OS X El Capitan: The Missing Manual

VIPs

In the real world, VIPs are people who get backstage passes to concerts or special treatment at business functions (it stands for “very important person”). In OS X, it means “somebody whose mail is important enough that I want it brought to my attention immediately when it arrives.”

GEM IN THE ROUGH: When You Want to Be Nudged About Incoming Mail

The Notification Center (Chapter 9) consolidates all the different programs and features that might want your attention—Mail, Reminders, Twitter, Facebook, software updates, and so on—into a single tidy list.

But if a little Notification Center alert bubble appeared on your screen every time any new Mail message came in, you’d go quietly mad. Fortunately, a Mail setting lets you tell Mail, “Don’t disturb me unless it’s really important. Like if it’s from my accountant.”

Here’s how to set up this useful filter. Choose Mail→Preferences→General. See the “New message notifications” pop-up menu?

Here you can choose Inbox only (all incoming messages trigger alert bubbles); VIPs (perhaps the most useful option—only messages from these essential people produce alerts); Contacts (messages from anyone in your address book trigger alerts—just not messages from strangers); or All Mailboxes (every single incoming message flags you).

You can also choose the name of a smart mailbox, if you’ve created one. That’s a pretty potent feature. It means that you can set up incoming messages to alert you only if they match whatever criteria your smart mailbox uses. ...