Filtering Mail Messages

In this video, we’re going to look at how we filter mail messages in macOS Big Sur. With macOS Big Sur, we now have to go up to the menu bar to select how we want to filter our messages. Let’s see how we filter mail messages in the Mail app with macOS Big Sur. Let’s go to my Mac.

Let’s go on open up my Mail app. When you’re looking at all of your messages here, what you’re able to do is filter them. When you filter them, you can select to see only your unread messages or maybe your messages that only have attachments. How do we do that? Well, with macOS Big Sur, it’s a two-step process. We first have to turn on filtering, and then we select how we want to filter them.

To turn on filtering, we can click on this button in the upper right-hand corner, the upper right-hand corner of our messages here. When I click on this, it’s going to filter my messages. Another way, I’m going to click on this to turn it off; another way of filtering our messages or turning on filtering is by going up to view in the menu bar – and then you’re going to see filter. All we do is just go over to the right, and select enable filter. I can also use command-L.

So now, let’s filter our messages. Right now, they are filtered by unread. So I’m only looking at my unread messages. How do we change what our filter is? In past versions of Mail with macOS, we were able to do this in the toolbar here. Now what we need to do to change our filter is we need to go back under the view in the menu bar. And then we go back over to our filter. And from here, we can select how we want to filter them. I can filter them by unread, by flagged, who they are addressed to if they are carbon copied to anyone, as well as show only mail with attachments, and only mail from VIP.

Now I can compound these, which means I can add more than one filter. So right now, I am looking at only my unread messages. I also want to see my flagged messages. All I do is just select flagged, and now I’m looking at my unread messages or my flag messages. Again, to change the filter, we just go back under View, and then we go over to Filter, and I select or de-select how I want to have them filtered. If I no longer want to filter them, I can disable it, I can use command-L, and then I can also just go up to the toolbar, click on this, and turn the filtering off.

So that’s how we filter our mail in macOS Big Sur. It’s a two-step process. We first have to turn on filtering. We can do that in the toolbar, and then we have to select how we want to filter them. We do that through the menu bar. We go up to View, you go to Filter, and then you can select how you want to have them filtered.

So that’s how we filter our mail in macOS Big Sur.