Exclusive whitelist

[Peter Gacs]

I am using Apple's Mail.app.
I would like my inbox to receive messages only from my whitelist.
The other messages should go into some other folder(s) which I can
review periodically, but my inbox should receive messages only
from approved senders.
Is there a way to get SpamSieve do this, or some other simple way
(say via an AppleScript)?

[Michael Tsai]

I don’t think there’s really a way to do this with SpamSieve/AppleScript. You could do the reverse—put messages from blocklisted senders in a different mailbox—but SpamSieve isn’t designed to differentiate among different levels of good messages within Apple Mail.

You could, however, make your own rule in Apple Mail, below the SpamSieve one, that moves messages from people in a particular Address Book group to a separate mailbox. To add someone to your “whitelist” you would drag them into that group in Address Book.

[Peter Gacs]

Thank you, it works, though the whitelist rule you suggest has to go to the
top, not to the bottom.

[Michael Tsai]

the whitelist rule you suggest has to go to the
top, not to the bottom.

It depends on what you want to do.

If you put it above the SpamSieve rule, messages from those senders will always get through, even if they’re blatantly spam.

If you put it below the SpamSieve rule, if SpamSieve thinks the messages aren’t spam, they’ll then be moved to the special “exclusive” mailbox.