Tip Details Add a Related Tip

Rate as: Positive Negative

Plain text email in Apple Mail

In Apple Mail, you can customize your client so that all emails are shown in plain text. Reading plain text email is not sexy, but it does protect you from attempts that spammers try to hide using HTML in emails.

To set up your email this way you need to enter a terminal window and type this command

defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText -bool TRUE

You then need to exit Mail and restart it. If you change your mind and you want to see emails rendered in HTML again, you can run the command again and change TRUE to FALSE.

If instead of doing this across the board, you want to see one particular email in plain text because you are suspicious of it, you can do that too. While looking at the email, go to View > Message > Plain Text Alternative in the menu bar and Mail will show you a plain-text version of the email.
Rating: 100% positive, 2 total Votes
Categories: Mac Apple Mail customization security
Added: on Aug 22, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Added By: an anonymous user
Searches: email mail apple text plain

Comments on this Tip

Add a Comment
There are no comments for this tip
Your Comment:
(how to format)
Rate This Tip:

Verify Humanity:
Sorry, we know it's annoying, but please enter the characters shown in the image to the left so that we know you're an actual person and not an evil spammer. Thanks.
       

Related Tips

Change the flag icon in Apple Mail

Categories: Mac mail customization hack
100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Jul 23, 2008 at 9:04 am

Background opening of links in Apple Mail

Categories: mail Mac email apple
100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on May 01, 2008 at 7:04 am

Avoid having your Mac hijacked

Categories: Mac Apple remote security
no ratings, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Sep 03, 2008 at 10:07 am

Three column layout for Apple Mail

no ratings, 1 comment - last added on Oct 02, 2009 at 9:23 am
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Apr 05, 2008 at 8:36 pm

Notes showing up in Mail inbox on Snow Leopard

100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Sep 07, 2009 at 10:35 am

Change file opening behavior in Coda

100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Nov 03, 2009 at 8:09 am

Show the size columns in finder search results

50% positive, 1 comment - last added 6 days, 7 hours ago
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Oct 25, 2009 at 6:34 am

Organizing mailboxes in Snow Leopard

Categories: Mac Snow Leopard Mac
100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Oct 15, 2009 at 9:03 am

Put the date in the Snow Leopard menu bar

100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Sep 30, 2009 at 8:13 am

Getting rid of the sync icon in the menu bar

100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Sep 08, 2009 at 6:42 am

Using Quick Look with Entourage

100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Aug 24, 2009 at 7:24 am

Which Mac Pro offers the best power and performance?

Categories: apple Mac mac pro
100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Jul 27, 2009 at 4:53 pm

Show links when composing mail on a Mac

no ratings, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Nov 12, 2009 at 7:56 am

Change the Expose window higlight color

no ratings, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Nov 06, 2009 at 6:21 am

Copying email address in Snow Leopard

Categories: Mac Snow Leopard Mail
no ratings, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Oct 30, 2009 at 7:06 pm

Get dictionary lookup to open in a single window

no ratings, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Oct 17, 2009 at 7:31 am

screengrab osx - further tip...

Categories: mac osx apple
no ratings, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Sep 09, 2009 at 9:19 am

Screen Capture to clipboard

Categories: mac osx apple
no ratings, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Aug 28, 2009 at 7:17 pm

Application compatibility with Snow Leopard

no ratings, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Aug 27, 2009 at 4:40 pm

Change the default Mail client on a Mac

Categories: Mac email customization
no ratings, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Aug 01, 2009 at 3:14 pm