The Unwanted Suggestions
Apple Mail on macOS is deeply integrated with the rest of the Apple ecosystem. One of its “smart” features is proactively scanning the contents of the emails you receive to look for phone numbers, addresses, and names that are not currently in your Contacts app. When it finds one, it will often display an annoying banner at the top of the email or aggressively auto-suggest that you add this random sender to your permanent address book.
If you use your Mac for business, you likely receive hundreds of emails from one-off vendors, automated mailing lists, and random inquiries. You do not want these people polluting your neatly organized iCloud Contacts. Having the Mail app constantly nag you to save their details is incredibly frustrating. You can stop this automatic scanning behavior.
How to Disable Mail Contact Suggestions
You can turn off this integration directly in the Apple Mail preferences.
- Open the Mail app on your Mac.
- In the top menu bar, click on Mail and select Settings… (or Preferences).
- In the popup window, click on the General tab at the top.
- Look down the list for a checkbox labelled Add invitations to Calendar automatically (which you may also want to uncheck) and, more importantly, a setting related to Contacts.
- In newer macOS versions, this setting has moved slightly. If you do not see it in General, click the Apple Logo > System Settings… > Contacts (or Internet Accounts > iCloud).
- The most direct way to stop the Apple ecosystem from learning from your mail is via Siri. Go to System Settings… > Siri & Spotlight.
- Scroll down to the list of apps and click on Mail.
- Uncheck the box for Learn from this App.
By preventing Siri and macOS from analyzing your inbox data, the Mail app will stop extracting random signatures and prompting you to save them as permanent contacts.