How to Automatically Sort Apple Mail by Sender Using Smart Mailboxes

What is a Smart Mailbox in Apple Mail?

If you receive hundreds of emails daily, keeping your inbox organised can feel like a full-time job. While manual folders are useful, dragging and dropping emails is tedious and inefficient.

Apple Mail includes a powerful feature called Smart Mailboxes. Unlike traditional folders, a Smart Mailbox does not actually move your emails. Instead, it acts as a dynamic, saved search filter. When you create a Smart Mailbox to filter emails by a specific sender, any email matching that criteria will automatically appear in that mailbox, even though the original email remains safely in your primary inbox or archive.

Step 1: Create a New Smart Mailbox

Setting up a Smart Mailbox on macOS takes only a few seconds and can be customised with highly specific rules.

1. Open the Mail application on your Mac.
2. Navigate to the top menu bar and click on Mailbox.
3. From the dropdown menu, select New Smart Mailbox….

A new dialogue box will appear where you can configure the specific rules and filters for this mailbox.

Step 2: Configure the Sender Filter Rules

To sort emails by a specific sender (such as a client, your boss, or an automated system), you need to set up the correct conditional logic.

1. In the Smart Mailbox Name field, type a clear identifier (e.g., “Important Client: John Doe”).
2. Look at the conditional rule section below. Ensure the first dropdown is set to Contains messages that match all of the following conditions.
3. In the first rule row, set the first dropdown to From.
4. Set the second dropdown to contains.
5. In the text field on the far right, type the email address or the domain of the sender (e.g., [email protected] or just @company.com to catch all emails from that business).

Step 3: Include the Trash and Sent Folders (Optional)

By default, Smart Mailboxes only search your Inbox and Archive folders. If you want a complete history of all correspondence with this sender, you can include your Sent messages.

1. At the bottom of the Smart Mailbox dialogue box, you will see two checkboxes.
2. Check the box next to Include messages from Trash if you want deleted emails to appear in the filter.
3. Check the box next to Include messages from Sent to ensure your replies are grouped together with the incoming emails.
4. Click OK to save the Smart Mailbox.

Step 4: Access and Edit Your Smart Mailboxes

Once created, your new Smart Mailbox will immediately populate with all matching emails.

• To view it: Look at the left-hand sidebar in Apple Mail. Scroll down until you see the Smart Mailboxes section. Click on your newly created mailbox to view the filtered emails.
• To edit it: If you need to add another email address to the filter (for example, if the client has two different email addresses), simply right-click the Smart Mailbox in the sidebar and select Edit Smart Mailbox. Click the + icon next to your first rule to add a second “From” condition, and ensure the top dropdown is changed to match any of the conditions.