail plug-in, as before. With macOS 13 Ventura and macOS 12 Monterey, you can choose whether to use the Mail extension (which is simpler to set up) or the Mail plug-in (which is more customizable). You can click Uninstall Plug-In… (which will also offer to delete the old Mail rule) in Settings ‣ Apple Mail ‣ Setup if you plan to switch all your Macs to using the extension.
The Microsoft Outlook support has been rewritten to be simpler and easier to set up. It is no longer necessary to install any script files. The Outlook Filter Mailboxes helper app is no longer needed. If you don’t store large amounts of Mail in your inbox, it’s no longer necessary to create any rules in Outlook.
If you had previously used SpamSieve with Outlook, you can continue to use the existing scripts and Outlook Filter Mailboxes, or you can remove the Outlook Filter Mailboxes app and switch to the new setup by following either the Setting Up Outlook or Setting Up Outlook (Large Inboxes) instructions.
SpamSieve’s e-mail parser has been rewritten in Swift for better accuracy, stability, and speed. SpamSieve is better able to understand messages that use newer e-mail formats, as well as malformed messages that don’t follow the specification. Where previous versions might get confused and give up (ignoring parts of the message) or even crash, the new parser engine is more resilient. Being able to read and understand more of the e-mail message increases the filtering accuracy, since it’s able to see spammy content that was invisible to SpamSieve 2, either because of bugs in the e-mail sending software or because spammers were deliberately trying to evade filters.
The corpus, blocklist, and allowlist have been rewritten to use a new database format. This greatly reduces SpamSieve’s launch time and memory use, while enabling lots of new features.
The text-based log file and history database have been replaced by a new log database and Log window, which is easier to browse and search. The log includes lots more information about each message to help you understand what SpamSieve did and why, and what you might want to do in response. It should be your first stop when troubleshooting.
The Settings window has been redesigned, consolidating options and commands that were previously in other menus, scripts, or esoteric preferences. Many of the labels have been reworded for clarity, and there are now links to open relevant sections of the help for more detailed explanations.
There is now a Show Dock icon setting to more easily hide SpamSieve’s Dock icon. With the Dock icon hidden, you can access all of SpamSieve’s windows and commands from the new SpamSieve menu bar icon. If both the Dock icon and menu bar icon are hidden, you can still access the settings by opening SpamSieve from your Applications folder when it’s already running.
Apple Mail:
Filtering is now controlled from within SpamSieve’s Settings window rather than from Mail’s settings. You can now choose to Enable spam filtering using Mail extension (for the newer, simpler setup) or Enable spam filtering using Mail plug-in (which works the same way as in SpamSieve 2). You can also select Disable spam filtering in Apple Mail to temporarily turn off filtering (without having to uninstall anything).
The Settings window has new buttons to Install Plug-In or Uninstall Plug-In…. The latter will also uninstall any SpamSieve rules. To stop using the Mail extension, you can just select Disable spam filtering in Apple Mail, which removes SpamSieve’s launch agent. There’s nothing further to uninstall, aside from the app itself.
There’s a new Filter Messages menu command to manually apply SpamSieve to the selected messages. This has a keyboard shortcut of Command-Control-L. Mail’s Apply Rules command has a keyboard shortcut of Command-Option-L, and it still works to apply the Mail rules, but it no longer applies SpamSieve when using the Mail extension (because there is no more SpamSieve rule).
We have long recommended setting Mail to move the messages SpamSieve catches to the All Junk mailbox rather than to the Spam mailbox. This is still the case when using the Mail plug-in, and with the Mail extension the Spam mailbox is no longer an option. There remains a SpamSieve setting to control where spam messages move when you train them. If you had been using Spam, you may want to change this to Junk so that all your spam messages end up in the same place.
SpamSieve normally moves spam messages to the Junk mailbox. When using the Mail extension, there’s a new Move it to the Trash if the spam score is at least option. This separates the more spammy messages (in Trash), which are less likely to be mistakes, from the less spammy ones (in Junk), so that you can concentrate your efforts on reviewing those. For example, if you set the score to 99, when you train a message as spam, its sender will go on SpamSieve’s blocklist, and future messages from the same name or address will go directly to the Trash.
There’s a new Mark it as read setting to mark new messages as read if SpamSieve thinks they’re spam, e.g. so that you aren’t distracted by the unread count in Mail’s sidebar.
The Color the background according to how spammy it is setting is now available in the Settings window (instead of via the Change Settings command). There’s now a legend so that you can see which spam levels the different colors correspond to.
There’s a new Filter spam messages in other mailboxes option. This makes it possible for SpamSieve to filter messages that other rules (either in Mail or on your mail server) moved out of the inbox. This is especially important when using the Mail extension, because Mail only sends new messages to the extension if they remain in the inbox after processing your Mail rules. With the Mail plug-in, this was not a concern because the SpamSieve rule was at the top of the list, so it was applied first. However, even with the plug-in, Mail does not apply rules to messages that were moved out of the inbox by a server rule or by another device before they got to your Mac. With this option, it is now possible for SpamSieve to filter all new messages, no matter where they are.
Filtering messages in other mailboxes is not immediate: SpamSieve needs to periodically check whether any new messages have arrived. If you receive lots of new messages and spend a lot of time in Mail, you may see a new message before SpamSieve does. It may not be clear whether a spam message is visible because SpamSieve made a mistake and thought it was good or simply because SpamSieve hadn’t had a chance to examine it yet. The new Add green flag to unread good messages option lets you choose to have SpamSieve mark messages that it has checked with a green flag. Messages with no flag are pending processing; they are not mistakes that need to be trained as spam.
In rare cases, a Mail bug may prevent new messages from being sent to the SpamSieve extension for analysis. You can enable green flags for the inbox using the Including in the inbox option, and if this and the Log window show that SpamSieve is not seeing the inbox messages, you can add the inboxes to the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet to have SpamSieve filter them without relying on the Mail extension.
You can now control from the Settings window whether messages that you train as spam are moved to the Junk, to the Trash mailbox, or to a custom mailbox; and whether they should be marked as read. You can also control whether messages trained as good are moved back to the inbox or marked as unread.
SpamSieve now shows an error message and help link in the settings if it’s missing Automation access to control Apple Mail or Full Disk Access to use the Apple Mail plug-in.
The new Setting the Junk Mailbox in Apple Mail section to the manual consolidates and updates several previous sections.
The Apple Mail - Rescue Good Messages and Apple Mail - Remote Training scripts are still supported. They do not need to be updated to continue working with SpamSieve 3. They work best when SpamSieve is set to move trained messages to the Junk mailbox.
Outlook:
Filtering is now controlled by SpamSieve itself rather than using the Outlook Filter Mailboxes helper app. In SpamSieve’s Settings window, you can choose to Enable spam filtering for Inbox. This is a simpler setup that’s available for users who don’t keep lots of old messages in the inbox. You can also choose to Enable spam filtering for InboxSpamSieve, which uses Outlook rules to temporarily store messages in the InboxSpamSieve folder until they have been processed, as with previous versions of SpamSieve. You can also select Disable spam filtering in Outlook to temporarily turn off filtering or if you want to uninstall—there are no more extra files that need to be manually deleted.
You can now train SpamSieve from the SpamSieve menu bar icon at the top of the screen or from SpamSieve’s Dock icon, rather than from the system script menu. The training commands now have keyboard shortcuts.
There’s a new Filter Messages menu command to manually apply SpamSieve to the selected messages.
You can now set in the Settings window how often SpamSieve checks for new messages to filter. There’s also a Filter Now button that shows whether filtering is currently in progress and lets you tell SpamSieve to filter right away.
The Settings window now has a Mark less spammy messages as “Uncertain Junk” checkbox. There are also checkboxes to control whether messages trained as spam (or good) are moved to the Junk E-mail folder (or to the inbox) or marked as read (or as unread).
SpamSieve still supports Outlook 2011. This works the same way as in SpamSieve 2, except that the scripts can now be installed directly from the Settings window, and there are links to the setup instructions right there.
SpamSieve now shows an error message and help link in the settings if it’s missing Automation access to control Apple Mail or Outlook.
Other Settings:
The Filters and Training settings have been consolidated. There are now buttons to open the various SpamSieve windows directly from the Settings window, along with links to open the relevant help sections. The old Use Habeas Safelist, “ADV” messages are spam, and Encoded HTML mail is spam filters have been retired. The old Allow good/spam duplicates in corpus checkboxes were not very useful and have been removed.
The Update Address Book “Me” Card command has been replaced with an Edit Addresses button, as it no longer worked due to privacy restrictions in macOS. This is useful in conjunction with the Catch spam sent from my own addresses setting (which used to be called Exclude my addresses).
Notification sounds are now shown without filename extensions and are remembered even if extension hidden flag is changed.
SpamSieve now supports Notification Center, with options for notifying for Good messages sent from Contacts, Other good messages, The number of new good messages, and Uncertain spam messages. There’s now a slider for controlling which messages are considered uncertain. The old support for Growl notifications has been retired.
There’s a new Other Clients tab of the Settings, which offers installation buttons and links to the setup instructions for the other mail apps that SpamSieve supports.
Bayesian Filtering:
SpamSieve is better able to understand Emoji and Asian languages, so that runs of these characters are properly tokenized into words even when they are not separated by whitespace. This greatly improves the filtering accuracy for messages containing such characters.
SpamSieve also has a better understanding of Unicode normalization and of certain special characters, which improves recognition of words that had been seen before, but in a slightly different form.
Made various other changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
Rules Filtering:
Normally, when you train a message as spam, SpamSieve will disable any matching allowlist rules; and when you train a message as good, SpamSieve will disable any matching blocklist rules. This prevents such “incorrect” rules from causing filtering mistakes for future messages. SpamSieve now lets you lock certain rules, which prevents them from being automatically disabled in this manner. This is useful when you are really sure that a rule does what you intend, for example if you want messages matching a certain rule to always be classified as good, even if some spam messages also match that rule.
SpamSieve is much faster at matching messages against mailing list rules.
Regex rules work better with Unicode text.
Added logging to help detect slow regexes that are slowing down rule filtering.
If you have a rule that has matched a lot of messages, SpamSieve no longer stops counting at 65,535 hits.
Corpus Window:
The Words tab of the Corpus window works much the same as before, but it’s much faster to open and to change the sorted column. A large corpus can take a while to reload after an update, and this now happens in the background, rather than blocking the user interface and filtering. The text is larger and easier to read.
There are new tabs in the Corpus window where you can view the list of Good Messages and Spam Messages that SpamSieve has been trained with. In most cases, the full message data is not available for messages trained with SpamSieve 2, so in that case only placeholders will be shown. For messages trained with SpamSieve 3, you can view metadata about the message, as well as when and how it was trained. You can also view the message’s rendered content and its raw source and MIME structure.
Messages can now be trained from the Corpus window. Normally, it’s better to train from within your mail client, but sometimes you can’t find a message in the mail client or it’s already been deleted, due to a client or server bug or another device moving the message to a local mailbox. Having the message available in the Corpus window lets you properly update SpamSieve’s training in such cases. Previously, the only way to fix an incorrect training if you no longer had the message was to reset the corpus. Also, you can view the lists of spam and good messages to make sure that SpamSieve has been trained properly, i.e. that there were no mistakes that you forgot to correct.
You can flag messages of note to come back to them later.
You can open SpamSieve’s copy of a message into your e-mail client to reply to it there or to copy it back to the mail server.
You can drag and drop messages out of the corpus window to export them for backup or for reporting to customer support.
Searches now support wildcards (* and ?), and you can also search for messages by their subject, address, or SpamSieve identifier.
The Corpus window now supports secondary sorting.
Rules Windows:
The Blocklist and Allowlist windows work much the same as before, but they’re much faster to open, loading now happens in the background, and the text is larger and easier to read.
The “whitelist” has been renamed to “allowlist,” as recommended by the IETF and Apple.
There are new columns to show when a rule was last Modified and when it last Matched a message. The Hits column has been replaced with separate columns to show the number of Correct and Incorrect times it was used to classify a message. This can help you identify rules that are not working as expected.
Secondary sorting is now supported. For example, to find allowlist rules that you might no longer need, you could sort by Date Created and then by Correct, to see all the rules with 0 hits ordered by how old they are.
Editing a rule now takes place in a separate sheet, where there’s more room to see the different options and to edit the text. You can now see live whether the regex that you entered is valid. The sheet also shows information about when and how the rule was created and how it has been used.
There’s a space to enter comments for each rule, e.g. to help you remember why you created a rule or how a regex was intended to work. You can search for rules by comment.
You can also flag a rule that you’re observing or tweaking or that you’ve put on probation to easily find it again later.
Rules with invalid regular expressions are shown in red. Some rules created with SpamSieve 2 may need to be updated, as the regex engine has changed from PCRE to ICU.
Changes that you make to rules are now undoable.
Searches now support wildcards (* and ?).
Log:
The new Log window shows all the message trainings and predictions, as before. They are now color-coded so that you can see SpamSieve’s accuracy: green means that it was correct, orange indicates a false negative, and red indicates a false positive.
You can now view a message’s rendered content and its raw source and MIME structure, rather than just its metadata. There’s a new setting to control how long SpamSieve should store the full message data for old log entries, to prevent it from using too much storage.
Log entries show more information about each message. You can see which mail client (and in some cases which account and mailbox) a message came from. You can see whether a server junk filter agreed with SpamSieve about whether or not a message is spam. It also shows more information about what SpamSieve did with the message and why. If a log message is for a training, and you’ve correcting SpamSieve, the training log entry will show you information right there about why SpamSieve made that mistake. You can also search the log for the message’s identifier to see all the log entries related to that message. The log will also try to alert you to unusual situations, e.g. if you trained a message that was not actually a SpamSieve mistake, or if the exact same message had been repeatedly classified or trained.
The log also shows new types of entries. You can see changes that you or SpamSieve have made to rules. You can see errors reported by the mail client when SpamSieve asks it to do something—information that was previously only available in the system log.
SpamSieve 2 recorded less extensive log and history information, but SpamSieve 3 imports it and updates it to the new format where possible. If you had enabled the experimental message backup feature in SpamSieve 2, to protect against the Mail data loss bug, any backed up messages will now be available in the Log window. Messages from the old Save false negatives to disk feature are also imported.
As with the corpus, you can open messages from the log in Apple Mail and other mail clients or export them via drag and drop.
If SpamSieve thinks that processing a particular message caused a crash, it will be shown in red in the log. You can drag the log entry into an e-mail to report the problematic data to us so that we can try to prevent the crash in the future.
You can also see whether a particular message took an abnormally long time to process and report such problematic messages.
The contents of the log are now localized.
Log entries can now display context-specific links to help pages. For example, there is a particular link that’s only relevant when you are using Apple Mail and the Mail extension and you’ve trained a message in the inbox that SpamSieve had not seen before as spam.
If you’ve enabled notifications for new messages, e.g. to see which messages SpamSieve is uncertain about, clicking the notification will find that message in the log.
The log database is now stored as shards, so it works much better with backups (old shards rarely change and so won’t need to be recopied) and is more resilient (if one file becomes damaged, you don’t have to throw away the entire log).
Message data is no longer stored in plaintext, to avoid problems with anti-virus software deleting data out from under SpamSieve, even though it was inert.
Diagnostic reports now include a fixed number of recent log entries, whereas previously there could be too much or too little data depending on when the log file had last rolled over.
Statistics Window:
The accuracy statistics now ignore duplicate classifications of the same message.
Calculating the corpus and rules statistics no longer blocks the user interface.
Show Statistics Since now uses a date picker rather than a free-form text field in a separate sheet.
General:
SpamSieve has a new Dock icon. The top-left of the icon shows an envelope when SpamSieve is idle, a downward pointing arrow when SpamSieve is classifying a message, a check mark when it’s training a message as good, and an x mark when it’s training a message as spam.
You can now open the Settings window from the Dock menu.
The SpamSieve menu bar icon changes color while an operation initiated by the menu or a hotkey is in progress (blue when filtering messages, green when training as good, and brown when training as spam).
AppleScript support for the corpus and rules has been rewritten to be faster and use less memory. You can now use considering case and ignoring case blocks when looking up words and rules.
The Setting Up Airmail instructions now have screenshots.
Each help page now has a link to a Google translation so you can view it in a different language.
Removed support for PowerMail 4.x; versions 5.x and 6.x are still supported.
Updated the Dutch, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish localizations.
Removed the Danish, Italian, Korean, Russian, Swedish, and Vietnamese localizations, which are out-of-date. If you’d like to help update the localizations (or add a new one), please contact [email protected].

New in SpamSieve 2.9.52 (Mar 10, 2023)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.51 (Jan 11, 2023)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.50 (Aug 4, 2022)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.49 (Jun 23, 2022)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.48 (Jun 23, 2022)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.47 (Dec 6, 2021)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.46 (Oct 15, 2021)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.45 (Sep 8, 2021)

Added support for Apple Mail on the forthcoming macOS 12.0. (An additional update was required due to late changes in Monterey Developer Beta 6.) We recommend updating SpamSieve before updating to Monterey. SpamSieve 2.9.45 should automatically update the installed version of its Apple Mail plug-in, however if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu and to enable the plug-in.
Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
On macOS 10.15 and later, we now recommend configuring Apple Mail and SpamSieve to move spam messages to the special All Junk mailbox rather than to the Spam mailbox. This simplifies many setup procedures and works around some Mail bugs that, in rare cases, can cause spam messages that SpamSieve has caught to appear in the inbox as well in as the Spam mailbox or to be deleted instead of moved to the Spam mailbox.
New installations of SpamSieve will use the Junk mailbox by default, and the manual has been rewritten with this new setup in mind.
If you are already using SpamSieve with a Spam mailbox and are not encountering the bugs mentioned above, you can continue with your current setup. It will keep working the same way as before, without your having to change anything.
The Switching From the Spam Mailbox to the Junk Mailbox section of the manual explains all of this in more detail and describes how you can update an existing SpamSieve setup if desired.
When you enter Deleted Messages as the spam mailbox name for training in Change Settings (Apple Mail), SpamSieve now moves the messages to the account-specific trash mailbox instead of to the local one, working around a macOS bug in that could cause the message to be deleted instead of moved.
Added the Separating Spam Caught by SpamSieve and Server Filters section of the manual.
Added the Apple Mail - Rescue Good Messages script, which moves good messages that were incorrectly caught by a server junk filter from the Junk mailbox to the inbox. This is similar to the old Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox script but is easier to set up because you can just install the script file without having to edit it first.
The Apple Mail - Remote Training script now works when SpamSieve is configured to use the special Junk mailbox. In such cases, you can now download the script and use it directly. There is no need to edit it, as with previous versions.
The Apple Mail - SaneBox script now works when SpamSieve is configured to use the special Junk mailbox.
The Apple Mail - Move If Spam script now works when SpamSieve is configured to use the special Junk mailbox.
Improved the error reporting when you’ve launched an incomplete copy of SpamSieve from a Carbon Copy Cloner SafetyNet folder.
Improved the following sections of the manual:
Resetting Mail’s Private Plug-Ins Folder
Sending in an Error Report
Setting Up Apple Mail

New in SpamSieve 2.9.44 (Jul 5, 2021)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.43 (Feb 23, 2021)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.42 (Jan 20, 2021)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.41 (Dec 13, 2020)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.40 (Oct 20, 2020)

Added support for Apple Mail on the forthcoming macOS 11.0 Big Sur. We recommend updating SpamSieve before updating to Big Sur. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu and enable the plug-in.
Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
SpamSieve now works with Apple Mail when running on an Apple Silicon Mac.
On macOS 11, you can now hold down the Option key when installing SpamSieve’s Apple Mail plug-in to clear out any active plug-in files that may be preventing Mail from loading the plug-in. (Other third-party Mail plug-ins will be disabled but not deleted; they can be re-enabled using the Manage Plug-in… button in Mail’s preferences.) This is much easier than the former method on macOS 10.14 and 10.15 that required temporarily disabling SIP.
Restored Web bug protection in Apple Mail on macOS 11 since it seems to fix the issue in macOS 10.15 that necessitated disabling it.
The Apple Mail plug-in now has a stapled notarization ticket so that it can be loaded even if the Mac can’t contact Apple’s notarization servers.
The Apple Mail plug-in installer is better at working around macOS quarantine bugs.
It is now possible to save a diagnostic report when SpamSieve’s Dock icon is hidden (and thus the Help menu is inaccessible) by clicking a special link.
The Setting Up Outlook section of the manual now explains that you should turn off the New Outlook switch because it does not support AppleScript.
SpamSieve now requires macOS 10.9 or later.
Improved the diagnostic report.
If a duplicate Apple Mail plug-in is installed, SpamSieve now reveals it to you in Finder.
The Apple Mail installer is better at reporting when the loaded version of the plug-in is different from the installed version, to help track down data vaults problems.
Added a workaround for a macOS privacy performance bug.
Fixed a regression where SpamSieve would unnecessarily update its Mail plug-in at each launch.
If an icon file is damaged, the error message now suggests installing a fresh copy of SpamSieve.
Fixed a bug where the text of an Apple Mail installer alert wasn’t accurate if you had relocated your Mac’s home folder.
Fixed a bug where the tags field was inappropriately shown.
Improved the following sections of the manual:
Checking the Airmail Setup
Enabling and Updating the Apple Mail Plug-In
If Apple Mail Is Running Slowly
If the Apple Mail Plug-In Doesn’t Appear in the List or Doesn’t Stay Enabled
Outlook IMAP/Exchange Account Rules
Setting Up Apple Mail
Setting Up Gmail, iCloud, Yahoo, AOL, or Other Web Mail
Using a Spam Mailbox on the Server
Why does a message disappear or go back to the spam mailbox after I train it as good?

New in SpamSieve 2.9.39 (Mar 5, 2020)

Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
When you select spam messages in Apple Mail, the message list text is more readable through a variety of highlight colors.
Added the Processing Messages Before SpamSieve and Setting Up Airmail 1–3 sections of the manual.
Worked around a change in the forthcoming macOS 10.15.4 that could prevent Mail from loading SpamSieve’s plug-in if you had relocated your home folder to another volume. If Mail reports an error loading the plug-in, choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu to update it.
Worked around an Apple Mail bug that could, in rare cases on macOS 10.15, cause spam messages to be marked as spam but not moved to the Spam mailbox. If this is happening for you, choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu to enable the workaround.
A small percentage of Apple Mail users are seeing a macOS 10.15 bug where a rule that is supposed to move messages to an IMAP or Exchange mailbox instead deletes them. If this is happening for you, make sure that your SpamSieve rule is set to move the messages to a local mailbox under On My Mac (as recommended in the Setting up Apple Mail section of the manual) rather than to a mailbox on the mail server.
A small percentage of Apple Mail users are seeing a macOS 10.15 bug where moving a message to an IMAP or Exchange mailbox (either via drag-and-drop or via AppleScript, as SpamSieve does) instead deletes it. If this is happening for you, you can use the Change Settings command to set SpamSieve to (a) move messages trained as spam to a local Spam mailbox (this is the default); and (b) not move messages trained as good back to the inbox (you can instead copy them by Option-dragging or using the menu command).
SpamSieve now includes an experimental feature to save backup copies of the messages that it has processed. This can help prevent data loss if you are one of the unlucky users affected by a bug in the macOS 10.15 version of Apple Mail that can delete messages when moving them from one mailbox to another. The bug is not actually related to SpamSieve and also manifests when it’s not installed. However, training messages with SpamSieve is a common reason that Mail would be asked to move messages, possibly triggering the bug. And since SpamSieve sees the messages, anyway, it’s in a good position to help mitigate the bug. For more information about backups and how to enable them, please see the Backing Up Messages section of the manual.
If you are running into a bug in macOS 10.15 where Mail hangs for 10+ seconds during launch, the If Apple Mail Is Running Slowly section of the manual now describes how you can work around this by disabling and re-enabling SpamSieve’s plug-in.
Worked around an Apple Mail bug that could cause the Preferences window to be blank on macOS 10.15, making it impossible to enable SpamSieve’s plug-in or to access other Mail settings.
When installing the Apple Mail plug-in, SpamSieve will now warn you if Mail’s files are stored on a different volume than your home folder, which would prevent Mail from loading the plug-in on macOS 10.14 or later.
If SpamSieve detects that macOS’s AppleScript system files are damaged, which can prevent training from working, it will now recommend that you reinstall macOS.
After installing the Apple Mail plug-in, we recommend clicking the Quit and Show Instructions button. If you opt not to do this, the other button is now titled Continue rather than Cancel, to better reflect that the plug-in has still been installed and still needs to be enabled.
There’s now an esoteric preference to mark Outlook messages as unread after filtering, to work around a mysterious issue where moving a message to another folder caused it to be marked as read.
SpamSieve now logs to Console to help you detect inefficient regexes that slow down rule matching.
Revised the Apple Mail and Postbox plug-ins for new macOS notarization requirements.
Fixed a bug where training a message as good in Apple Mail could switch to displaying the inbox instead of moving the message to the inbox.
Fixed a bug where SpamSieve could warn you that the Apple Mail plug-in was not enabled if Mail relaunched while SpamSieve was in the process of uninstalling.
Fixed a bug where relaunching Apple Mail while SpamSieve was reminding you to enable the plug-in could result in a duplicate alert being shown.
Improved the following sections of the manual:
How can I copy my training data to another machine?
If the Apple Mail Plug-In Doesn’t Appear in the List or Doesn’t Stay Enabled
Setting Up Airmail
Setting Up an Apple Mail Drone
Turning Off the FastMail Spam Filter
Why are messages marked as spam in Apple Mail but not moved?

New in SpamSieve 2.9.38 (Nov 20, 2019)

SpamSieve 2.9.38 (and also 2.9.37) are compatible with macOS 10.15, however a small number of customers are seeing issues with the Catalina version of Apple Mail. The latest information about Catalina is available here.
Worked around an AppleScript bug in Apple Mail on macOS 10.15 that could result in messages trained as good being moved to the inbox of an account that’s disabled, making it look like the messages disappeared. This fix is available for all new installations and for older ones if you choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. (If you weren’t seeing this problem or have no disabled accounts, it’s not necessary to update the plug-in.)
Worked around an issue that could prevent some Apple Mail messages from being filtered through SpamSieve if SpamSieve had not yet launched and the Mac was overloaded, e.g. because it was relaunching all apps after logging in.
Worked around a problem where SpamSieve could be slow to launch if the system privacy database was overloaded.
Added the If the Apple Mail Plug-In Doesn’t Appear in the List or Doesn’t Stay Enabled section of the manual.
A macOS 10.15 bug can prevent Apple Mail messages from being moved to the Spam mailbox, leaving them colored as spam in the inbox. SpamSieve now offers an alternate Apple Mail Script Rule setup for the small number of customers affected by this bug.
Added an experimental esoteric preference (click to enable/disable) to flag incoming spam messages as gray. A few customers are running into a Mail bug in macOS 10.15 that prevents rules from moving messages (even when using an Apple Mail Script Rule). This workaround makes it possible to set up a smart mailbox for gray flagged messages, so that they can easily be viewed and bulk-deleted even if the messages remain in the inbox.
Worked around some bugs in macOS 10.15 that could cause Mail to hang when SpamSieve launched.
If the Rules file is damaged, SpamSieve will now report some more information about the problem.
The Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox script now has an option to only mark confirmed spam messages as read, leaving them in the server spam mailbox rather than moving them to a shared spam mailbox.
Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when a Software Update… error occurred.
Fixed a bug with the crash reporter window and Dark Mode.
Modernized the localizations.
Improved the following sections of the manual:
Enabling and Updating the Apple Mail Plug-In
How can I rebuild Apple Mail’s database?
Setting Up Apple Mail
Turning Off Microsoft Spam Filters
Why does a message disappear or go back to the spam mailbox after I train it as good?

New in SpamSieve 2.9.37 (Aug 20, 2019)

SpamSieve is now compatible with Apple Mail under macOS 10.15 (which is now in beta).
It’s best to update to SpamSieve 2.9.37 now, before updating to macOS 10.15. If you are already using macOS 10.15, the SpamSieve 2.9.36 auto-updater won’t work, so you should instead use the Download button in the Software Update… window and install the update manually, according to the instructions in the Read Me file. Once you have SpamSieve 2.9.37, auto-updates on macOS 10.15 will work normally.
Updated the documentation for macOS 10.15.
The Outlook - Filter Mailboxes app is now notarized for compatibility with macOS 10.15. If you’ve already installed the helper app, it should not be necessary to update it, but this change is needed for future updates as well as new installations.
Various Apple Mail error messages and documentation are better at reminding you to grant SpamSieve Full Disk Access when not having that might be the cause of the error, e.g. SpamSieve thinking its plug-in is not loaded.
Apple Mail on macOS 10.15 has a bug where it will not load plug-ins that are installed in the normal location if you’ve redirected your home folder to another volume. If SpamSieve detects this situation, it will apply a workaround (moving the plug-in to an alternate location) and show an alert that explains what it’s doing.
Renamed the “Setting Up Outlook 365” section of the manual to Setting Up Outlook, as it covers all current versions of Outlook, not just 365. This section has also been substantially rewritten to make it clearer what to do for each type of account.
The Can other Apple Mail plug-ins cause problems with SpamSieve? section of the manual now recommends using Mail’s own plug-in manager instead of manipulating the Bundles folder directly.
Fixed a bug where SpamSieve would sometimes ask you to enable an old Apple Mail plug-in (which wasn’t possible, because it was old) and quit, where instead it should have offered to update it first.
Worked around an Apple Mail bug where training a message as good sometimes didn’t move it to the inbox because Mail reported a script error when checking whether the account was enabled.
Improved the diagnostic report.
Software Update… reports a better error message if it was unable to install the new version of the app.

New in SpamSieve 2.9.36 (May 26, 2019)

Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
When using Outlook 365, you can now use Outlook rules to organize messages into folders, and SpamSieve will filter them (rather than just the messages in the inbox). The details for how to set this up are in Filtering Other Folders in the Setting Up Outlook 365 section of the manual. (This has always worked automatically, with no special setup, in previous versions of Outlook and in Apple Mail.)
After you manually refilter messages in Outlook, SpamSieve now clears the selection to prevent accidental bulk training when correcting a spam message that remains.
Fixed a problem where some Apple Mail messages that were colored as spam still displayed with white text in Dark Mode, which was difficult to read.
If SpamSieve encounters an error because your Mac’s storage is full, it now displays information about the free space available and recommends Apple’s guide to freeing up storage space.
SpamSieve reports a more useful error message if it determines that the reason its application package is damaged is because it’s running from a Carbon Copy Cloner safety net.
Improved the error message when uninstalling the Apple Mail plug-in if SpamSieve hasn’t been granted Full Disk Access.
Improved the error message when SpamSieve doesn’t have access to your Contacts.
Worked around a problem where asking Apple Mail for the list of mailboxes could cause it to hang at launch.
When training a good message in Apple Mail, if SpamSieve can’t find the proper inbox it logs more information to help figure out what happened.
Fixed a bug displaying the number of licenses in the Purchase window.
Fixed a bug where debug logging of messages that caused parser crashes wasn’t working with Apple Mail.
The diagnostic report now includes information about when the privacy database was last reset.
Diagnostic reports now work better when SpamSieve lacks Full Disk Access.
Updated to Xcode 10.2.
Improved the following sections of the manual:
Does SpamSieve stop Web bugs?
How can I hide SpamSieve’s Dock icon?
Security & Privacy Access
Setting Up Airmail
Why do Apple Mail messages bounce back to the inbox after I train them as spam?

New in SpamSieve 2.9.35 (Dec 21, 2018)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.34 (Nov 1, 2018)

Outlook Filter Mailboxes now shows a more helpful error message if it lacks Automation access on macOS 10.14.
Due to changes in Airmail and macOS 10.14, Airmail versions 3.6.3 through 3.6.41 are not compatible with SpamSieve when using macOS 10.14. You should use Airmail 3.6.42 or later.
When checking the setup for your e-mail client, the instructions now recommend verifying that Automation access has been granted.
The Apple Mail - Discard Spam script reports a better error if Mail times out because there were too many messages in the trash.
Updated the Security & Privacy Access section of the manual.
The About window now includes a link to the privacy policy and has an updated layout.
Updated SpamSieve’s code signing for the latest Apple notarization requirements.
Fixed a bug where training a message as spam in Apple Mail would display the Spam mailbox instead of moving the message if you were using the old GUI scripting workaround on macOS 10.12 or later with a non-US localization.
Fixed a bug where SpamSieve could get confused by the presence of Fluid App instances.
Made a variety of changes to work better with Apple Mail on macOS 10.14:
SpamSieve now uses a variety of heuristics to better detect when Mail has finished launching before checking that its plug-in is enabled. This helps avoid annoying dialogs and prevents unnecessary rule deactivations if Mail takes a really long time to launch, e.g. on a slower Mac that has rebooted and is restoring all the previously open applications at once or if a utility such as iLock has halted Mail during the launch process.
SpamSieve can now protect you from a disabled plug-in when Mail launches after SpamSieve launches, e.g. if you are using SpamSieve with multiple mail clients and so SpamSieve is not always launched as a result of Mail launching.
SpamSieve now detects and repairs problems with Mail’s preferences folder that could prevent Mail from showing the Manage Plug-ins… button.
If macOS has forgotten that you gave SpamSieve Full Disk Access, SpamSieve will now detect this and remind you to grant it again.
If SpamSieve can’t install its Mail plug-in because it doesn’t have Full Disk Access, it no longer suggests that you install the plug-in manually. (It is better for you to grant access and then try the automatic installer again.)
If you’ve previously declined to give SpamSieve Automation access to control Mail, SpamSieve will now remind you to do this (and open System Preferences for you) when you try to train a message, instead of failing silently.
The Apple Mail - Remote Training and Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox scripts, when running as standalone applications, now explain to you that they need Automation access in order to function.
Adjusted the launch agent so that SpamSieve more reliably launches when Mail launches, and sandbox errors aren’t logged to Console.
Since version 2.9.21, SpamSieve has overridden the text color in Mail’s message list in order to improve the contrast and readability for spam messages that are marked with a colored background. This now works on macOS 10.14, including with Dark Mode.
The AppleMailAllJunkMessagesUseBlackText esoteric preference now switches the color for Dark Mode on macOS 10.14.
SpamSieve now logs more information to Console and diagnostic reports to help diagnose problems with the Mail plug-in.
The alert and manual now clarify that, if you no longer want to use SpamSieve with Mail, you can prevent SpamSieve from reminding you to enable the plug-in by uninstalling it.
SpamSieve no longer wastes time waiting for Mail to launch when there are no rules for it to reactivate, anyway.
Fixed an error reporting bug when activating the Mail rules.
Fixed a bug where a fresh install on macOS 10.14 wouldn’t remember that the Mail plug-in had been installed.

New in SpamSieve 2.9.33 (Nov 1, 2018)

Streamlined the flow of using SpamSieve with Apple Mail on macOS 10.14. SpamSieve does a better of job of guiding you through the Mojave security changes to make setup as easy as possible. For the smoothest experience, we recommend updating to SpamSieve 2.9.33 before you update your Mac to macOS 10.14.
On macOS 10.14, it is possible for an Apple Mail plug-in to be installed but not yet enabled. When SpamSieve’s plug-in is not enabled, the SpamSieve rule(s) in Mail cannot function properly and may move new good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve. SpamSieve now protects you from this by automatically deactivating the rules if it notices that the plug-in is disabled. Once you’ve enabled the plug-in, it reactivates the rule(s) for you.
For completeness, we mention that there is a chance that Mail will move some messages before SpamSieve can deactivate the rule(s), e.g. because Mail downloaded them while SpamSieve was launching or because you declined when SpamSieve requested access to control Mail. If you end up with some good messages in the spam mailbox that are uncolored (because Mail moved them without consulting SpamSieve), you can just drag them back to your inbox.
If you want to fully prevent messages from being moved to the spam mailbox, you can manually deactivate (uncheck) the SpamSieve rule(s) in Mail’s preferences until you know that the plug-in is loaded (i.e. you see the SpamSieve menu commands in Mail’s Message menu). However, most users will find it easier to let SpamSieve manage the rule(s) for them.
If you have previously used SpamSieve with Apple Mail but are now using a different mail client, you can choose Uninstall Apple Mail Plug-In… from the SpamSieve menu in order to prevent SpamSieve from reminding you to enable the Mail plug-in.
If the Uninstall Apple Mail Plug-In… command can’t remove the Mail rules because it lacks Automation access on macOS 10.14, it will now proceed with uninstalling the other items and ask you to remove the rules manually rather than stopping with an error.
SpamSieve now supports the Hardened Runtime on macOS 10.14.
SpamSieve is now notarized by Apple.
The former “Advanced Outlook Setup for Large Inboxes” (which uses the InboxSpamSieve folder) is now the standard setup described in the Setting Up Outlook 365 section of the manual. This setup makes Outlook more responsive and provides for more accurate filtering when setting up SpamSieve for the first time. If you are already successfully using Outlook 365 with SpamSieve, the old setup is still supported, so you don’t have to change anything.
Reduced the sizes of some large screenshots in the HTML manual so that the text is more easily readable.
Fixed a bug where some screenshots in the PDF manual were displayed at double size instead of at Retina resolution.
Removed support for legacy mail clients that no longer work on SpamSieve’s supported macOS versions: Claris Emailer, Eudora, Outlook Express, and Thunderbird 2.x.
Improved the following sections of the manual:
Enabling and Updating the Apple Mail Plug-In
Security & Privacy Access
Setting Up MailMate
Setting Up Outlook 365
Turning Off the Gmail Spam Filter

New in SpamSieve 2.9.32 (Aug 30, 2018)

SpamSieve now supports macOS 10.14 Mojave and Dark Mode.
Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
Added the Setting Up Other Mail Clients section of the manual.
When you click the link to show SpamSieve’s Dock icon, the change now takes effect immediately, as quitting and relaunching to see the effect was difficult to do when the Dock icon was hidden.
Added a statistics report AppleScript property, which is a string with the current contents of the Statistics window.
The Copy Stats button no longer copies zeroes to the clipboard when the statistics haven’t been calculated yet.
Worked around a bug in macOS 10.13 that could prevent the log file from being written.
Worked around a macOS 10.13 bug that could prevent keyboard input after closing the Help menu.
Worked around a bug in macOS 10.13.4 that could cause an internal error when locating SpamSieve’s data files.
An error saving the system log for the diagnostic report is no longer fatal, so other files can still be saved to the report.
Fixed a bug where holding down the Command and Option keys to reset one of SpamSieve’s damaged files didn’t work if the file was seriously damaged.
Fixed a spurious error message when trying to launch SpamSieve if it was already running.
Apple Mail:
SpamSieve is now compatible with Apple Mail under macOS 10.14. It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.32 before updating to 10.14. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve.
macOS 10.14 adds some security protections for Apple Mail, and so you will need confirm to the system that you want SpamSieve to be able to access Mail and that you want Mail to load SpamSieve’s plug-in.
Access section of the manual.
The Software Update… command now advises you about re-enabling SpamSieve’s Mail plug-in after the update if you are using macOS 10.14.
Added the Keeping Spam Messages Out of Gmail’s Archive section of the manual.
If Mail can’t find the SpamSieve application file, e.g. because you manually deleted it in attempting to uninstall manually, it now offers the option of uninstalling the SpamSieve plug-in for you, so that you don’t have to reinstall the app to use the automatic installer.
If SpamSieve doesn’t have Full Disk Access, it will now log a single error to that affect, rather than a flood of file permissions errors.
SpamSieve now detects if the installed plug-in is up-to-date but not enabled (macOS 10.14–only) in Mail and will explain how to fix this.
Fixed a problem where color-specific rules didn’t apply their actions on macOS 10.14.
The Apple Mail - SaneBox script is better at handling and reporting errors.
The Mail plug-in is no longer code-signed, to work around an issue with macOS 10.14, and thus SpamSieve no longer checks whether it’s damaged.
Fixed a bug where the Mail plug-in could show the same error message repeatedly if the SpamSieve application was deleted, thus interfering with access to Mail itself.
Fixed a typo in Mail debug logging.
Microsoft Outlook 365:
Added support for Outlook 365’s new kind of Gmail accounts that show up as “Google” accounts rather than as “IMAP” accounts.
Filtering is faster and will now process any messages in the InboxSpamSieve folder, even read ones.
SpamSieve is better able to recover when Outlook reports an error getting a message’s account.
To get these improvements, please go to the Setting Up Outlook 365 section of the manual and follow the instructions in Step 6 to update your copy of Outlook - Filter Mailboxes.app.
The Advanced Outlook Setup for Large Inboxes section of the manual now describes a different way to do the setup if you are using Outlook 16.17 (currently available on the Office Insider track) with a Gmail account.
Fixed a bug where SpamSieve would incorrectly log that the Outlook scripts were damaged if you were using Outlook 365 but had previously used Outlook 2011 and still had its old scripts installed at the old location.
Improved the following sections of the manual:
Checking the Outlook 365 Setup
Install Apple Mail Plug-In
Setting Up Apple Mail
Setting Up Outlook 365
Turning Off Microsoft Spam Filters
Turning Off the AOL Spam Filter
Turning Off the Gmail Spam Filter
Turning Off the Yahoo Mail Spam Filter
Uninstalling SpamSieve
Why does SpamSieve always need an update when macOS is updated?

New in SpamSieve 2.9.32 Beta 5 (Aug 22, 2018)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.32 Beta 3 (Jun 6, 2018)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.32 Beta 1 (May 6, 2018)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.31 (Apr 30, 2018)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.31 Beta 4 (Apr 27, 2018)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.31 Beta 3 (Apr 27, 2018)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.31 Beta 2 (Apr 27, 2018)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.31 Beta 1 (Apr 27, 2018)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.30 (Jan 30, 2018)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.30 Beta 4 (Jan 25, 2018)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.30 Beta 3 (Jan 19, 2018)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.30 Beta 2 (Jan 19, 2018)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.30 Beta 1 (Oct 6, 2017)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.29 (Aug 25, 2017)

Works with Apple Mail under macOS 10.13 High Sierra (currently in beta). It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.29 before updating to 10.13. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve.
To get the improvements (described below) to SpamSieve’s integration with Microsoft Outlook 2016, please follow these instructions after updating SpamSieve:
Quit Microsoft Outlook and Outlook - Filter Mailboxes.
From the SpamSieve menu in SpamSieve, choose Install Outlook Scripts.
Go to the Setting Up Outlook 2016 section of the manual and follow the instructions in Step 6 to update your copy of Outlook - Filter Mailboxes.app.
Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
Made various improvements to the Outlook - Filter Mailboxes app for Microsoft Outlook 2016:
The Setting Up Outlook 2016 section of the manual has been updated to be more complete and clear.
Worked around a hang in Outlook when there are lots of messages in the inbox.
There is an optional “Large Inboxes” setup that can greatly speed up the processing of new messages if you have lots of old messages in your inbox.
Filtering now works when the Mac is running in Dutch or Swedish.
It is now possible to configure the options using esoteric preferences links, so that you don’t have to edit the script itself.
Improved the debug logging and error reporting.
Worked around a bug in Microsoft Outlook 15.36 were it could incorrectly report that no messages were selected, thus preventing training from working.
The Apple Mail - Remote Training script now sets and clears message background colors and (optionally) flags. This way if a server filter and SpamSieve share the same Spam mailbox, you can easily see which messages are confirmed as spam by SpamSieve because they will be marked in its normal way.
Improved the following sections of the manual:
Checking the Outlook 2016 Setup
Converting Your Apple Mail Setup to IMAP
Requirements
Setting Up GyazMail
Setting Up Outlook 2016
Turning Off the AOL Spam Filter
Turning Off the FastMail Spam Filter
Turning Off the Gmail Spam Filter
Uninstalling SpamSieve
Improved the scrolling speed in the Blocklist, Corpus, and Whitelist windows.
The diagnostic reporter can now check whether the application package is damaged
SpamSieve is better at detecting and reporting problems with the launch agent.
Logged errors now use indentation to improve readability.
SpamSieve now fixes the permissions of the log file if it can’t append to it (and worked around an OS bug reporting such errors).
Improved the Apple Mail debug logging.
Improved the reporting of corpus reset errors.
Improved the error reporting for damaged files.
Documentation and Help menu links to c-command.com now use https instead of http.
Made various code modernizations.
Fixed a bug that could cause a -10004 error when filtering messages for Microsoft Outlook 2016.
Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when processing incoming Apple Mail messages on macOS 10.13.
Fixed a bug where some Preferences window labels were truncated on Mac OS X 10.10 due to OS font changes.

New in SpamSieve 2.9.29 Beta 5 (Jul 8, 2017)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.29 Beta 4 (Jun 9, 2017)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.29 Beta 2 (May 15, 2017)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.29 Beta 1 (Apr 5, 2017)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.28 (Feb 27, 2017)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.28 Beta 3 (Feb 11, 2017)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.28 Beta 2 (Jan 25, 2017)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.28 Beta 1 (Jan 25, 2017)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.27 (Dec 9, 2016)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.27 Beta 1 (Nov 2, 2016)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.26 (Oct 18, 2016)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.26 Beta 3 (Oct 10, 2016)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.26 Beta 2 (Oct 5, 2016)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.26 Beta 1 (Sep 22, 2016)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.25 (Sep 19, 2016)

Made various changes to improve SpamSieve's filtering accuracy.
Renamed "Mac OS X" to "macOS" throughout the app and documentation.
Made various code modernizations.
Updated to Xcode 8.
The distribution disk image is now signed.
Updated the Spanish localization.
Infinisys customers can now participate in SpamSieve public betas.
If you try to activate SpamSieve when its Dock icon is hidden, it now reports how you can show the Dock icon.
Worked around a Postbox issue that could make SpamSieve not realize that it had seen certain messages before.
If logging a mail client error to Console fails, SpamSieve will now try to report the error via an alert window so it's not lost.
Improved the handling and reporting of file handle errors.
Improved SpamSieve's reporting of permissions errors when reading files.
Improved the error reporting and debug logging.
Fixed a bug identifying the current mail client.
Fixed a bug that could cause an autorelease pool error when reporting a crash.
Fixed a bug where SpamSieve would log errors to Console at launch on Mac OS X 10.6.
Apple Mail:
Improved the positioning of the SpamSieve items in Apple Mail's **Message** menu.
If SpamSieve's plug-in is incompatible with the current version of Apple Mail, the error message now includes a button to join the SpamSieve public beta.
The Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox script now has an option to mark good messages as read.
The Apple Mail - Move if Spam, Apple Mail - SaneBox, and Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox scripts now have an option to not change the junk status in Apple Mail, as that can be very slow with some mail servers.
Removed a workaround that sometimes prevented messages trained in Apple Mail on Mac OS X 10.10 from updating the junk status in Mail.
SpamSieve is more careful about only modifying its launch agent file when it's actually changed, so as not to arouse the suspicions of anti-virus software.
Improved the reporting of Apple Mail training errors.
Improved the error reporting when Apple Mail is having trouble launching SpamSieve.
Improved the error message if SpamSieve finds that its launch agent has been unexpectedly deleted.
Fixed a bug where the Apple Mail plug-in could report an error about not being able to create a file.
Fixed a bug where the Apple Mail plug-in was missing its Spanish localization.
Fixed a bug where SpamSieve could get stuck in an auto-launch, auto-quit cycle when logging into a slower Mac.
Fixed a bug where Apple Mail could hang when processing incoming messages if SpamSieve was showing a modal window, such as the trial expiration alert.
Microsoft Outlook:
Worked around an Outlook error getting a message's subject. To get this fix, choose **Install Outlook Scripts** from the SpamSieve menu.
Updated the **Outlook - Move If Spam**, Outlook - Filter Mailboxes, and Outlook - Remote Training scripts scripts to work around a bug in Outlook 2016 that could make a spam message disappear if Outlook could not find the **Junk E-mail** folder.
The Outlook - Filter Mailboxes script is better at handling errors from Outlook in getting the message's subject.
The Outlook - Filter Mailboxes script no longer tries to apply an empty category name to good messages.
Fixed a bug where the Outlook - Filter Mailboxes script only filtered one mailbox per account.
Worked around an OS issue where the Outlook - Filter Mailboxes script would report a System Events error.
Improved the following section of the manual:
Consolidating Spam From Multiple Filters
Correct All Mistakes
Does SpamSieve prevent me from receiving messages?
Exclude my addresses
Filtering Spam During Power Nap
Outlook Customization
Requirements
Sending in an Error Report
Setting Up Airmail
Setting Up an Apple Mail Drone
Setting Up Apple Mail
Setting Up Gmail, iCloud, Yahoo, AOL, or Other Web Mail
Setting Up MailMate
Turning Off the FastMail Spam Filter
Turning Off the Gmail Spam Filter
Turning Off the Yahoo Mail Spam Filter
Using a Spam Mailbox on the Server
What can I do if my Spam mailbox in Apple Mail disappeared?
What can I do if the corpus file is damaged?
What can I do if the statistics database is damaged?
Why do good messages keep going to the Junk or Spam mailbox?
Why does the "Junk" mailbox appear in Apple Mail?

New in SpamSieve 2.9.25 Beta 7 (Sep 15, 2016)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.25 Beta 6 (Sep 9, 2016)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.25 Beta 5 (Jul 21, 2016)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.25 Beta 4 (Jul 6, 2016)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.25 Beta 3 (Jun 19, 2016)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.25 Beta 2 (May 11, 2016)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.25 Beta 1 (Apr 15, 2016)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.24 (Mar 1, 2016)

Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.11.4. It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.24 before updating to 10.11.4. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve.
Made some optimizations so that SpamSieve launches faster and sorting and deleting in the Blocklist, Whitelist, and Corpus windows is faster.
The Train as Good command in Apple Mail is better at finding which inbox to move the message back to.
The Outlook - Filter Mailboxes.app file is now codesigned for Gatekeeper, so it will work without your having to change System Preferences to allow applications downloaded from Anywhere.
The Apple Mail - Move If Spam script can now color or flag messages based on how spammy they are.
SpamSieve now uses a different and more reliable strategy to prevent the OS from keeping it stuck in a partially launched state.
Added an experimental option for Apple Mail to use black text for messages marked as junk but not processed by SpamSieve, overriding the low-contrast color that Mail added in Mac OS X 10.11. For SpamSieve’s black text, click here; for the default brown text click here.
The Uninstall Apple Mail Plug-In… command now removes the Launch SpamSieve.scpt file.
When running as background applications, the Apple Mail - Remote Training, Apple Mail - SaneBox, and Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox scripts no longer launch Mail if it is not already running.
Improved the error handling in the Apple Mail - Discard Spam script so that it can now delete most of the messages even if a few result in errors.
Reduced SpamSieve’s memory use when type-selecting in the Corpus, Blocklist, and Whitelist windows.
SpamSieve is better able to function when the system is unable to tell it where the user’s home folder is.
Improved the error reporting for the Software Update… command.
Modernized the Software Update code that checks whether your OS version is new enough to run the new version of SpamSieve.
The SpamSieveHelper application will now quit in the rare event that another copy is already running.
Made some changes to try to work around a rare bug where SpamSieve’s Apple Mail plug-in didn’t load until after the first few messages had been downloaded from the server, leading to them being filtered directly to the Spam mailbox rather than through SpamSieve.
Worked around an issue where an internal path conversion error from NSFileManager could cause SpamSieve to interrupt spam filtering with an error dialog. Now SpamSieve will simply log an “Error looking up image for address” message to the Console and continue filtering.
Made various code modernizations.
Made various changes to the build system.
Improved the following sections of the manual:
Automatically Deleting Old Spam Messages
Checking the Airmail Setup
Exclude my addresses
How can I open the Library folder?
Setting Up Airmail
Setting Up Apple Mail
Setting Up MailMate
Setting Up Outlook 2016
Use Growl global notification system

New in SpamSieve 2.9.24 Beta 3 (Feb 11, 2016)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.24 Beta 2 (Jan 11, 2016)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.24 Beta 1 (Dec 15, 2015)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.23 (Dec 8, 2015)

Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.11.2. It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.23 before updating to 10.11.2. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve.
Made a variety of changes to work around a bug in Mac OS X 10.11 in which (in rares cases) the system would start to launch SpamSieve but not load any of its code, leaving it stuck in a partially launched state. This would particularly happen if Mail itself was auto-launched by the system after your Mac booted. This could lead to Apple Mail hanging (while waiting for SpamSieve), spam messages left in the inbox (because the Mail plug-in was forced to assume they were good), and high Mail memory use. SpamSieve’s launch agent now tries to detect this situation and quit the stuck SpamSieve process, allowing it to relaunch normally. If this is unsuccessful, the Mail plug-in will report an error explaining what is going on and how you can manually fix it.
The Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox script can now move the spams to per-account spam mailboxes, has better error reporting, and has an option to enable debug logging.
The Apple Mail - SaneBox script now has an option to enable debug logging.
Made some improvements to the statistics database to be more resilient to errors and also report them better.
SpamSieve is better at handling errors if it gets disconnected from Apple Mail in the middle of processing a message.
SpamSieve will no longer try to use Apple Mail’s background activity count scripting property on Mac OS X 10.11 because it’s known to be broken. This will reduce unnecessary error logging to Console.
SpamSieve no longer creates an App Store Receipts folder, since it would always be empty.
Updated code for Xcode 7.1.
Fixed the size of the distribution disk image window.
Worked around a Finder bug that could cause the disk image’s icons to be misaligned if the AppleShowAllFiles option was enabled.

New in SpamSieve 2.9.23 Beta 3 (Nov 20, 2015)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.23 Beta 2 (Nov 16, 2015)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.22 (Oct 21, 2015)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.22 Beta 2 (Oct 19, 2015)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.22 Beta 1 (Oct 15, 2015)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.21 (Sep 28, 2015)

Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan. It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.21 before updating to El Capitan. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve.
Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
Microsoft Outlook 2016 removes the Run AppleScript rule action feature. This makes it impossible to create a rule that automatically processes incoming messages with SpamSieve. We recommend using the “send-a-smile” button in Outlook’s main window (below the search field) to send Microsoft feedback, asking them to prioritize this feature. Please see this forum post for more information and workarounds for using SpamSieve with Outlook 2016.
Added the Outlook - Filter Mailboxes script as a workaround for automatically filtering messages with Outlook 2016.
Added support for App Transport Security on Mac OS X 10.11.
Modernized code for the Xcode 7 compiler and the Mac OS X 10.11 SDK.
The About, Software Update, and help windows now use the San Francisco font on Mac OS X 10.11.
Added the following sections to the manual:
Filtering Spam During Power Nap
Should I download SpamSieve from this free site?
Improved the following sections of the manual:
Automatically Deleting Old Spam Messages
Checking the Apple Mail Setup
Correct All Mistakes
Installing SpamSieve
iPhone Spam Filtering
Play sound
Save false negatives to disk
Sending in an Error Report
Sending in Apple Mail Rules
Setting Up Airmail
Setting Up an Apple Mail Drone
Setting Up Gmail, iCloud, Yahoo, AOL, or Other Web Mail
Setting Up Outlook 2016
Spam Message Colors in Apple Mail
SpamSieve and Multiple Macs
Turning Off the Gmail Spam Filter
What can I do if Apple Mail is crashing?
Why does a message disappear or go back to the spam mailbox after I train it as good?
When SpamSieve encounters a permissions error, it now reports on any applicable ACLs (Access Control Lists).
Improved the error message when your version of SpamSieve is too old for the current version of Mac OS X.
Added “(?)” to error text to help people know what “Help button” refers to.
If a PDF file attached to an e-mail triggers an OS bug that leads to an infinite loop, SpamSieve now aborts the spamsieve-reader process after 30 seconds. Previously, the process (and your fan) would keep running forever and possibly freeze the mail client.
Worked around a bug in Mac OS X 10.11 that could cause a crash during Software Update….
Worked around a bug in Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.7 that could cause a crash.
Added defensive coding to try to prevent a crash when saving the corpus to disk.
Fixed a regression that could cause an error when switching applications.
Fixed a regression where SpamSieve wasn’t able to reset the corpus.
Fixed a regression where the Entourage scripts could not be installed.
Fixed a bug where Software Update… would continue offering updates in the same session in which you had held down the Option key.
Fixed a bug where SpamSieve could crash when sending data to a helper tool that exited unexpectedly.
Fixed a bug where a text field in the crash reporter was truncated.
Fixed a few small memory leaks.
Updated the German localization.

New in SpamSieve 2.9.21 Beta 3 (Aug 22, 2015)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.21 Beta 2 (Jul 31, 2015)

Microsoft Outlook 2016 removes the Run AppleScript rule action feature. This makes it impossible to create a rule that automatically processes incoming messages with SpamSieve. We recommend using the “send-a-smile” button in Outlook’s main window (below the search field) to send Microsoft feedback, asking them to prioritize this feature. Please see this forum post184 for more information and workarounds for using SpamSieve with Outlook 2016.
Added the Outlook - Filter Mailboxes script as a workaround for automatically filtering messages with Outlook 2016.
If a PDF file attached to an e-mail triggers an OS bug that leads to an infinite loop, SpamSieve now aborts the spamsieve-reader process after 30 seconds. Previously, the process (and your fan) would keep running forever and possibly freeze the mail client.
Improved the error message when your version of SpamSieve is too old for the current version of Mac OS X.
Added more debug logging for the Apple Mail Train as Spam command to figure out why trained messages sometimes don’t move to the expected mailbox.
The About and Software Update windows now use the San Francisco font on Mac OS X 10.11.
The Software Update. . . feature and crash reporter now use HTTPS.
Worked around a bug in the Mac OS X 10.11 that could prevent SpamSieve from marking
trained messages as junk in Apple Mail.
Updated the German localization.
Added defensive coding to try to prevent a crash when saving the corpus.
Worked around a bug in Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.7 that could cause a crash.
Updated the code that checks your Apple Mail files to handle Mail’s new data store in Mac
OS X 10.11.
Fixed a regression where SpamSieve wasn’t able to reset the corpus.
Fixed a regression where the Entourage scripts could not be installed.
Fixed a bug where Software Update... would continue offering updates in the same session
you had held down the Option key.
Added the following sections to the manual:
Filtering Spam During Power Nap
Should I download SpamSieve from this free site?
Improved the following sections of the manual:
Automatically Deleting Old Spam Messages ∗ Checking the Apple Mail Setup
Installing SpamSieve
iPhone Spam Filtering
Play sound
Save false negatives to disk
Sending in an Error Report
Sending in Apple Mail Rules
Setting Up Airmail
Setting Up Gmail, iCloud, Yahoo, AOL, or Other Web Mail
Setting Up Outlook 2016
SpamSieve and Multiple Macs
∗ What can I do if Apple Mail is crashing?

New in SpamSieve 2.9.21 Beta 1 (Jun 10, 2015)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.20 (Jun 4, 2015)

GENERAL:
Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
Apple’s server-side iCloud spam filter has recently become more aggressive. As a result, many people have been confused by the sudden increase in messages in the Junk mailbox (rather than SpamSieve’s Spam mailbox). iCloud’s spam filter cannot be turned off, but the Why does the “Junk” mailbox appear in Apple Mail? section of the manual and the new Consolidating Spam From Multiple Filters section explain some of the options for dealing with this.
SpamSieve’s launch agent process no longer runs when Apple Mail is not running, which should reduce overall memory use.
Dates in the log are now shown in the local time zone.
Trained entries in the log now include the sender’s address.
The Apple Mail plug-in installer now checks that file ownership is enabled on the volume containing your home folder. This is necessary for proper operation of SpamSieve’s launch agent and, thus, launching and training from Apple Mail.
When the trial period is over, the alert now has a Help button that opens the instructions for uninstalling.
The Uninstall Apple Mail Plug-In… command is now available even after the trial period has ended.
Improved the fonts in the About and Software Update windows.
Added accessibility labels in the Software Update new News windows.
Reinstalling a Fresh Copy is now its own section of the manual, and SpamSieve will direct you there if it finds that one of its files is missing.
Added the following sections to the manual:
Checking the Airmail Setup
Consolidating Spam From Multiple Filters
Turning Off the FastMail Spam Filter
Improved the following sections of the manual:
Can I delete spam messages that are in the spam folder?
Changing the Name of the Spam Mailbox
Checking the Airmail Setup
Checking the Apple Mail Setup
Checking the Outlook 2016 Setup
Checking the Postbox Setup
Consolidating Spam From Multiple Filters
Correct All Mistakes
Does SpamSieve launch automatically?
Does SpamSieve stop Web bugs?
Faster Apple Mail Training
How can I copy my training data to another machine?
How should I configure the junk filter on my mail server?
Setting Up Outlook 2016
Spam Message Colors in Apple Mail
Train SpamSieve whitelist
Turning Off the Gmail Spam Filter
Use Bayesian classifier
Use Mac OS X Address Book
What can I do if Apple Mail is crashing?
What can I do if my Spam mailbox in Apple Mail disappeared?
What can I do if the corpus file is damaged?
Why does SpamSieve always need an update when Mac OS X is updated?
Why does the “Junk” mailbox appear in Apple Mail?
Why is SpamSieve not catching my spam?
APPLESCRIPT:
The Apple Mail - Remote Training script now has an option to mark the trained spam messages as read.
The Apple Mail - SaneBox script now has a configurable mailbox name.
The Apple Mail - Discard Spam script is better at handling errors from Mail.
Added the Apple Mail - List Mailboxes script.
The Copy Whitelist Addresses script can now copy blocklist addresses and now restricts itself to “Is Equal to” rules.
Fixed an error reporting bug in the Apple Mail - Discard Spam script.
Fixed a regression in the Apple Mail - Remote Training script.
Fixed an error reporting bug in the Apple Mail - SaneBox script.
The Apple Mail - SaneBox and Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox scripts:
Can now be configured to move any color of spammy messages directly to the trash and to apply flag colors so that you can sort by spamminess.
Have an option to move the most spammy messages to trash.
Can now be saved as standalone applications to run on a more regular schedule than when run via a Mail rule.
ERROR HANDLING:
SpamSieve will now recreate the log file’s folder if it unexpectedly disappears after the application has launched, perhaps due to CleanApp. If this affects you, SpamSieve will make a note in the Console log.
Improved SpamSieve’s error handling and recovery when there is an error creating or updating the log file.
The Uninstall Apple Mail Plug-In… command will now retry if there’s an error communicating with Mail and report a better error if it still doesn’t succeed.
When training from Apple Mail, SpamSieve will now report a better error if it detects that the necessary SpamSieveHelper application is not running.
If SpamSieve detects that one of its files is missing, i.e. that the application is damaged, it now presents a better error message.
When there is an error reading the corpus or history database, the error alert now has a clickable Help button instead of inline URL text.
The Entourage scripts can now log errors to Console.
SpamSieve will now log an error if it’s not installed in the Applications folder, as this can prevent proper functioning with Airmail (due to sandbox restrictions).
Improved the error message if Apple Mail can’t launch SpamSieve.
Errors for corrupt files now link to the relevant Web pages that explain how to fix them.
Improved the error message when you’re using a version of SpamSieve that’s too old for your version of Apple Mail.
Improved error reporting when a temporary folder cannot be created.
Improved the error message for incorrect serial numbers.
SpamSieve now reports permissions information if there’s an error opening the statistics database.
BUG FIXES:
Worked around a bug where Microsoft Outlook does not always correctly return a message’s source. This could lead to spam messages being classified as good because SpamSieve had no information to work from. To get this fix, choose Install Outlook Scripts from the SpamSieve menu.
Worked around a text conversion bug in Mac OS X 10.10.3.
SpamSieve will no longer repeatedly try to fix a file’s owner if ownership is ignored on the volume.
Fixed a bug where SpamSieve could report an internal error if it received an Apple event while in the process of quitting.
Fixed a bug that could cause an internal error writing to SpamSieve’s log file when the application was quitting.
Fixed a regression where the Outlook 14 installer didn’t properly migrate installed script files.
Fixed a bug abbreviating long rules in the log.
Date formatters now use the POSIX local where appropriate.

New in SpamSieve 2.9.20 Beta 4 (May 30, 2015)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.20 Beta 3 (May 14, 2015)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.20 Beta 2 (Apr 24, 2015)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.19 (Jan 28, 2015)

Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.10.2. It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.19 before updating to Mac OS X 10.10.2. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve.
To make future OS updates smoother:
You can wait to update Mac OS X until a new version of SpamSieve has been released. The latest compatibility information is always available at the top of the SpamSieve Support page. To prevent Mac OS X from updating itself without asking you, go to the App Store section of System Preferences and make sure that Install OS X updates is unchecked.
You can sign up to receive the public beta versions of SpamSieve. Then you will likely already have a compatible version of SpamSieve installed when the OS update first becomes available.
Added the Uninstall Apple Mail Plug-In… command in the SpamSieve menu.
SpamSieve is now more aggressive about auto-training whitelist rules to prevent false positives.
SpamSieve is now 33% faster at reading the corpus and 48% faster at writing it. This improves the launch time and overall application responsiveness.
The Apple Mail Train as Good command is better at determining when a message is inside of a junk mailbox with a localized name.
The Apple Mail - Remote Training script no longer times out when there are lots of messages in the training mailbox. It also has new options for changing the name of the spam mailbox and for enabling debug logging.
The Apple Mail - SaneBox and Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox scripts now set the junk status and color for spam messages.
Added the following sections to the manual:
Checking the GyazMail Setup
Separate Spam Folders for Each Outlook Account
What can I do if the corpus file is damaged?
What can I do if the statistics database is damaged?
Improved the following sections of the manual:
iPhone Spam Filtering
Installing SpamSieve
Setting Up Outlook 15
Updating From a Previous Version
Added improved instructions for installing and running supplemental AppleScripts.
If Outlook reports an error when creating the Uncertain Junk category, SpamSieve now explains how you can create it manually.
SpamSieve can now log the contents of the LaunchAgents folder if there is a problem.
When the SpamSieve application is damaged and needs to be reinstalled, it now links to some more extensive online instructions for doing so.
Improved the error reporting when SpamSieve’s log file can’t be written to.
If there’s an error removing the old copy of the Apple Mail plug-in and fixing the file permissions/ownership doesn’t help, SpamSieve now instructs you how to remove the file manually.
Improved the text in the Welcome window. Also, the window is now shown later in the launch process so that the referenced Help menu is available.
The About SpamSieve window now uses the new system font on Mac OS X 10.10.
The About SpamSieve window now uses the system language names when crediting localizers, to reduce the number of strings that localizers need to keep up-to-date.
Increased the font size in the Software Update… window on Mac OS X 10.10.
Added the ShowResetAlert user default to show the corpus/history reset window if the user can’t hold down the proper modifier keys.
Added QuitMailWhenMacSleeps to the esoteric preferences. This quits Mail when the Mac sleeps and relaunches it when the Mac wakes. This works around an OS bug that can cause messages not to be moved to the Spam mailbox if Mail received them right after the Mac woke from sleep.
Worked around a string encoding bug in Mac OS X 10.10.
Fixed a bug where the Apple Mail plug-in would cause unnecessary messages about LSUIElement and the sandbox to be logged to Console.
Fixed a bug where a change in system font metrics caused some text in the Preferences and Statistics windows to be truncated.
Fixed spurious log messages from SpamSieveHelper when running on Mac OS X 10.10.
Added defensive check to prevent trying to fix the ownership of certain folders.
Fixed a bug where toolbar buttons in the rules and corpus windows were always enabled when running on Mac OS X 10.10.
Worked around an OS bug that prevented bookmark files from being resolved.
Worked around an OS bug that could cause SpamSieve’s log file to be created in the wrong location.
Updated the German and Spanish localizations.

New in SpamSieve 2.9.19 Beta 3 (Jan 19, 2015)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.19 Beta 2 (Jan 6, 2015)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.19 Beta 1 (Nov 24, 2014)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.18 (Nov 18, 2014)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.18 Beta 2 (Nov 5, 2014)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.18 Beta 1 (Nov 5, 2014)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.17 (Oct 17, 2014)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.17 Beta 3 (Oct 8, 2014)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.17 Beta 2 (Oct 1, 2014)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.17 Beta 1 (Sep 23, 2014)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.16 (Sep 18, 2014)

Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.9.5. It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.16 before updating to Mac OS X 10.9.5. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve.
Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite.
Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
Updated the Outlook and Entourage scripts for compatibility with the upcoming Mac OS X 10.0. If you’re using one of those mail clients, you should update the scripts by choosing Install Outlook Scripts or Install Entourage Scripts from the SpamSieve menu.
Updated the Apple Mail - Discard Spam, Apple Mail - Move If Spam, Apple Mail - Remote Training, Apple Mail - Save Spam, and PowerMail - Uncertain Spam Condition scripts to work around a bug in the upcoming Mac OS X 10.10. If you are using these scripts, you will need to download and install fresh copies of them.
Updated the Apple Mail - Remote Training, Apple Mail - SaneBox, and Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox scripts to work around a problem with duplicate messages created from deleted messages that Mail had not expunged. If you are using these scripts, you will need to download and install fresh copies of them.
Added a new method of hiding SpamSieve’s Dock icon that doesn’t require editing the Info.plist file. For more information, see the How can I hide SpamSieve’s Dock icon? section of the manual.
Added the Faster Apple Mail Training, Why don’t I see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu?, and Recommended Apple Mail Customizations (Mac OS X 10.8 and Earlier) sections of the manual.
Improved the Automatically Deleting Old Spam Messages, Changing the Name of the Spam Mailbox sections, Show Blocklist, Show Whitelist, Requirements, Correct All Mistakes, Separate Spam Mailboxes for Each Account, Use Mac OS X Address Book, Redirecting Good Messages to Another Account, Apple Mail Customization, How should I configure the junk filter on my mail server?, Updating From a Previous Version, and Uninstalling SpamSieve sections of the manual.
SpamSieve is better at repairing folder ownership and permissions.
SpamSieve is better able to recover from errors when creating temporary folders.
Made lots of code modernizations.
By default, training a message as good in Apple Mail no longer clears its colored flags. This can be adjusted using the AppleMailTrainGoodClearFlags option in the esoteric preferences.
Esoteric preferences links are now directly clickable in the Apple Help and PDF manual.
Worked around a problem where Apple Mail could hang at launch if MailTags was installed.
Removed spurious warnings about extra Apple Mail preferences files.
Improved error reporting when SpamSieve can’t connect to the update server.
Removed the Option-key workaround to have SpamSieve try to update the Apple Mail plug-in’s Info.plist file (based on installed version of Mail) because it’s no longer effective.
Fixed a bug reporting an error from running a compiled AppleScript.
Improved the crash reporter.
Fixed a crash when reporting file errors.
We need help keeping SpamSieve’s Japanese localization up-to-date. Please contact [email protected] if you’re interested.

New in SpamSieve 2.9.16 Beta 7 (Sep 16, 2014)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.16 Beta 6 (Sep 16, 2014)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.16 Beta 5 (Sep 1, 2014)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.16 Beta 3 (Aug 5, 2014)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.16 Beta 2 (Jul 26, 2014)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.16 Beta 1 (Jul 26, 2014)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.15 (Jul 1, 2014)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.14 (May 16, 2014)

Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.9.3. It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.14 before updating to Mac OS X 10.9.3. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve.
Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
Added the Does SpamSieve protect me from viruses? and Why does SpamSieve always need an update when Mac OS X is updated? sections to the manual.
Improved the Spam Message Colors in Apple Mail, Correct All Mistakes, Sending in the SpamSieve Log File, Using a Spam Mailbox on the Server, Why does the “Junk” mailbox appear in Apple Mail?, and Checking the Mailsmith Setup sections of the manual, as well as various instructional alerts and error messages.
The Import Addresses… command no longer has a file size limit.
SpamSieve no longer prompts to access the system contacts database if you have Use Mac OS X Address Book unchecked.
Made some changes to make SpamSieve launch faster, especially when cfprefsd is slow to respond.
Rewrote the Apple Mail - Discard Spam script to not rely on GUI scripting and to avoid deleting messages that were already in the trash.
The Setting Up Postbox command works better with pre-release versions of Postbox.
SpamSieve now checks the permissions on more of Apple Mail’s folders.
If an error occurs during Install Outlook Scripts, SpamSieve will now try to determine whether this was because Microsoft Outlook was not installed properly.
If your copy of Apple Mail is damaged, SpamSieve will now report this, but it will still let you install the plug-in.
The training commands in Apple Mail work better with localized mailbox names.
Added more logging for the Outlook Train as Good command.
The images in the PDF manual and Apple Help are now Retina-resolution.
Adjusted the font sizes in the PDF manual.

New in SpamSieve 2.9.13 (Feb 26, 2014)

Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.9.2. It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.13 before updating to Mac OS X 10.9.2. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox
Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
On Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Apple Mail is slower at moving messages to the Spam mailbox when you choose SpamSieve - Train as Spam and the inbox when you choose SpamSieve - Train as Good. This version of SpamSieve includes some changes to speed this up. It also includes workarounds to move messages faster by using GUI scripting instead of regular AppleScript. To enable the workarounds, please see the AppleMailTrainSpamGUIScripting and AppleMailTrainGoodGUIScripting options in the Esoteric Preferences section of the manual.
Documented the AppleMailPlugInSetIsJunk esoteric preference, as it can be used to speed up filtering on Mac OS X 10.9.
Improved the Setting Up Airmail section of the manual to recommend not deleting messages from the Spam mailbox when using Airmail 1.3.1 (223).
Added the Why does the “Junk” mailbox appear in Apple Mail? section to the manual.
Improved the Setting Up a MailMate Drone and iPhone Spam Filtering sections of the manual.
The AppleMailTrainSpamGUIScripting esoteric preference now works if you’ve selected the trash as your mailbox for trained spam messages.
Optimized and fixed a possible Apple Mail crash when using the Setting Up an Apple Mail Drone configuration.
SpamSieve is now able to log more diagnostic information to help track down problems with Apple Mail.
When a Mac OS X update disables SpamSieve’s Apple Mail plug-in, and your Mac is running in a language other than English, SpamSieve is better able to detect this and auto-reinstall the plug-in.
SpamSieve now cleans up empty folders of disabled Apple Mail bundles.
When training messages from Microsoft Outlook, SpamSieve now logs errors to the Console. You can also enable extended error logging via the OutlookScriptDebug default.

New in SpamSieve 2.9.12 (Dec 17, 2013)

Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.9.1. It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.12 before updating to Mac OS X 10.9.1. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox
On Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Apple Mail is slower at moving messages to the Spam mailbox when you choose SpamSieve - Train as Spam. SpamSieve includes a workaround to move messages faster by using GUI scripting instead of regular AppleScript. To enable the workaround, please see the AppleMailTrainSpamGUIScripting option in the Esoteric Preferences section of the manual.
Versions 1.2.1 and later of the Airmail e-mail client include support for SpamSieve. The Setting Up Airmail section of the manual describes how to use SpamSieve with Airmail.
It is now possible to set up a spam filtering drone using the MailMate e-mail client. This is described in the Setting Up a MailMate Drone section of the manual.
The Flash PowerMate feature is now compatible with (and requires) version 3.0 of the Griffin PowerMate software.
You can now hold down the Option key when you click Check Now in the Software Update… window to always download the latest version, even if your version is already up-to-date. This is an easy way to download and re-install a fresh copy of SpamSieve if yours is damaged.
Added the AppleMailTrainGoodClearFlags esoteric preference, for people who use colored flags on their spam messages for purposes other than indicating the spam level.
If Microsoft Outlook is not able to retrieve a message’s source, SpamSieve will now log the message’s subject to Console.
Worked around an OS bug that could cause a crash when SpamSieve was processing certain types of multi-part e-mail messages.
Improved various error messages.
Tried to work around a crash by disabling JavaScript in the release notes view.

New in SpamSieve 2.9.11 (Nov 8, 2013)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.10 (Oct 23, 2013)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.9 (Oct 8, 2013)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.8 (Sep 13, 2013)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.7 (May 2, 2013)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.6 (Dec 20, 2012)

Worked around a bug in Mac OS X 10.8.2 that could cause spam operations in Postbox to be very slow. If you’re using Postbox, you can update your SpamSieve plug-in by following steps 1 through 6 in the Setting Up Postbox section of the manual.
Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
SpamSieve now understands that @icloud.com, @me.com, and @mac.com are equivalent, so it’s better that finding the proper inbox in Apple Mail when you train a message as good. (For non-Apple IMAP and POP mail accounts, you can define aliases manually, as before. Go to the Accounts tab of Mail’s preferences and enter all the addresses—separated by commas—in the Email Address field.)
Customers have reported that Sync Services does not work reliably on Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. Thus, rather than having Outlook use Sync Services to sync its contacts with the system address book, SpamSieve now offers a feature to load the Outlook address book directly. (This ensures that SpamSieve doesn’t mark messages from people in your address book as spam.) Outlook users are encouraged to make sure that Use Entourage/Outlook address book is checked in SpamSieve’s preferences and to click the Load button. For more information, see the Use Entourage/Outlook address book section of the manual.
SpamSieve is now better able to handle invalid data received from a mail program.
When Using a Spam Mailbox on the Server, SpamSieve is better at handling errors from Mail that could cause a trained spam message to go to the local spam mailbox instead.
Training a message as good in Apple Mail now removes any flags, in case you were using Spam Message Colors in Apple Mail.
Added How should I configure the junk filter on my mail server? to the FAQ.
The Automatically Deleting Old Spam Messages section of the manual now includes instructions for Outlook.
Worked around various file permissions problems that could prevent training in Apple Mail from working.
Worked around a bug in Migration Assistant that could prevent SpamSieve from working properly with Apple Mail.
The plug-in and scripts installers are better able to handle non-standard folder structures.
Fixed a bug where SpamSieve was unable to see the contents of certain malformed messages, leading to poor filtering accuracy.
Fixed a bug where sometimes setting the date in the Statistics window didn’t work when SpamSieve was running in 64-bit mode.
Fixed a regression where where messages trained as good in Apple Mail didn’t move back to the inbox if you were using a local spam mailbox and no inbox matched the message’s recipients.
Made various improvements to the manual.

New in SpamSieve 2.9.5 (Sep 21, 2012)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.4 (Sep 5, 2012)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.3 (Jul 20, 2012)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.2 (Jul 5, 2012)

New in SpamSieve 2.9.1 (Apr 27, 2012)

New in SpamSieve 2.9 (Apr 3, 2012)

Added support for upcoming versions of Mac OS X.
Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
SpamSieve is now code-signed using a Developer ID certificate for Gatekeeper.
When training an Exchange message as good in Apple Mail, SpamSieve is better at moving it to the proper inbox.
Processing incoming messages with Outlook is more efficient. To take advantage of this change, choose Install Outlook Scripts from the SpamSieve menu.
If you’ve used the SpamSieve - Change Settings command in Apple Mail to tell SpamSieve not to use a local spam mailbox, training a message as spam will now try to move the message to a spam mailbox on the same server account, rather than always using the first account.
Added support for training messages as spam via Herald (version 2.1.2 and later), a notification plug-in for Apple Mail.
When sorting spam messages by color in Apple Mail, you can now use Grey as a synonym for Gray.
The score script command has a new auto training parameter that can be used to override the setting in the preferences on a case-by-case basis. This might be useful, for example, if you’re writing an AppleScript to triage messages that have already been classified, and you just want to get SpamSieve’s opinion without having to make any corrections.
Adjusted the drone AppleScripts so that they’re easier to troubleshoot.
If Apple Mail gives SpamSieve empty data for a message, the plug-in now assumes the message is good and does not pass it on to SpamSieve for analysis.
Added support for Growl notifications via GNTP (requires Mac OS X 10.7 or later).
SpamSieve is better at handling file permission errors.
SpamSieve is better at handling errors when running helper tools.
Improved SpamSieve’s ability to still function when the application package is damaged.
Added the AddStandardRules esoteric preference, which lets you prevent SpamSieve from creating its built-in blocklist and whitelist rules if you prefer to manage the rules yourself.
Fixed a bug that could reduce SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy for some messages with attached files.
Made various improvements to the documentation.
Updated the German localization.

New in SpamSieve 2.8.8 (Nov 17, 2011)

New in SpamSieve 2.8.7 (Sep 1, 2011)

New in SpamSieve 2.8.6 (Jul 7, 2011)

New in SpamSieve 2.8.5 (Mar 2, 2011)

New in SpamSieve 2.8.4 (Oct 13, 2010)

New in SpamSieve 2.8.3 (Aug 31, 2010)

New in SpamSieve 2.8.2 (May 25, 2010)

New in SpamSieve 2.8.1 (Mar 25, 2010)

Made various changes to improve SpamSieve's filtering accuracy.
Adjusted the **SpamSieve - Train as Good** command in Apple Mail to reduce confusion. Training a message as good now will only move the message into the inbox of an *enabled* account. If no account matches the message or if the proper account is disabled, it will move the message into the inbox of the first enabled account (even if it doesn't match). Thus, the message will always move out of the **Spam** mailbox, and it will no longer seem to disappear because it was moved into an inbox that was hidden.
Made various code modernizations.
Apple Mail now auto-launches SpamSieve sooner, to speed up the filtering of the first messages.
Improved the support for server-side **Spam** mailboxes in Apple Mail.
Clarified the instructions in the "Do an Initial Training" section of the manual.
Added the "How do I make SpamSieve catch spams sent from my own address?" section to the manual.
Expanded the "Correct All Mistakes" section of the manual.
Improved the Apple Mail troubleshooting instructions.
Improved the styling of the Apple Help.
Improved SpamSieve's launching speed.
Fixed a bug where, in rare circumstances, SpamSieve didn't filter all of the first batch of messages when using Apple Mail on Mac OS X 10.6.
SpamSieve will now warn you if it looks like its Apple Mail plug-in has been damaged by an application slimming utility. This could lead to Mail continually reporting that the plug-in was incompatible.
SpamSieve will now complain if it looks like you've manually installed the Apple Mail plug-in in the wrong folder instead of using SpamSieve's installer.
Made a change to try to work around a bug in Apple Mail that could make training a message as good create a duplicate copy of the message.
Improved the **Purchase** window to reduce confusion about the demo period, serial numbers, and the number of seats that you've purchased.
Modernized the **Software Update** window and code.
Changed the way the **Software Update** feature finds the downloads folder on Mac OS X 10.5 and later because sometimes the one that Internet Config returned would be invalid or unwanted.
Fixed a bug where SpamSieve would crash when processing certain invalid URLs.
Fixed an error where a newly added whitelist/blocklist rule might not be auto-selected.
Removed the Dutch, Italian, and Portuguese localizations because they were out of date. If you would like to update the translation for one of these languages, please contact [email protected].