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10   Version History

3.1—November 20, 2024
Highlights
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • Previously, the Train as Good and Train as Spam commands in SpamSieve’s Message menu were disabled while you were in the app when there was nothing for them to apply to, i.e. if no messages were selected in the Corpus or Log. To reduce confusion, since some people thought these commands were meant to be used from within Apple Mail or Outlook, they are now always enabled but will open the Train as Good/Spam section of the help when not applicable, as that will direct you to the various ways that you can train SpamSieve from within your mail client.
  • If macOS incorrectly reports that SpamSieve is damaged when installing or updating the app, we now have a Download Fixer tool to help.
  • SpamSieve no longer triggers the “find devices on local networks” prompt on macOS 15. It never needed that access, anyway. If, for some reason, you still get the local network access prompt, it’s fine to click Don’t Allow.
  • SpamSieve is once again localized in Korean.
Blocklist and Allowlist
  • If SpamSieve hangs due to a bug in Swift Regex, it is now able to report the problematic pattern and string, so that you can temporarily disable the offending rule and so that we can make a bug report to Apple.
  • Added some protections to help prevent rules from malfunctioning if the rules database is damaged.
Log
  • When you copy a log entry as text, it now shows more information about the corpus and rule changes.
  • If there’s an error reading an inessential part of the log database, SpamSieve will now just log the error instead of preventing you from using the app.
Apple Mail
  • If you’re using Proton Mail, we recommend using the Move it to the Trash if the spam score is at least setting to have SpamSieve move all spam messages to the Trash instead of to the Junk mailbox. This will ensure that Proton Mail removes the spam messages from the special All Mail mailbox.
  • Fixed a problem where, if you flagged a good message at the same time SpamSieve was filtering it, the flag could be overwritten.
  • Worked around a Mail bug where it could lose a message if you were manually refiltering messages that were already in the Junk mailbox.
  • Fixed an issue where, if a mail account was reset or Mail’s database was rebuilt, SpamSieve might reprocess old messages if they were still marked as unread.
  • Worked around a Mail bug that could cause a modal error to be reported (and block filtering and use of the app) when moving a message on an Exchange server.
  • The Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet now prevents the selection of additional sent and notes mailboxes, as these do not receive new messages that should be filtered.
  • Added some diagnostics to help track down a Mail bug that can cause messages to be inappropriately flagged orange when using the Mail extension.
  • The diagnostic report now includes additional information for troubleshooting problems with Mail’s database and Mail extensions.
Microsoft Outlook
  • When there’s an error processing an Outlook message, SpamSieve now reports the account name and folder, not just the subject of the message.
General
  • Updated the Dutch, French, and German localizations.
  • Fixed an issue where SpamSieve could get confused if you corrected a mistake but the mail server had changed the message data in between the prediction and the training.
  • Tried to work around a macOS bug that could cause it to incorrectly report the SpamSieve application file as damaged.
  • The × button in progress views now has an accessibility label.
  • When trying to open a database file that’s damaged, SpamSieve will now move it aside (saving it for diagnostic and recovery purposes) and start a fresh database automatically, rather than blocking the app from launching.
  • Fixed a problem where database errors caused by the disk being full were not handled properly because macOS was incorrectly reporting the error.
  • Removed various code that is no longer used.
  • The diagnostic report now includes information about the app’s logs, the crash logs folder, and components that could cause AppleScript errors.
  • SpamSieve is now built with Xcode 16 and the macOS 15 SDK.
Documentation
AppleScript
  • Optimized the scripting support so that it is now possible to access the entire contents of a large corpus without overwhelming AppleScript, as demonstrated here.
  • The training script commands now report an error if you forget to supply the message data.
3.0.5—July 1, 2024

SpamSieve 3.0.5 is a free update for those who have already purchased the SpamSieve 3.0 upgrade. If you’re using SpamSieve 2 and haven’t upgraded yet, the easiest way is to first let SpamSieve install the new version. At launch, it will show the Purchase window, and you can click the Check Upgrade Options button to get the upgrade discount without having to enter your old serial number.

Apple Mail
  • Preliminary testing shows that SpamSieve is compatible with macOS 15 Sequoia Developer Beta 2. Further updates may be required when Apple updates Mail in a subsequent Sequoia beta.
  • Worked around some problems where Mail could temporarily hang during spam filtering if the network connection was very slow or when encountering a macOS bug where Mail redownloads messages that have already been downloaded. If SpamSieve detects that Mail is slow reading a message, it will postpone filtering for a while to give it time to finish downloading everything. It can also help to go to Mail ‣ Settings ‣ Accounts ‣ Account Information and set Download Attachments to All for each account. This will encourage Mail to fully download messages right away.
  • The Filter Now button in Settings ‣ Apple Mail ‣ Filtering can now be used to manually filter the Mail inboxes, even when automatic filtering is disabled or postponed.
  • Worked around an issue where sometimes filtering in Mail didn’t work because Mail was so bogged down that it couldn’t read the inboxes for SpamSieve in a timely manner.
  • The mailbox outline for Filter spam messages in other mailboxes now recognizes the lowercase spam and junk names as being for mailboxes that should not be filtered.
  • Fixed a bug where SpamSieve would try to repair files related to Mail plug-ins when running on macOS 14, which doesn’t support plug-ins.
  • Fixed a bug where updating certain settings could cause a spurious error to be logged if you were not using the Mail plug-in.
  • Improved the error reporting to track down a Mail AppleScript issue when finding new messages to filter.
Microsoft Outlook
  • The Settings ‣ Outlook ‣ Setup window clarifies that, when using Enable spam filtering for Inbox, the non-spam messages left in the inbox are marked with the Good category after SpamSieve has processed them.
Settings
  • Fixed a bug where the notification score slider was too narrow on macOS 10.13.
  • Modernized the editable text fields to use shaded bezels instead of solid lines.
  • Secondary label text throughout the user interface now uses the modern gray coloring.
Icons
  • Due to a macOS bug, clicking the SpamSieve menu bar icon does not show the menu when the Mac has multiple displays, a window on the secondary display is full screen, and you are clicking the menu bar icon on that display. You can work around this by accessing the SpamSieve commands in another way (e.g. via the keyboard shortcuts or the menu bar icon on the main display) or by unchecking Show Dock icon in the settings.
  • Fixed a bug where the application icon in the Dock or Command-Tab switcher could appear pixellated when it was badged to show that SpamSieve was in the process of filtering or training a message.
General
  • SpamSieve now disables automatic filtering for Apple Mail and Outlook when the Mac is not connected to the Internet, to avoid hangs that could occur when trying to read messages that can’t be downloaded from the server.
  • The Open in External Viewer command now works in the Corpus and Log windows when the table view has a selected message but doesn’t have keyboard focus.
  • Improved the error reporting when a database can’t be accessed because the disk is full.
  • Worked around a problem where SpamSieve could crash if Core Data’s conflict resolution failed because the database file was damaged.
  • Made various updates for macOS 15, Xcode 16, and Swift 6.
Documentation
3.0.4—May 17, 2024

SpamSieve 3.0.4 is a free update for those who have already purchased the SpamSieve 3.0 upgrade. If you’re using SpamSieve 2 and haven’t upgraded yet, the easiest way is to first let SpamSieve install the new version. At launch, it will show the Purchase window, and you can click the Check Upgrade Options button to get the upgrade discount without having to enter your old serial number.

General
  • You can now use the Message submenu commands within the SpamSieve menu bar icon to train SpamSieve from Apple Mail or Outlook, for users who didn’t see the top-level commands inside the menu bar icon.
  • Made some changes to improve performance on Macs with spinning hard drives.
  • Improved the way the Text to Match column in rules windows truncates text that doesn’t fit.
  • You can now press Command-C in the Statistics window as a shortcut for clicking the Copy Statistics button.
  • Toolbar buttons no longer shift position when the Flag label changes to Unflag.
  • Updated the German localization and Settings window layout.
  • SpamSieve now reports an error if the Edit Addresses button can’t access your card in Contacts.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when quitting SpamSieve while a window was in the process of reloading.
  • Fixed an issue where SpamSieve could be double-launched after restarting your Mac, possibly causing the Settings window to be opened when it should have been hidden. Also, to avoid this problem, we recommend that you not add SpamSieve to System Settings ‣ General ‣ Login Items ‣ Open at Login. It should only be under Allow in the Background.
  • If a database file is damaged, SpamSieve now marks it as such and moves it aside. At the next launch, SpamSieve will create a fresh database so that you don’t continually run into the same error that prevents you from launching the app.
  • If a database can’t be saved, SpamSieve now logs the changes to a series of text files so that there’s a chance at recovering the data or figuring out what caused the problem.
Apple Mail
  • Fixed a bug where filtering could be delayed for a long time after the Mac woke from sleep, if it had gone to sleep while SpamSieve was waiting for a response from Mail.
  • Fixed a problem where filtering or training a large batch of messages in Mail could be slow or cause SpamSieve to hang or crash.
  • SpamSieve is more responsive and better at reporting errors when Mail is not responding.
  • Worked around a macOS bug that could cause a hang while waiting for Mail to respond to a command.
  • When using the Mail plug-in, SpamSieve no longer wastes time checking for messages in the inbox that need to be unflagged.
  • SpamSieve is better at handling AppleScript errors when training from Mail.
  • SpamSieve reports a better error message if Mail filtering is slow and the problem can be fixed by switching from the Mail extension to the Mail plug-in.
  • Improved the error reporting when SpamSieve is unable to read the accounts from Mail.
  • Improved the error reporting when setting up the Mail plug-in.
  • Worked around a Mail bug that could cause a spam message on an Exchange server to lose its body when moving it to the Junk mailbox.
  • Fixed a bug where some of SpamSieve’s script error codes could possibly conflict with Apple ones.
  • Added AppleMailMarkGoodRead to the esoteric preferences, for those who want SpamSieve to mark incoming good messages as read.
  • The AppleMailMailboxListerExtraMailboxes option in the esoteric preferences can now be used with local mailboxes, to work around a Mail bug that hides certain mailboxes from SpamSieve.
Microsoft Outlook
  • When training an Outlook message as spam, SpamSieve now removes the Uncertain Junk category.
  • When refiltering an Outlook message that turns out to be spam, SpamSieve now removes the Good category.
Filtering
  • When using macOS 14.4 or later, SpamSieve uses Swift Regex instead of ICU for matching blocklist and allowlist rules.
  • Worked around a macOS bug that could cause a crash when using a regular expression to process message text.
  • Worked around a macOS bug that could cause a hang when detecting the language of some message text.
  • Improved the handling of non-breaking space characters within words.
Log
  • Fixed a problem where SpamSieve could hang when reporting an error if the log database couldn’t be saved.
  • Log text that’s copied to the clipboard (or included in diagnostic reports) now uses consistent number formatting for message and word probabilities and has better descriptions for migrated rule predictions.
  • Diagnostic reports now include summary information about the objects in each database.
  • Diagnostic reports now include information to track down problems with the preferences not being saved.
Documentation
3.0.3—December 27, 2023

SpamSieve 3.0.3 is a free update for those who have already purchased the SpamSieve 3.0 upgrade. If you’re using SpamSieve 2 and haven’t upgraded yet, the easiest way is to first let SpamSieve install the new version. At launch, it will show the Purchase window, and you can click the Check Upgrade Options button to get the upgrade discount without having to enter your old serial number.

Apple Mail
  • Fixed a problem where, with certain unusual account configurations, SpamSieve would not see the new messages that needed to be filtered, so they would stay in the inbox.
  • SpamSieve is better able to continue filtering messages when Mail is temporarily unable to look up account information.
  • Worked around a macOS bug that could cause Mail to hang if it was preparing to send a message to the SpamSieve Mail extension while SpamSieve was filtering another mailbox.
  • Improved the Filter spam messages in other mailboxes feature:
    • Added a safety feature where SpamSieve will no longer filter messages that were received before SpamSieve was installed or before this feature was activated, to avoid reprocessing lots of old messages that happen to still be marked as unread.
    • The checkboxes in the mailbox list for TrainGood and TrainSpam are now disabled, as these mailboxes should not be selected for filtering.
    • SpamSieve is now able to continue finding mailboxes to list even if Mail returns invalid information for some of them.
  • Fixed a bug where the Settings ‣ Apple Mail ‣ Training window could be out-of-sync with the stored settings that SpamSieve was using, leading to trained messages not moving where you expected.
  • Removed the Including in the inbox setting. The Add green flag to unread good messages setting now controls the green flags for all mailboxes.
  • Improved the error handling when reading the selected messages.
  • Improved the error handling when reading the inboxes.
General
  • Worked around a macOS bug that could cause a crash when updating the Dock icon.
  • Worked around a macOS bug that could cause SpamSieve to hang at launch or when opening the Settings window.
  • The Print… command is now disabled for large table views, as it would overload the macOS printing system and cause a hang.
  • Improved the following sections of the manual (amongst others):
  • Fixed a bug where a damaged corpus database could cause a crash.
  • Fixed a bug where the hotkeys didn’t work with certain keyboard layouts.
  • Fixed a bug reporting errors during Outlook filtering.
  • Worked around a Core Data bug that could cause a crash.
  • Updated the German localization.
3.0.2—November 17, 2023

SpamSieve 3.0.2 is a free update for those who have already purchased the SpamSieve 3.0 upgrade. If you’re using SpamSieve 2 and haven’t upgraded yet, the easiest way is to first let SpamSieve install the new version. At launch, it will show the Purchase window, and you can click the Check Upgrade Options button to get the upgrade discount without having to enter your old serial number.

Apple Mail
  • Apple Mail filtering when using the Mail extension is much faster and is no longer limited by the number of messages in a mailbox.
    • This applies to the Check inboxes for new messages not sent to Mail extension, Filter spam messages in other mailboxes, and Add green flag to unread good messages features.
    • To enable fast filtering, make sure that you’ve granted SpamSieve Full Disk Access. SpamSieve will still work without it, but in some cases it will be slower or report an error if a mailbox contains too many messages. If you were previously using SpamSieve 2 with Apple Mail, it most likely still has Full Disk Access. Otherwise, or if it seems like filtering is slow, check System Settings ‣ Privacy & Security ‣ Full Disk Access to make sure SpamSieve is enabled there.
    • If you haven’t granted Full Disk Access, but SpamSieve thinks you would benefit from doing so, it will show a warning help link in the Settings ‣ Apple Mail ‣ Setup window.
    • Fast filtering currently requires macOS 13 Ventura or later. (On macOS 13 and earlier, it’s not really needed because the Mail plug-in is available.)
    • When fast filtering is available, SpamSieve now defaults to checking for new messages every 30 seconds instead of every minute. If you want, you can go to the Settings ‣ Apple Mail ‣ Filtering window and set it to check even more frequently, e.g. every 5 seconds, to minimize the time that spam messages spend in the inbox. In most cases, this doesn’t add much CPU overhead, however it might make Mail less responsive if you have a slow network connection or if Mail on your Mac takes a long time to fully download new messages for some other reason.
    • The Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet will no longer show large mailboxes in orange or red when fast filtering is available, because it’s now fine to select them.
  • The Mail extension no longer sets the background color at all on spam messages if coloring is off. This lets you set colors yourself for other purposes.
  • Improved the reporting of duplicate accounts when training from Apple Mail.
  • Clicking the Filter Now button will now filter the inboxes, too, not just the selected mailboxes.
  • SpamSieve will now log if Apple Mail is stuck reading a certain message.
  • Improved the error logging when listing Apple Mail mailboxes.
  • Added AppleMailMailboxListerExtraMailboxes to the esoteric preferences, which makes it possible to select mailboxes for filtering that Apple Mail failed to include in its mailbox listing.
Microsoft Outlook
  • Training an Outlook message as spam now removes the Good category.
  • Fixed a bug where SpamSieve would auto-launch when Outlook launched if Apple Mail filtering was enabled but Outlook filtering was disabled (and vice-versa).
Log
  • You can now click on the Date column header to reverse the sort order in the Log window so that the most recent log entries are at the top. (For memory and performance reasons, Date is the only sortable column in the log.)
  • When opening the Log window, if no log entries are selected, it now auto-scrolls to show the most recent ones.
  • SpamSieve is better at reporting whether a server junk filter thought that a message was spam.
  • Improved the error log entry when SpamSieve lacks privacy access for the Use macOS Contacts feature.
General
  • Improved the auto-creation of From (name) blocklist and allowlist rules so that SpamSieve learns more quickly when you train a message.
  • The Uncertain spam messages notification is now disabled by default, as most people only want to be notified about good messages.
  • Fixed a bug where the training keyboard shortcuts didn’t work in Apple Mail or Outlook when using a Greek keyboard layout.
  • Work around a Core Data bug that could cause a crash when saving the corpus.
  • Updated the Danish, Dutch, French, Japanese, and Spanish localizations.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when processing an e-mail message with an improperly encoded ZIP file attachment.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when updating the Dock icon during a software update.
3.0.1—October 19, 2023

SpamSieve 3.0.1 is a free update for those who have already purchased the SpamSieve 3.0 upgrade. If you’re using SpamSieve 2 and haven’t upgraded yet, the easiest way is to first let SpamSieve install the new version. At launch, it will show the Purchase window, and you can click the Check Upgrade Options button to get the upgrade discount without having to enter your old serial number.

Highlights

SpamSieve 3.0 brought a new way of integrating with Apple Mail—using a Mail extension—that’s compatible with macOS 14 Sonoma. Most customers have had success with this simpler system, where there’s no plug-in to install or rule to set up. Unfortunately, some customers encountered a macOS bug where Apple Mail stops sending new messages to SpamSieve’s Mail extension. This would cause spam messages to be left in the inbox, not because SpamSieve thought they were good, but because it hadn’t actually seen them.

We were aware of this problem affecting a small percentage of customers, and SpamSieve 3.0 included a built-in workaround: you could enable the Filter spam messages in other mailboxes feature and select your inboxes, and then SpamSieve would periodically check them for any new messages that Mail hadn’t sent to the extension. This worked, but there were a few downsides. You had to know—or see in the Log window or FAQ—that you needed to configure this. Also, there could be a slight delay before SpamSieve would detect the new messages; you could optionally enable a green flag to indicate to you when a message in the inbox had, in fact, been processed.

The main focus of SpamSieve 3.0.1 is improving this workaround so that everyone can get their mail filtered, even when Apple Mail is misbehaving. SpamSieve 3.0.1 adds a Check inboxes for new messages not sent to Mail extension feature that will automatically filter all of your inboxes, without your having to configure anything. Currently, this feature only kicks in if your inbox has fewer than 5,000 messages. We found that trying to read a larger inbox could cause Mail to freeze. If there are too many messages in the inbox, SpamSieve will skip it and tell you this in the Settings ‣ Apple Mail ‣ Setup window and in the Log window. Filtering will automatically resume if you move some messages to the Archive mailbox (or to another mailbox that you create, such as Inbox2) to get below the limit.

We understand that needing to move messages is not ideal, but most customers are below the limit and we wanted to get the fix to them as soon as possible. If you have a fast Mac, it may be able to handle a higher limit, and you can adjust this in the esoteric preferences. For SpamSieve 3.0.2, we’re working on another way of accessing the messages, which will work for larger inboxes and with a much shorter delay.

To be clear, all of this only applies for customers impacted by the macOS bug that prevents new messages from being sent to SpamSieve’s Mail extension. For most people, Mail does send messages to the extension for filtering. If your inbox has a large number of messages but is being filtered properly by the extension, you can ignore any error messages that SpamSieve reports about there being too many messages. The error just means that SpamSieve couldn’t double-check that all the new messages were processed.

Apple Mail
  • Added the Check inboxes for new messages not sent to Mail extension feature:
    • In the event that a macOS bug prevents Apple Mail from sending new messages to SpamSieve’s Mail extension for filtering, this will automatically find and filter new messages in the inbox.
    • This is enabled by default and will check the inboxes periodically using the same schedule that you’ve set for Filter spam messages in other mailboxes.
    • Inboxes with more than 5,000 total messages (shown as orange in the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet) will be skipped, to avoid slowing down or freezing Apple Mail.
    • We recommend reducing the size of the inbox by archiving older messages or moving them to another mailbox. This will ensure that your inbox is eligible for automatic filtering and also make inbox checks faster.
    • If you really want SpamSieve to try filtering a large inbox (shown in orange), you can manually select it in the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet or adjust the esoteric preferences.
    • Otherwise, you can remove any inboxes that you had added to the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet (to avoid duplicate checks).
    • To avoid disturbing old, unread messages that you may be purposely leaving in the inbox, Check inboxes for new messages not sent to Mail extension only processes messages received after the first time you launch SpamSieve 3.0.1. If you need to filter older messages in the inbox, you can select them and use the Filter Messages menu command.
  • Improved the new filtering system:
    • The Mail extension no longer overwrites the background color of good messages, so you can once again have Mail rules that set background colors for other reasons.
    • Worked around an Apple Mail bug that could prevent trained or filtered messages from moving to the trash.
    • Restored the prior behavior of leaving spam messages totally uncolored (rather than gray) when Color the background according to how spammy it is is unchecked.
    • If there’s an error moving a message to the Junk mailbox, SpamSieve now tries various fallback methods of moving it.
    • If the Mail extension encounters an error communicating with SpamSieve, it now flags the message orange instead of gray, since gray is now used for another purpose (see above).
    • If Apple Mail erroneously provides empty data for a message, SpamSieve will now always classify it as good, just to be safe, and it will also log some information about the location of the problematic message and then try again later.
    • Added an esoteric preference (click to enable/disable), which makes the Mail extension flag spam messages gray. Message background colors don’t sync between devices, but flags do, so this makes it possible to see on another device which messages in the Junk mailbox were put there by SpamSieve (rather than by a server filter). Also, the flag can be useful for separating spam messages from good ones in Apple Mail if Mail is for some reason unable to move the spam messages to the Junk mailbox.
    • Worked around an AppleScript error checking whether an account was enabled.
    • Fixed a bug where the details for some AppleScript error messages were lost.
  • Improved the Filter spam messages in other mailboxes feature:
    • This is now enabled by default, to avoid the problem of selecting mailboxes to filter but forgetting to enable the feature.
    • Previous versions of SpamSieve would warn you not to select a mailbox that was orange in the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet (having 5,000 or more messages) or red (10,000 or more messages). If you disregarded its advice, SpamSieve would respect your choice, but sometimes this could lead to Mail freezing and confusion as to what caused this. Now, SpamSieve will strictly enforce the red limit and skip filtering such mailboxes to avoid slowing down Apple Mail or causing it to freeze. If you think your Mac is super speedy and can handle more messages, you can raise the limit using the esoteric preferences.
    • If reading a particular mailbox causes a timeout error, SpamSieve now reports this in the log and recommends archiving some of the old messages to another mailbox that’s not selected for filtering.
    • SpamSieve will no longer try to filter mailboxes in accounts that are marked as disabled.
    • If a mailbox can’t be found because there are multiple mail accounts with the same name, SpamSieve will now try to figure out which account you meant and, failing that, show an error message saying that you should rename one of the accounts.
    • Fixed a bug where the wrong mailbox could be filtered if a top-level mailbox had the same name as a nested one.
    • Worked around an Apple Mail bug that could prevent moving POP messages to the Junk or Trash mailbox.
    • SpamSieve is better at handling errors from Mail when setting a message’s flag or read status.
    • Made some optimizations to speed up filtering.
  • Improved the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet:
    • SpamSieve is better at handling and reporting errors that Mail reports when reading the mailbox list.
    • The special mailboxes are now sorted to the top, like in Apple Mail.
    • Improved the recognition of special Junk and Archive mailboxes.
    • The special Archive mailbox is no longer selectable as filterable, since it doesn’t receive new messages.
    • Mailboxes that are not eligible for filtering are never shown in red or orange, even if they contain a large number of messages.
  • Improved the Add green flag to unread good messages feature:
    • Including in the inbox no longer tries to remove green flags from inboxes in accounts that are disabled.
    • In order to prevent Including in the inbox from causing slowness in Mail, SpamSieve will skip unflagging for large inboxes that show up as orange in the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet. It will also log an error if it looks like unflagging failed because there were too many messages in the mailbox.
    • Fixed a bug that could cause spurious errors to be logged when unflagging messages.
    • Improved the responsiveness of Mail during filtering and unflagging.
  • Improved the Mail plug-in:
    • Updated some error messages to account for SpamSieve’s new Settings window.
    • Fixed an error moving a trained spam message to the Trash mailbox.
    • In rare cases, SpamSieve asking Mail to deactivate its rules on macOS 14 can cause a crash, so you can now click here to tell SpamSieve not to do that. In that case, you should be sure to deactivate or delete the rules yourself.
General
  • Fixed a bug where the training hotkeys sometimes didn’t work in Apple Mail or Outlook.
  • When you train a message as good in Apple Mail or Outlook, SpamSieve no longer marks it as unread if it’s not in a Junk mailbox. Also, clarified the labels in the Settings window to say that the message is only moved if it’s in the Junk mailbox. In other words, you can train messages in other mailboxes (e.g. as part of the initial training) without messing up how they are filed.
  • Worked around a Swift bug that could cause a crash when parsing an e-mail message’s address list.
  • Improved the filtering accuracy through more precise message parsing.
  • Added Danish and Swedish localizations.
  • Updated the Dutch, French, German, and Spanish localizations.
  • You can now access the the release notes from the Help menu.
  • Improved SpamSieve’s launch time by preloading scripts in the background.
  • Many sections of the manual have been revised or updated.
  • SpamSieve will now log at launch if it thinks the menu bar icon is set to be visible but doesn’t actually fit on screen due to other menu bar icons or the Mac’s camera housing. There is now an esoteric preference (click to enable/disable) to see in the log how it determined this.
  • Added an esoteric preference to suppress badging of the Dock icon, as in rare cases that can trigger a Core Image bug that causes a crash (click to disable/enable badging).
  • Fixed a bug where SpamSieve wouldn’t let you enter your license information into the Purchase window.
Importing From SpamSieve 2
  • Worked around a Core Data bug that could cause an error saving the corpus when importing from SpamSieve 2.
  • Fixed a bug where SpamSieve could hang when importing certain malformed messages from SpamSieve 2.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when importing from SpamSieve 2 if the corpus was damaged. SpamSieve will now just skip the damaged message.
  • Fixed a bug where certain settings migrated from SpamSieve 2 would make it show in the Settings window that trained messages would be moved to Junk, but actually they would not be moved.
Settings
  • In the pop-up menu for the Move it to the Trash if the spam score is at least checkbox, the score of 50 is now labeled with all spam.
  • The menu item for opening the window is now called Settings, even on older versions of macOS, as having it called Preferences was confusing for people following the instructions in the manual.
  • SpamSieve will show a warning if Check inboxes for new messages not sent to Mail extension is disabled or if an inbox was skipped for filtering because it contained too many messages.
  • SpamSieve will now show a warning if you have Apple Mail mailboxes selected for filtering but Filter spam messages in other mailboxes is disabled.
  • SpamSieve will now show a warning if it skips filtering a mailbox because it’s too large.
  • Fixed the labels for the Uncertain spam messages slider, which were backwards.
  • Improved the display of Entourage and Postbox installation errors.
Blocklist and Allowlist
  • Fixed a bug where changing whether a rule was enabled or locked from a rule list window didn’t work if the search field had focus.
  • Fixed a bug where the text to match in the rule editor sheet was unreadable in Dark Mode.
  • Worked around a Swift Regex bug that could cause a hang when matching a message against the blocklist or allowlist.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when using the Import Addresses… command on macOS 10.15 or earlier.
Log
  • SpamSieve is better at reporting whether a server filter thought that a message was spam.
  • When you copy a log entry to the clipboard, it now includes the sender’s name.
  • If the same error occurs multiple times when communicating with Apple Mail or Outlook, SpamSieve now only logs it once per hour.
  • Fixed a bug where viewing a partially deleted log entry could cause a crash.
  • Fixed a bug where some emoji were not available on macOS 10.14.
3.0—September 21, 2023

SpamSieve 3.0 is a major upgrade. It costs $39.99 for new users (no subscription), $19.99 for previous SpamSieve owners, and is free for people who purchased SpamSieve 2.x on or after January 1, 2023. There’s a 30-day fully-featured trial for new users and upgraders. If you’re updating from SpamSieve 2, SpamSieve 3 will start out with no license information shown, but it still knows your serial number for the previous version. You can just click the Check Upgrade Options button in the Purchase window to take you to the store and automatically apply the upgrade discount.

Highlights
  • SpamSieve 3 is compatible with macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) through macOS 14 (Sonoma) and is recommended for all customers using those versions of macOS. SpamSieve 3 is required for customers using Apple Mail with Sonoma. We recommend updating SpamSieve before updating to Sonoma.
  • When you launch SpamSieve 3, it will offer to automatically migrate all your old training data and accuracy statistics (so that you don’t need to retrain it), or you can choose to start fresh. Your SpamSieve 2 data is left untouched, so it’s possible to revert to the old version if necessary. The new version of the Apple Mail plug-in also works with SpamSieve 2. Training done with version 2 after updating to version 3 will stay with version 2 (and vice-versa).
  • The Apple Mail integration has been completely rewritten for compatibility with macOS 14 Sonoma. On Sonoma, SpamSieve now uses a Mail extension rather than a Mail plug-in (as Sonoma no longer supports plug-ins). The extension needs to be enabled in Mail’s Settings ‣ Extensions window. It is no longer necessary to install any files or to give SpamSieve Full Disk Access. You will now train SpamSieve from the SpamSieve menu bar icon at the top of the screen or from SpamSieve’s Dock icon, rather than from the Message menu in Mail.
  • If you had previously used SpamSieve with Apple Mail, the first time SpamSieve launches on Sonoma it will explain how to make the transition to using the Mail extension. The new setup is also described in the Setting Up Apple Mail section of the manual. With earlier versions of macOS, you can continue using the Mail plug-in, as before. With macOS 13 Ventura and macOS 12 Monterey, you can choose whether to use the Mail extension (which is simpler to set up) or the Mail plug-in (which is more customizable). You can click Uninstall Plug-In… (which will also offer to delete the old Mail rule) in Settings ‣ Apple Mail ‣ Setup if you plan to switch all your Macs to using the extension.
  • The Microsoft Outlook support has been rewritten to be simpler and easier to set up. It is no longer necessary to install any script files. The Outlook Filter Mailboxes helper app is no longer needed. If you don’t store large amounts of mail in your inbox, it’s no longer necessary to create any rules in Outlook.
  • If you had previously used SpamSieve with Outlook, you can continue to use the existing scripts and Outlook Filter Mailboxes, or you can remove the Outlook Filter Mailboxes app and switch to the new setup by following either the Setting Up Outlook or Setting Up Outlook (Large Inboxes) instructions.
  • SpamSieve’s e-mail parser has been rewritten in Swift for better accuracy, stability, and speed. SpamSieve is better able to understand messages that use newer e-mail formats, as well as malformed messages that don’t follow the specification. Where previous versions might get confused and give up (ignoring parts of the message) or even crash, the new parser engine is more resilient. Being able to read and understand more of the e-mail message increases the filtering accuracy, since it’s able to see spammy content that was invisible to SpamSieve 2, either because of bugs in the e-mail sending software or because spammers were deliberately trying to evade filters.
  • The corpus, blocklist, and allowlist have been rewritten to use a new database format. This greatly reduces SpamSieve’s launch time and memory use, while enabling lots of new features.
  • The text-based log file and history database have been replaced by a new log database and Log window, which is easier to browse and search. The log includes lots more information about each message to help you understand what SpamSieve did and why, and what you might want to do in response. It should be your first stop when troubleshooting.
  • The Settings window has been redesigned, consolidating options and commands that were previously in other menus, scripts, or esoteric preferences. Many of the labels have been reworded for clarity, and there are now links to open relevant sections of the help for more detailed explanations.
  • There is now a Show Dock icon setting to more easily hide SpamSieve’s Dock icon. With the Dock icon hidden, you can access all of SpamSieve’s windows and commands from the new SpamSieve menu bar icon. If both the Dock icon and menu bar icon are hidden, you can still access the settings by opening SpamSieve from your Applications folder when it’s already running.
Apple Mail
  • Filtering is now controlled from within SpamSieve’s Settings window rather than from Mail’s settings. You can now choose to Enable spam filtering using Mail extension (for the newer, simpler setup) or Enable spam filtering using Mail plug-in (which works the same way as in SpamSieve 2). You can also select Disable spam filtering in Apple Mail to temporarily turn off filtering (without having to uninstall anything).
  • The Settings window has new buttons to Install Plug-In or Uninstall Plug-In…. The latter will also uninstall any SpamSieve rules. To stop using the Mail extension, you can just select Disable spam filtering in Apple Mail, which removes SpamSieve’s launch agent. There’s nothing further to uninstall, aside from the app itself.
  • There’s a new Filter Messages menu command to manually apply SpamSieve to the selected messages. This has a keyboard shortcut of Command-Control-L. Mail’s Apply Rules command has a keyboard shortcut of Command-Option-L, and it still works to apply the Mail rules, but it no longer applies SpamSieve when using the Mail extension (because there is no more SpamSieve rule).
  • We have long recommended setting Mail to move the messages SpamSieve catches to the All Junk mailbox rather than to the Spam mailbox. This is still the case when using the Mail plug-in, and with the Mail extension the Spam mailbox is no longer an option. There remains a SpamSieve setting to control where spam messages move when you train them. If you had been using Spam, you may want to change this to Junk so that all your spam messages end up in the same place.
  • SpamSieve normally moves spam messages to the Junk mailbox. When using the Mail extension, there’s a new Move it to the Trash if the spam score is at least option. This separates the more spammy messages (in Trash), which are less likely to be mistakes, from the less spammy ones (in Junk), so that you can concentrate your efforts on reviewing those. For example, if you set the score to 99, when you train a message as spam, its sender will go on SpamSieve’s blocklist, and future messages from the same name or address will go directly to the Trash.
  • There’s a new Mark it as read setting to mark new messages as read if SpamSieve thinks they’re spam, e.g. so that you aren’t distracted by the unread count in Mail’s sidebar.
  • The Color the background according to how spammy it is setting is now available in the Settings window (instead of via the Change Settings command). There’s now a legend so that you can see which spam levels the different colors correspond to.
  • There’s a new Filter spam messages in other mailboxes option. This makes it possible for SpamSieve to filter messages that other rules (either in Mail or on your mail server) moved out of the inbox. This is especially important when using the Mail extension, because Mail only sends new messages to the extension if they remain in the inbox after processing your Mail rules. With the Mail plug-in, this was not a concern because the SpamSieve rule was at the top of the list, so it was applied first. However, even with the plug-in, Mail does not apply rules to messages that were moved out of the inbox by a server rule or by another device before they got to your Mac. With this option, it is now possible for SpamSieve to filter all new messages, no matter where they are.
  • Filtering messages in other mailboxes is not immediate: SpamSieve needs to periodically check whether any new messages have arrived. If you receive lots of new messages and spend a lot of time in Mail, you may see a new message before SpamSieve does. It may not be clear whether a spam message is visible because SpamSieve made a mistake and thought it was good or simply because SpamSieve hadn’t had a chance to examine it yet. The new Add green flag to unread good messages option lets you choose to have SpamSieve mark messages that it has checked with a green flag. Messages with no flag are pending processing; they are not mistakes that need to be trained as spam.
  • In rare cases, a Mail bug may prevent new messages from being sent to the SpamSieve extension for analysis. You can enable green flags for the inbox using the Including in the inbox option, and if this and the Log window show that SpamSieve is not seeing the inbox messages, you can add the inboxes to the Select Mailboxes to Filter… sheet to have SpamSieve filter them without relying on the Mail extension.
  • You can now control from the Settings window whether messages that you train as spam are moved to the Junk, to the Trash mailbox, or to a custom mailbox; and whether they should be marked as read. You can also control whether messages trained as good are moved back to the inbox or marked as unread.
  • SpamSieve now shows an error message and help link in the settings if it’s missing Automation access to control Apple Mail or Full Disk Access to use the Apple Mail plug-in.
  • The new Setting the Junk Mailbox in Apple Mail section to the manual consolidates and updates several previous sections.
  • The Apple Mail - Rescue Good Messages and Apple Mail - Remote Training scripts are still supported. They do not need to be updated to continue working with SpamSieve 3. They work best when SpamSieve is set to move trained messages to the Junk mailbox.
Outlook
  • Filtering is now controlled by SpamSieve itself rather than using the Outlook Filter Mailboxes helper app. In SpamSieve’s Settings window, you can choose to Enable spam filtering for Inbox. This is a simpler setup that’s available for users who don’t keep lots of old messages in the inbox. You can also choose to Enable spam filtering for InboxSpamSieve, which uses Outlook rules to temporarily store messages in the InboxSpamSieve folder until they have been processed, as with previous versions of SpamSieve. You can also select Disable spam filtering in Outlook to temporarily turn off filtering or if you want to uninstall—there are no more extra files that need to be manually deleted.
  • You can now train SpamSieve from the SpamSieve menu bar icon at the top of the screen or from SpamSieve’s Dock icon, rather than from the system script menu. The training commands now have keyboard shortcuts.
  • There’s a new Filter Messages menu command to manually apply SpamSieve to the selected messages.
  • You can now set in the Settings window how often SpamSieve checks for new messages to filter. There’s also a Filter Now button that shows whether filtering is currently in progress and lets you tell SpamSieve to filter right away.
  • The Settings window now has a Mark less spammy messages as “Uncertain Junk” checkbox. There are also checkboxes to control whether messages trained as spam (or good) are moved to the Junk E-mail folder (or to the inbox) or marked as read (or as unread).
  • SpamSieve still supports Outlook 2011. This works the same way as in SpamSieve 2, except that the scripts can now be installed directly from the Settings window, and there are links to the setup instructions right there.
  • SpamSieve now shows an error message and help link in the settings if it’s missing Automation access to control Apple Mail or Outlook.
Other Settings
  • The Filters and Training settings have been consolidated. There are now buttons to open the various SpamSieve windows directly from the Settings window, along with links to open the relevant help sections. The old Use Habeas Safelist, “ADV” messages are spam, and Encoded HTML mail is spam filters have been retired. The old Allow good/spam duplicates in corpus checkboxes were not very useful and have been removed.
  • The Update Address Book “Me” Card command has been replaced with an Edit Addresses button, as it no longer worked due to privacy restrictions in macOS. This is useful in conjunction with the Catch spam sent from my own addresses setting (which used to be called Exclude my addresses).
  • Notification sounds are now shown without filename extensions and are remembered even if extension hidden flag is changed.
  • SpamSieve now supports Notification Center, with options for notifying for Good messages sent from Contacts, Other good messages, The number of new good messages, and Uncertain spam messages. There’s now a slider for controlling which messages are considered uncertain. The old support for Growl notifications has been retired.
  • There’s a new Other Clients tab of the Settings, which offers installation buttons and links to the setup instructions for the other mail apps that SpamSieve supports.
Bayesian Filtering
  • SpamSieve is better able to understand Emoji and Asian languages, so that runs of these characters are properly tokenized into words even when they are not separated by whitespace. This greatly improves the filtering accuracy for messages containing such characters.
  • SpamSieve also has a better understanding of Unicode normalization and of certain special characters, which improves recognition of words that had been seen before, but in a slightly different form.
  • Made various other changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
Rules Filtering
  • Normally, when you train a message as spam, SpamSieve will disable any matching allowlist rules; and when you train a message as good, SpamSieve will disable any matching blocklist rules. This prevents such “incorrect” rules from causing filtering mistakes for future messages. SpamSieve now lets you lock certain rules, which prevents them from being automatically disabled in this manner. This is useful when you are really sure that a rule does what you intend, for example if you want messages matching a certain rule to always be classified as good, even if some spam messages also match that rule.
  • SpamSieve is much faster at matching messages against mailing list rules.
  • Regex rules work better with Unicode text.
  • Added logging to help detect slow regexes that are slowing down rule filtering.
  • If you have a rule that has matched a lot of messages, SpamSieve no longer stops counting at 65,535 hits.
Corpus Window
  • The Words tab of the Corpus window works much the same as before, but it’s much faster to open and to change the sorted column. A large corpus can take a while to reload after an update, and this now happens in the background, rather than blocking the user interface and filtering. The text is larger and easier to read.
  • There are new tabs in the Corpus window where you can view the list of Good Messages and Spam Messages that SpamSieve has been trained with. In most cases, the full message data is not available for messages trained with SpamSieve 2, so in that case only placeholders will be shown. For messages trained with SpamSieve 3, you can view metadata about the message, as well as when and how it was trained. You can also view the message’s rendered content and its raw source and MIME structure.
  • Messages can now be trained from the Corpus window. Normally, it’s better to train from within your mail client, but sometimes you can’t find a message in the mail client or it’s already been deleted, due to a client or server bug or another device moving the message to a local mailbox. Having the message available in the Corpus window lets you properly update SpamSieve’s training in such cases. Previously, the only way to fix an incorrect training if you no longer had the message was to reset the corpus. Also, you can view the lists of spam and good messages to make sure that SpamSieve has been trained properly, i.e. that there were no mistakes that you forgot to correct.
  • You can flag messages of note to come back to them later.
  • You can open SpamSieve’s copy of a message into your e-mail client to reply to it there or to copy it back to the mail server.
  • You can drag and drop messages out of the corpus window to export them for backup or for reporting to customer support.
  • Searches now support wildcards (* and ?), and you can also search for messages by their subject, address, or SpamSieve identifier.
  • The Corpus window now supports secondary sorting.
Rules Windows
  • The Blocklist and Allowlist windows work much the same as before, but they’re much faster to open, loading now happens in the background, and the text is larger and easier to read.
  • The “whitelist” has been renamed to “allowlist,” as recommended by the IETF and Apple.
  • There are new columns to show when a rule was last Modified and when it last Matched a message. The Hits column has been replaced with separate columns to show the number of Correct and Incorrect times it was used to classify a message. This can help you identify rules that are not working as expected.
  • Secondary sorting is now supported. For example, to find allowlist rules that you might no longer need, you could sort by Date Created and then by Correct, to see all the rules with 0 hits ordered by how old they are.
  • Editing a rule now takes place in a separate sheet, where there’s more room to see the different options and to edit the text. You can now see live whether the regex that you entered is valid. The sheet also shows information about when and how the rule was created and how it has been used.
  • There’s a space to enter comments for each rule, e.g. to help you remember why you created a rule or how a regex was intended to work. You can search for rules by comment.
  • You can also flag a rule that you’re observing or tweaking or that you’ve put on probation to easily find it again later.
  • Rules with invalid regular expressions are shown in red. Some rules created with SpamSieve 2 may need to be updated, as the regex engine has changed from PCRE to ICU.
  • Changes that you make to rules are now undoable.
  • Searches now support wildcards (* and ?).
Log
  • The new Log window shows all the message trainings and predictions, as before. They are now color-coded so that you can see SpamSieve’s accuracy: green means that it was correct, orange indicates a false negative, and red indicates a false positive.
  • You can now view a message’s rendered content and its raw source and MIME structure, rather than just its metadata. There’s a new setting to control how long SpamSieve should store the full message data for old log entries, to prevent it from using too much storage.
  • Log entries show more information about each message. You can see which mail client (and in some cases which account and mailbox) a message came from. You can see whether a server junk filter agreed with SpamSieve about whether or not a message is spam. It also shows more information about what SpamSieve did with the message and why. If a log message is for a training, and you’ve correcting SpamSieve, the training log entry will show you information right there about why SpamSieve made that mistake. You can also search the log for the message’s identifier to see all the log entries related to that message. The log will also try to alert you to unusual situations, e.g. if you trained a message that was not actually a SpamSieve mistake, or if the exact same message had been repeatedly classified or trained.
  • The log also shows new types of entries. You can see changes that you or SpamSieve have made to rules. You can see errors reported by the mail client when SpamSieve asks it to do something—information that was previously only available in the system log.
  • SpamSieve 2 recorded less extensive log and history information, but SpamSieve 3 imports it and updates it to the new format where possible. If you had enabled the experimental message backup feature in SpamSieve 2, to protect against the Mail data loss bug, any backed up messages will now be available in the Log window. Messages from the old Save false negatives to disk feature are also imported.
  • As with the corpus, you can open messages from the log in Apple Mail and other mail clients or export them via drag and drop.
  • If SpamSieve thinks that processing a particular message caused a crash, it will be shown in red in the log. You can drag the log entry into an e-mail to report the problematic data to us so that we can try to prevent the crash in the future.
  • You can also see whether a particular message took an abnormally long time to process and report such problematic messages.
  • The contents of the log are now localized.
  • Log entries can now display context-specific links to help pages. For example, there is a particular link that’s only relevant when you are using Apple Mail and the Mail extension and you’ve trained a message in the inbox that SpamSieve had not seen before as spam.
  • If you’ve enabled notifications for new messages, e.g. to see which messages SpamSieve is uncertain about, clicking the notification will find that message in the log.
  • The log database is now stored as shards, so it works much better with backups (old shards rarely change and so won’t need to be recopied) and is more resilient (if one file becomes damaged, you don’t have to throw away the entire log).
  • Message data is no longer stored in plaintext, to avoid problems with anti-virus software deleting data out from under SpamSieve, even though it was inert.
  • Diagnostic reports now include a fixed number of recent log entries, whereas previously there could be too much or too little data depending on when the log file had last rolled over.
Statistics Window
  • The accuracy statistics now ignore duplicate classifications of the same message.
  • Calculating the corpus and rules statistics no longer blocks the user interface.
  • Show Statistics Since now uses a date picker rather than a free-form text field in a separate sheet.
General
  • SpamSieve has a new Dock icon. The top-left of the icon shows an envelope when SpamSieve is idle, a downward pointing arrow when SpamSieve is classifying a message, a check mark when it’s training a message as good, and an x mark when it’s training a message as spam.
  • You can now open the Settings window from the Dock menu.
  • The SpamSieve menu bar icon changes color while an operation initiated by the menu or a hotkey is in progress (blue when filtering messages, green when training as good, and brown when training as spam).
  • AppleScript support for the corpus and rules has been rewritten to be faster and use less memory. You can now use considering case and ignoring case blocks when looking up words and rules.
  • The Setting Up Airmail instructions now have screenshots.
  • Each help page now has a link to a Google translation so you can view it in a different language.
  • Removed support for PowerMail 4.x; versions 5.x and 6.x are still supported.
  • Updated the Dutch, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish localizations.
  • Removed the Danish, Italian, Korean, Russian, Swedish, and Vietnamese localizations, which are out-of-date. If you’d like to help update the localizations (or add a new one), please contact spamsieve@c-command.com.
2.9.52—March 10, 2023
2.9.51—January 11, 2023
2.9.50—August 4, 2022
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • Fixed an issue where, on macOS 12.5, sometimes Mail would move e-mails received immediately after launch to the Junk mailbox without asking SpamSieve whether they were spam.
  • Fixed an issue where, on macOS 12.5, sometimes SpamSieve would disable its Apple Mail rules because it looked like Mail hadn’t loaded the plug-in, but actually Mail was just slow to launch.
  • Made a change to prevent potential problems setting up the Message menu in Apple Mail on future versions of macOS 13 Ventura.
  • Fixed a bug where SpamSieve could incorrectly report that another copy of the Apple Mail plug-in was installed in the wrong place, when that copy might be necessary for another macOS user account on a different volume.
  • Fixed a bug that in rare cases could prevent SpamSieve from detecting that two copies of the Apple Mail plug-in were loaded at the same time.
  • SpamSieve is better at handling damaged rules files.
  • Reduced the size of the app by removing a helper tool that was only necessary for Apple Mail on macOS 10.7, which is no longer supported.
2.9.49—June 22, 2022
  • Added support for Apple Mail on the forthcoming macOS 12.5 and macOS 13 Ventura. We recommend updating SpamSieve before updating macOS. SpamSieve 2.9.49 should automatically update the installed version of its Apple Mail plug-in, and the plug-in should stay enabled. However, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu and to enable the plug-in.
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • Updated the Outlook Filter Mailboxes helper app to work around a problem where macOS 12.3 would report an error at launch. It also now helps you figure out if Outlook Filter Mailboxes doesn’t have Automation access to control SpamSieve.
  • Improved the following sections of the manual:
  • Worked around a macOS bug that could prevent a rules file written on macOS 12 on an M1 Mac from being properly read on macOS 10.15.
  • Fixed a bug where certain Unicode character sequences in a message’s address list could cause SpamSieve to hang when matching against a rule list.
  • Updated the Read Me.
2.9.48—February 10, 2022
2.9.47—December 6, 2021
  • Added support for Apple Mail on the forthcoming macOS 12.1. We recommend updating SpamSieve before updating macOS. SpamSieve 2.9.47 should automatically update the installed version of its Apple Mail plug-in, and the plug-in should stay enabled. However, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu and to enable the plug-in.
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • Worked around a bug in Apple Mail that could prevent messages trained as good from moving back to the inbox or messages (particularly POP ones) trained as spam from moving to the Junk mailbox. If you continue to see either of these problems, choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu.
  • Updated the Open Window script to work around an issue on macOS 12 where some windows didn’t open due to an AppleScript error.
  • Improved the following sections of the manual:
  • Improved the error handling when Apple Mail reports an error determining whether a message trained as spam is already in the Junk mailbox.
  • Improved the diagnostic report on macOS 12.
  • SpamSieve now declares notch compatibility for the new MacBook Pros.
2.9.46—October 14, 2021
  • Added support for Apple Mail on the forthcoming macOS 12.0. (An additional update was required due to late changes in Monterey Developer Beta 9.) We recommend updating SpamSieve before updating to Monterey. SpamSieve 2.9.46 should automatically update the installed version of its Apple Mail plug-in, however if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu and to enable the plug-in.
  • When you train a message as good, and SpamSieve is moving the message back to the inbox, it’s better at handling localized inbox names.
  • The Train as Good command in Apple Mail now moves messages out of spam/junk mailboxes that have a leading space in the name for sorting.
  • Updated the crash reporter for macOS 12 Monterey.
  • Improved the following sections of the manual:
  • The Apple Mail - Remote Training script is now able to find training mailboxes that are nested in other folders.
  • The Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox script is better at handling errors.
  • Added AppleMailTrainGoodMoveAlways to the esoteric preferences, which can work around a problem with Gmail where Mail does not report the trained message as being in the right mailbox, so SpamSieve decides not to move it when training as good.
  • Worked around a problem where an internal Apple Mail error could prevent messages from moving to the inbox when you trained them as good.
  • Fixed a bug where the Apple Mail - Remote Training script could fail after “Switching From the Spam Mailbox to the Junk Mailbox.”
2.9.45—September 8, 2021

  • Added support for Apple Mail on the forthcoming macOS 12.0. (An additional update was required due to late changes in Monterey Developer Beta 6.) We recommend updating SpamSieve before updating to Monterey. SpamSieve 2.9.45 should automatically update the installed version of its Apple Mail plug-in, however if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu and to enable the plug-in.

  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.

  • On macOS 10.15 and later, we now recommend configuring Apple Mail and SpamSieve to move spam messages to the special All Junk mailbox rather than to the Spam mailbox. This simplifies many setup procedures and works around some Mail bugs that, in rare cases, can cause spam messages that SpamSieve has caught to appear in the inbox as well in as the Spam mailbox or to be deleted instead of moved to the Spam mailbox.

    New installations of SpamSieve will use the Junk mailbox by default, and the manual has been rewritten with this new setup in mind.

    If you are already using SpamSieve with a Spam mailbox and are not encountering the bugs mentioned above, you can continue with your current setup. It will keep working the same way as before, without your having to change anything.

    The “Switching From the Spam Mailbox to the Junk Mailbox” section of the manual explains all of this in more detail and describes how you can update an existing SpamSieve setup if desired.

  • When you enter Deleted Messages as the spam mailbox name for training in Change Settings (Apple Mail), SpamSieve now moves the messages to the account-specific trash mailbox instead of to the local one, working around a macOS bug in that could cause the message to be deleted instead of moved.

  • Added the “Separating Spam Caught by SpamSieve and Server Filters” section of the manual.

  • Improved the following sections of the manual:

  • Added the Apple Mail - Rescue Good Messages script, which moves good messages that were incorrectly caught by a server junk filter from the Junk mailbox to the inbox. This is similar to the old Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox script but is easier to set up because you can just install the script file without having to edit it first.

  • The Apple Mail - Remote Training script now works when SpamSieve is configured to use the special Junk mailbox. In such cases, you can now download the script and use it directly. There is no need to edit it, as with previous versions.

  • The Apple Mail - SaneBox script now works when SpamSieve is configured to use the special Junk mailbox.

  • The Apple Mail - Move If Spam script now works when SpamSieve is configured to use the special Junk mailbox.

  • Improved the error reporting when you’ve launched an incomplete copy of SpamSieve from a Carbon Copy Cloner SafetyNet folder.

2.9.44—July 5, 2021
  • Added support for Apple Mail on the forthcoming macOS 11.5 and macOS 12.0. We recommend updating SpamSieve before updating to these versions of macOS. SpamSieve 2.9.44 should automatically update the installed version of its Apple Mail plug-in, however if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu and to enable the plug-in.
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • In most cases, updating SpamSieve’s Mail plug-in on macOS 11 no longer requires the plug-in to be re-enabled. It will just keep working after the update.
  • Improved the following sections of the manual:
  • On macOS 12, SpamSieve changes the keyboard shortcut for Mail’s Show/Hide Sidebar menu command to Command-Option-S. This avoids a conflict with the SpamSieve - Train as Spam command and makes Mail consistent with other apps such as Finder.
  • Updated the Outlook Filter Mailboxes helper app to to work around a macOS bug that could cause messages to be left in the InboxSpamSieve folder on Apple Silicon Macs. If you are seeing this problem, you should quit Outlook Filter Mailboxes and replace it with a freshly downloaded copy.
  • Optimized the text coloring in Mail’s message list on macOS 11.
  • Improved the Apple Mail diagnostic report.
2.9.43—February 22, 2021
2.9.42—January 20, 2021
  • SpamSieve now runs natively on Apple Silicon Macs.
  • Worked around a macOS bug that could block communication between Apple Mail or Outlook and SpamSieve on Apple Silicon Macs. This could cause training not to work and/or messages to accumulate in the InboxSpamSieve folder.
  • SpamSieve now tries to detect if Apple Mail will incorrectly report an “Incompatible Plug-ins Disabled” error on macOS 11 (e.g. when the installed version of the plug-in actually is compatible) and explains how to fix this.
  • Improved the following sections of the manual:
  • SpamSieve now maintains its own error log files, so you can still access information for troubleshooting when the macOS system log isn’t working properly.
  • Improved the installer and diagnostic report to better work around problems with Apple Mail’s plug-ins folder on macOS 11.
  • The software updater reports a more useful error message if you try to update SpamSieve while running it from the disk image. This should prevent confusion where you continue running an old version despite telling it to update.
  • The Apple Mail - Move If Spam script now lets you set a server spam mailbox name via the user defaults without having to edit the script.
2.9.41—December 11, 2020
  • Added support for Apple Mail on the forthcoming macOS 11.1. We recommend updating SpamSieve before updating to macOS 11.1. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu and enable the plug-in.
  • The Apple Mail installer is better able to detect when a new version of macOS requires a new version of SpamSieve.
  • Apple Mail is faster at launching SpamSieve and more likely to find the right installed copy of it.
  • Worked around a macOS 11 bug that prevented the diagnostic report from working properly on Apple Silicon Macs.
  • Worked around a macOS 11 bug that could cause an Apple Mail hang when SpamSieve and Small Cubed MailSuite were both in use.
  • Made various changes to try to work around a problem where Apple Mail training commands were intermittently not received on Macs with Apple Silicon.
  • Improved the diagnostic report on macOS 11.
  • Update the Korean localization.
2.9.40—October 19, 2020
  • Added support for Apple Mail on the forthcoming macOS 11.0 Big Sur. We recommend updating SpamSieve before updating to Big Sur. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu and enable the plug-in.
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • SpamSieve now works with Apple Mail when running on an Apple Silicon Mac.
  • On macOS 11, you can now hold down the Option key when installing SpamSieve’s Apple Mail plug-in to clear out any active plug-in files that may be preventing Mail from loading the plug-in. (Other third-party Mail plug-ins will be disabled but not deleted; they can be re-enabled using the Manage Plug-in… button in Mail’s preferences.) This is much easier than the former method on macOS 10.14 and 10.15 that required temporarily disabling SIP.
  • Restored Web bug protection in Apple Mail on macOS 11 since it seems to fix the issue in macOS 10.15 that necessitated disabling it.
  • The Apple Mail plug-in now has a stapled notarization ticket so that it can be loaded even if the Mac can’t contact Apple’s notarization servers.
  • The Apple Mail plug-in installer is better at working around macOS quarantine bugs.
  • It is now possible to save a diagnostic report when SpamSieve’s Dock icon is hidden (and thus the Help menu is inaccessible) by clicking a special link.
  • Improved the following sections of the manual:
  • The Setting Up Outlook section of the manual now explains that you should turn off the New Outlook switch because it does not support AppleScript.
  • SpamSieve now requires macOS 10.9 or later.
  • Improved the diagnostic report.
  • If a duplicate Apple Mail plug-in is installed, SpamSieve now reveals it to you in Finder.
  • The Apple Mail installer is better at reporting when the loaded version of the plug-in is different from the installed version, to help track down data vaults problems.
  • Added a workaround for a macOS privacy performance bug.
  • Fixed a regression where SpamSieve would unnecessarily update its Mail plug-in at each launch.
  • If an icon file is damaged, the error message now suggests installing a fresh copy of SpamSieve.
  • Fixed a bug where the text of an Apple Mail installer alert wasn’t accurate if you had relocated your Mac’s home folder.
  • Fixed a bug where the tags field was inappropriately shown.
2.9.39—March 4, 2020
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • When you select spam messages in Apple Mail, the message list text is more readable through a variety of highlight colors.
  • Improved the following sections of the manual:
  • Added the Processing Messages Before SpamSieve and Setting Up Airmail 1–3 sections of the manual.
  • Worked around a change in the forthcoming macOS 10.15.4 that could prevent Mail from loading SpamSieve’s plug-in if you had relocated your home folder to another volume. If Mail reports an error loading the plug-in, choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu to update it.
  • Worked around an Apple Mail bug that could, in rare cases on macOS 10.15, cause spam messages to be marked as spam but not moved to the Spam mailbox. If this is happening for you, choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu to enable the workaround.
  • A small percentage of Apple Mail users are seeing a macOS 10.15 bug where a rule that is supposed to move messages to an IMAP or Exchange mailbox instead deletes them. If this is happening for you, make sure that your SpamSieve rule is set to move the messages to a local mailbox under On My Mac (as recommended in the Setting up Apple Mail section of the manual) rather than to a mailbox on the mail server.
  • A small percentage of Apple Mail users are seeing a macOS 10.15 bug where moving a message to an IMAP or Exchange mailbox (either via drag-and-drop or via AppleScript, as SpamSieve does) instead deletes it. If this is happening for you, you can use the Change Settings command to set SpamSieve to (a) move messages trained as spam to a local Spam mailbox (this is the default); and (b) not move messages trained as good back to the inbox (you can instead copy them by Option-dragging or using the menu command).
  • SpamSieve now includes an experimental feature to save backup copies of the messages that it has processed. This can help prevent data loss if you are one of the unlucky users affected by a bug in the macOS 10.15 version of Apple Mail that can delete messages when moving them from one mailbox to another. The bug is not actually related to SpamSieve and also manifests when it’s not installed. However, training messages with SpamSieve is a common reason that Mail would be asked to move messages, possibly triggering the bug. And since SpamSieve sees the messages, anyway, it’s in a good position to help mitigate the bug. For more information about backups and how to enable them, please see the Backing Up Messages section of the manual.
  • If you are running into a bug in macOS 10.15 where Mail hangs for 10+ seconds during launch, the If Apple Mail Is Running Slowly section of the manual now describes how you can work around this by disabling and re-enabling SpamSieve’s plug-in.
  • Worked around an Apple Mail bug that could cause the Preferences window to be blank on macOS 10.15, making it impossible to enable SpamSieve’s plug-in or to access other Mail settings.
  • When installing the Apple Mail plug-in, SpamSieve will now warn you if Mail’s files are stored on a different volume than your home folder, which would prevent Mail from loading the plug-in on macOS 10.14 or later.
  • If SpamSieve detects that macOS’s AppleScript system files are damaged, which can prevent training from working, it will now recommend that you reinstall macOS.
  • After installing the Apple Mail plug-in, we recommend clicking the Quit and Show Instructions button. If you opt not to do this, the other button is now titled Continue rather than Cancel, to better reflect that the plug-in has still been installed and still needs to be enabled.
  • There’s now an esoteric preference to mark Outlook messages as unread after filtering, to work around a mysterious issue where moving a message to another folder caused it to be marked as read.
  • SpamSieve now logs to Console to help you detect inefficient regexes that slow down rule matching.
  • Revised the Apple Mail and Postbox plug-ins for new macOS notarization requirements.
  • Fixed a bug where training a message as good in Apple Mail could switch to displaying the inbox instead of moving the message to the inbox.
  • Fixed a bug where SpamSieve could warn you that the Apple Mail plug-in was not enabled if Mail relaunched while SpamSieve was in the process of uninstalling.
  • Fixed a bug where relaunching Apple Mail while SpamSieve was reminding you to enable the plug-in could result in a duplicate alert being shown.
2.9.38—November 19, 2019
  • SpamSieve 2.9.38 (and also 2.9.37) are compatible with macOS 10.15, however a small number of customers are seeing issues with the Catalina version of Apple Mail. The latest information about Catalina is available here.
  • Worked around an AppleScript bug in Apple Mail on macOS 10.15 that could result in messages trained as good being moved to the inbox of an account that’s disabled, making it look like the messages disappeared. This fix is available for all new installations and for older ones if you choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. (If you weren’t seeing this problem or have no disabled accounts, it’s not necessary to update the plug-in.)
  • Worked around an issue that could prevent some Apple Mail messages from being filtered through SpamSieve if SpamSieve had not yet launched and the Mac was overloaded, e.g. because it was relaunching all apps after logging in.
  • Worked around a problem where SpamSieve could be slow to launch if the system privacy database was overloaded.
  • Added the If the Apple Mail Plug-In Doesn’t Appear in the List or Doesn’t Stay Enabled section of the manual.
  • Improved the following sections of the manual:
  • A macOS 10.15 bug can prevent Apple Mail messages from being moved to the Spam mailbox, leaving them colored as spam in the inbox. SpamSieve now offers an alternate “Apple Mail Script Rule” setup for the small number of customers affected by this bug.
  • Added an experimental esoteric preference (click to enable/disable) to flag incoming spam messages as gray. A few customers are running into a Mail bug in macOS 10.15 that prevents rules from moving messages (even when using an “Apple Mail Script Rule”). This workaround makes it possible to set up a smart mailbox for gray flagged messages, so that they can easily be viewed and bulk-deleted even if the messages remain in the inbox.
  • Worked around some bugs in macOS 10.15 that could cause Mail to hang when SpamSieve launched.
  • If the Rules file is damaged, SpamSieve will now report some more information about the problem.
  • The Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox script now has an option to only mark confirmed spam messages as read, leaving them in the server spam mailbox rather than moving them to a shared spam mailbox.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when a Software Update… error occurred.
  • Fixed a bug with the crash reporter window and Dark Mode.
  • Modernized the localizations.
2.9.37—August 19, 2019
  • SpamSieve is now compatible with Apple Mail under macOS 10.15 (which is now in beta).
  • It’s best to update to SpamSieve 2.9.37 now, before updating to macOS 10.15. If you are already using macOS 10.15, the SpamSieve 2.9.36 auto-updater won’t work, so you should instead use the Download button in the Software Update… window and install the update manually, according to the instructions in the Read Me file. Once you have SpamSieve 2.9.37, auto-updates on macOS 10.15 will work normally.
  • Updated the documentation for macOS 10.15.
  • The Outlook - Filter Mailboxes app is now notarized for compatibility with macOS 10.15. If you’ve already installed the helper app, it should not be necessary to update it, but this change is needed for future updates as well as new installations.
  • Various Apple Mail error messages and documentation are better at reminding you to grant SpamSieve Full Disk Access when not having that might be the cause of the error, e.g. SpamSieve thinking its plug-in is not loaded.
  • Apple Mail on macOS 10.15 has a bug where it will not load plug-ins that are installed in the normal location if you’ve redirected your home folder to another volume. If SpamSieve detects this situation, it will apply a workaround (moving the plug-in to an alternate location) and show an alert that explains what it’s doing.
  • Renamed the “Setting Up Outlook 365” section of the manual to Setting Up Outlook, as it covers all current versions of Outlook, not just 365. This section has also been substantially rewritten to make it clearer what to do for each type of account.
  • The Can other Apple Mail plug-ins cause problems with SpamSieve? section of the manual now recommends using Mail’s own plug-in manager instead of manipulating the Bundles folder directly.
  • Fixed a bug where SpamSieve would sometimes ask you to enable an old Apple Mail plug-in (which wasn’t possible, because it was old) and quit, where instead it should have offered to update it first.
  • Worked around an Apple Mail bug where training a message as good sometimes didn’t move it to the inbox because Mail reported a script error when checking whether the account was enabled.
  • Improved the diagnostic report.
  • Software Update… reports a better error message if it was unable to install the new version of the app.
2.9.36—May 24, 2019
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • When using Outlook 365, you can now use Outlook rules to organize messages into folders, and SpamSieve will filter them (rather than just the messages in the inbox). The details for how to set this up are in Filtering Other Folders in the “Setting Up Outlook 365” section of the manual. (This has always worked automatically, with no special setup, in previous versions of Outlook and in Apple Mail.)
  • After you manually refilter messages in Outlook, SpamSieve now clears the selection to prevent accidental bulk training when correcting a spam message that remains.
  • Fixed a problem where some Apple Mail messages that were colored as spam still displayed with white text in Dark Mode, which was difficult to read.
  • Improved the following sections of the manual:
  • If SpamSieve encounters an error because your Mac’s storage is full, it now displays information about the free space available and recommends Apple’s guide to freeing up storage space.
  • SpamSieve reports a more useful error message if it determines that the reason its application package is damaged is because it’s running from a Carbon Copy Cloner safety net.
  • Improved the error message when uninstalling the Apple Mail plug-in if SpamSieve hasn’t been granted Full Disk Access.
  • Improved the error message when SpamSieve doesn’t have access to your Contacts.
  • Worked around a problem where asking Apple Mail for the list of mailboxes could cause it to hang at launch.
  • When training a good message in Apple Mail, if SpamSieve can’t find the proper inbox it logs more information to help figure out what happened.
  • Fixed a bug displaying the number of licenses in the Purchase window.
  • Fixed a bug where debug logging of messages that caused parser crashes wasn’t working with Apple Mail.
  • The diagnostic report now includes information about when the privacy database was last reset.
  • Diagnostic reports now work better when SpamSieve lacks Full Disk Access.
  • Updated to Xcode 10.2.
2.9.35—December 20, 2018
  • Worked around an issue where macOS 10.14 would tell SpamSieve that Mail had finished launching when it hadn’t. If Mail took a long time to launch, this could make SpamSieve erroneously think that its plug-in wasn’t enabled, so it would show some unnecessary and annoying alert windows asking you to fix this.
  • SpamSieve no longer updates its Apple Mail plug-in with each new release because this causes extra work to re-enable it for customers using macOS 10.14. Instead, the plug-in only auto-updates when there is a major change that we recommend for all users. You can still update it manually (by choosing Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the menu) if you want to ensure that you have the latest version.
  • Improved the following sections of the manual:
  • Improved SpamSieve’s error handling when trying to uninstall its Apple Mail plug-in while lacking Full Disk Access.
  • Fixed a bug where AppleScript permissions errors could report the wrong app name.
  • Fixed a bug where some Retina images in the manual were shown at double size.
  • Fixed a bug where the help index file was marked as executable.
2.9.34—October 30, 2018
  • Made a variety of changes to work better with Apple Mail on macOS 10.14:
    • SpamSieve now uses a variety of heuristics to better detect when Mail has finished launching before checking that its plug-in is enabled. This helps avoid annoying dialogs and prevents unnecessary rule deactivations if Mail takes a really long time to launch, e.g. on a slower Mac that has rebooted and is restoring all the previously open applications at once or if a utility such as iLock has halted Mail during the launch process.
    • SpamSieve can now protect you from a disabled plug-in when Mail launches after SpamSieve launches, e.g. if you are using SpamSieve with multiple mail clients and so SpamSieve is not always launched as a result of Mail launching.
    • SpamSieve now detects and repairs problems with Mail’s preferences folder that could prevent Mail from showing the Manage Plug-ins… button.
    • If macOS has forgotten that you gave SpamSieve Full Disk Access, SpamSieve will now detect this and remind you to grant it again.
    • If SpamSieve can’t install its Mail plug-in because it doesn’t have Full Disk Access, it no longer suggests that you install the plug-in manually. (It is better for you to grant access and then try the automatic installer again.)
    • If you’ve previously declined to give SpamSieve Automation access to control Mail, SpamSieve will now remind you to do this (and open System Preferences for you) when you try to train a message, instead of failing silently.
    • The Apple Mail - Remote Training and Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox scripts, when running as standalone applications, now explain to you that they need Automation access in order to function.
    • Adjusted the launch agent so that SpamSieve more reliably launches when Mail launches, and sandbox errors aren’t logged to Console.
    • Since version 2.9.21, SpamSieve has overridden the text color in Mail’s message list in order to improve the contrast and readability for spam messages that are marked with a colored background. This now works on macOS 10.14, including with Dark Mode.
    • The AppleMailAllJunkMessagesUseBlackText esoteric preference now switches the color for Dark Mode on macOS 10.14.
    • SpamSieve now logs more information to Console and diagnostic reports to help diagnose problems with the Mail plug-in.
    • The alert and manual now clarify that, if you no longer want to use SpamSieve with Mail, you can prevent SpamSieve from reminding you to enable the plug-in by uninstalling it.
    • SpamSieve no longer wastes time waiting for Mail to launch when there are no rules for it to reactivate, anyway.
    • Fixed an error reporting bug when activating the Mail rules.
    • Fixed a bug where a fresh install on macOS 10.14 wouldn’t remember that the Mail plug-in had been installed.
  • Outlook Filter Mailboxes now shows a more helpful error message if it lacks Automation access on macOS 10.14.
  • Due to changes in Airmail and macOS 10.14, Airmail versions 3.6.3 through 3.6.41 are not compatible with SpamSieve when using macOS 10.14. You should use Airmail 3.6.42 or later.
  • When checking the setup for your e-mail client, the instructions now recommend verifying that Automation access has been granted.
  • The Apple Mail - Discard Spam script reports a better error if Mail times out because there were too many messages in the trash.
  • Updated the Security & Privacy Access section of the manual.
  • The About window now includes a link to the privacy policy and has an updated layout.
  • Updated SpamSieve’s code signing for the latest Apple notarization requirements.
  • Fixed a bug where training a message as spam in Apple Mail would display the Spam mailbox instead of moving the message if you were using the old GUI scripting workaround on macOS 10.12 or later with a non-US localization.
  • Fixed a bug where SpamSieve could get confused by the presence of Fluid App instances.
2.9.33—September 21, 2018

  • Streamlined the flow of using SpamSieve with Apple Mail on macOS 10.14. SpamSieve does a better of job of guiding you through the Mojave security changes to make setup as easy as possible. For the smoothest experience, we recommend updating to SpamSieve 2.9.33 before you update your Mac to macOS 10.14.

  • On macOS 10.14, it is possible for an Apple Mail plug-in to be installed but not yet enabled. When SpamSieve’s plug-in is not enabled, the SpamSieve rule(s) in Mail cannot function properly and may move new good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve. SpamSieve now protects you from this by automatically deactivating the rules if it notices that the plug-in is disabled. Once you’ve enabled the plug-in, it reactivates the rule(s) for you.

    For completeness, we mention that there is a chance that Mail will move some messages before SpamSieve can deactivate the rule(s), e.g. because Mail downloaded them while SpamSieve was launching or because you declined when SpamSieve requested access to control Mail. If you end up with some good messages in the spam mailbox that are uncolored (because Mail moved them without consulting SpamSieve), you can just drag them back to your inbox.

    If you want to fully prevent messages from being moved to the spam mailbox, you can manually deactivate (uncheck) the SpamSieve rule(s) in Mail’s preferences until you know that the plug-in is loaded (i.e. you see the SpamSieve menu commands in Mail’s Message menu). However, most users will find it easier to let SpamSieve manage the rule(s) for them.

  • If you have previously used SpamSieve with Apple Mail but are now using a different mail client, you can choose Uninstall Apple Mail Plug-In… from the SpamSieve menu in order to prevent SpamSieve from reminding you to enable the Mail plug-in.

  • If the Uninstall Apple Mail Plug-In… command can’t remove the Mail rules because it lacks Automation access on macOS 10.14, it will now proceed with uninstalling the other items and ask you to remove the rules manually rather than stopping with an error.

  • SpamSieve now supports the Hardened Runtime on macOS 10.14.

  • SpamSieve is now notarized by Apple.

  • The former “Advanced Outlook Setup for Large Inboxes” (which uses the InboxSpamSieve folder) is now the standard setup described in the “Setting Up Outlook 365” section of the manual. This setup makes Outlook more responsive and provides for more accurate filtering when setting up SpamSieve for the first time. If you are already successfully using Outlook 365 with SpamSieve, the old setup is still supported, so you don’t have to change anything.

  • Improved the following sections of the manual:

  • Reduced the sizes of some large screenshots in the HTML manual so that the text is more easily readable.

  • Fixed a bug where some screenshots in the PDF manual were displayed at double size instead of at Retina resolution.

  • Removed support for legacy mail clients that no longer work on SpamSieve’s supported macOS versions: Claris Emailer, Eudora, Outlook Express, and Thunderbird 2.x.

2.9.32—August 30, 2018
  • SpamSieve now supports macOS 10.14 Mojave and Dark Mode.
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • Apple Mail
    • SpamSieve is now compatible with Apple Mail under macOS 10.14. It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.32 before updating to 10.14. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve.
    • macOS 10.14 adds some security protections for Apple Mail, and so you will need confirm to the system that you want SpamSieve to be able to access Mail and that you want Mail to load SpamSieve’s plug-in. SpamSieve will automatically advise you of what you need to do and when, but the steps are included here for reference:
      • In order to install the Mail plug-in, you’ll need to give SpamSieve Full Disk Access using System Preferences. This is described in the Security & Privacy Access section of the manual.
      • In order for Mail to load SpamSieve’s plug-in, you’ll need to enable it in Mail’s preferences. This is described in the Enabling and Updating the Apple Mail Plug-In section of the manual.
      • Each new version of SpamSieve will auto-update the installed plug-in, but you will need to re-enable it in Mail’s preferences. If the plug-in is installed but not enabled, Mail will move new messages to the Spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve. You can prevent this by temporarily disabling (unchecking) the SpamSieve rule in Mail’s preferences before updating SpamSieve. Or you can just drag the messages back to the inbox if you happen to receive any before you’ve had a chance to re-enable the plug-in.
      • In order to train messages in Mail, SpamSieve needs Automation access to control Mail. When macOS asks if SpamSieve should be able to control Mail, you should click OK. This is described in the Security & Privacy Access section of the manual.
    • The Software Update… command now advises you about re-enabling SpamSieve’s Mail plug-in after the update if you are using macOS 10.14.
    • Added the Keeping Spam Messages Out of Gmail’s Archive section of the manual.
    • If Mail can’t find the SpamSieve application file, e.g. because you manually deleted it in attempting to uninstall manually, it now offers the option of uninstalling the SpamSieve plug-in for you, so that you don’t have to reinstall the app to use the automatic installer.
    • If SpamSieve doesn’t have Full Disk Access, it will now log a single error to that affect, rather than a flood of file permissions errors.
    • SpamSieve now detects if the installed plug-in is up-to-date but not enabled (macOS 10.14–only) in Mail and will explain how to fix this.
    • Fixed a problem where color-specific rules didn’t apply their actions on macOS 10.14.
    • The Apple Mail - SaneBox script is better at handling and reporting errors.
    • The Mail plug-in is no longer code-signed, to work around an issue with macOS 10.14, and thus SpamSieve no longer checks whether it’s damaged.
    • Fixed a bug where the Mail plug-in could show the same error message repeatedly if the SpamSieve application was deleted, thus interfering with access to Mail itself.
    • Fixed a typo in Mail debug logging.
  • Microsoft Outlook 365
    • Added support for Outlook 365’s new kind of Gmail accounts that show up as “Google” accounts rather than as “IMAP” accounts.
    • Filtering is faster and will now process any messages in the InboxSpamSieve folder, even read ones.
    • SpamSieve is better able to recover when Outlook reports an error getting a message’s account.
    • To get these improvements, please go to the “Setting Up Outlook 365” section of the manual and follow the instructions in Step 6 to update your copy of Outlook - Filter Mailboxes.app.
    • The Advanced Outlook Setup for Large Inboxes section of the manual now describes a different way to do the setup if you are using Outlook 16.17 (currently available on the Office Insider track) with a Gmail account.
    • Fixed a bug where SpamSieve would incorrectly log that the Outlook scripts were damaged if you were using Outlook 365 but had previously used Outlook 2011 and still had its old scripts installed at the old location.
  • Added the Setting Up Other Mail Clients section of the manual.
  • Improved the following sections of the manual:
  • When you click the link to show SpamSieve’s Dock icon, the change now takes effect immediately, as quitting and relaunching to see the effect was difficult to do when the Dock icon was hidden.
  • Added a statistics report AppleScript property, which is a string with the current contents of the Statistics window.
  • The Copy Stats button no longer copies zeroes to the clipboard when the statistics haven’t been calculated yet.
  • Worked around a bug in macOS 10.13 that could prevent the log file from being written.
  • Worked around a macOS 10.13 bug that could prevent keyboard input after closing the Help menu.
  • Worked around a bug in macOS 10.13.4 that could cause an internal error when locating SpamSieve’s data files.
  • An error saving the system log for the diagnostic report is no longer fatal, so other files can still be saved to the report.
  • Fixed a bug where holding down the Command and Option keys to reset one of SpamSieve’s damaged files didn’t work if the file was seriously damaged.
  • Fixed a spurious error message when trying to launch SpamSieve if it was already running.
2.9.31—April 30, 2018
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • Fixed a database bug that could cause SpamSieve to crash when processing a particular type of spam message containing garbage Unicode characters in the subject.
  • Outlook - Filter Mailboxes now checks for new inbox messages every 1 minute by default (instead of 5), is more efficient, and is able to filter inboxes with localized names that were previously ignored.
  • Updated the Requirements and Setting Up Postbox sections of the manual. Postbox 6 no longer supports plug-ins, so we recommend continuing to use Postbox 5 for the time being or using the Apple Mail drone setup in the background.
  • The Outlook sections of the manual have been renamed to “Setting Up Outlook 365” and Setting Up Outlook 2011 for clarity.
  • Improved the following sections of the manual:
  • Worked around a bug in macOS 10.13 that could cause an internal error at launch when resolving an alias.
  • The Apple Mail - Discard Spam script is better able to work around Mail slowness that could leave spam messages stranded in the trash.
  • Diagnostic reports now include more information about localizations and SpamSieve helper processes.
  • Made various minor code updates.
  • Fixed a crash reporter bug that could prevent some information from being logged.
2.9.30—January 30, 2018
  • SpamSieve is now 64-bit only and requires macOS 10.7 or later.
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • You can now click the Outlook - Filter Mailboxes icon in the Dock to make it filter the new inbox messages immediately instead of waiting until the next scheduled check.
  • The Apple Mail - Remote Training script now auto-creates the TrainGood and TrainSpam mailboxes for you.
  • Added the Apple Mail - Block Sender script.
  • Improved the following sections of the manual:
  • SpamSieve can now recover from certain types of damage to a Rules file by logging information about the damaged rules and modifying them so that they don’t cause crashes.
  • Manually installing the Apple Mail plug-in now forces creation of a new launch agent .plist file, even if nothing has changed, to work around a problem with it not loading.
  • The Apple Mail - Remote Training, Apple Mail - SaneBox, and Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox scripts work around a macOS bug that reports that System Events is not running.
  • Outlook - Filter Mailboxes now works around an Outlook bug with getting folders by name.
  • Improved the error reporting when a file cannot be written.
  • Fixed a bug where SpamSieve could be fooled into parsing the wrong e-mail address out of a message header (Mailsploit).
  • Fixed a bug where a misleading error message would be presented if a secure connection could not be made to the software update server.
  • Fixed a spurious error in diagnostic reports on macOS 10.12 and later.
  • Made various code modernizations.
  • Updated the German localization.
2.9.29—August 24, 2017
  • Works with Apple Mail under macOS 10.13 High Sierra (currently in beta). It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.29 before updating to 10.13. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve.
  • To get the improvements (described below) to SpamSieve’s integration with Microsoft Outlook 2016, please follow these instructions after updating SpamSieve:
    1. Quit Microsoft Outlook and Outlook - Filter Mailboxes.
    2. From the SpamSieve menu in SpamSieve, choose Install Outlook Scripts.
    3. Go to the “Setting Up Outlook 365” section of the manual and follow the instructions in Step 6 to update your copy of Outlook - Filter Mailboxes.app.
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • Made various improvements to the Outlook - Filter Mailboxes app for Microsoft Outlook 2016:
    • The “Setting Up Outlook 365” section of the manual has been updated to be more complete and clear.
    • Worked around a hang in Outlook when there are lots of messages in the inbox.
    • There is an optional “Large Inboxes” setup that can greatly speed up the processing of new messages if you have lots of old messages in your inbox.
    • Filtering now works when the Mac is running in Dutch or Swedish.
    • It is now possible to configure the options using esoteric preferences links, so that you don’t have to edit the script itself.
    • Improved the debug logging and error reporting.
  • Worked around a bug in Microsoft Outlook 15.36 were it could incorrectly report that no messages were selected, thus preventing training from working.
  • The Apple Mail - Remote Training script now sets and clears message background colors and (optionally) flags. This way if a server filter and SpamSieve share the same Spam mailbox, you can easily see which messages are confirmed as spam by SpamSieve because they will be marked in its normal way.
  • Improved the following sections of the manual:
  • Improved the scrolling speed in the Blocklist, Corpus, and Whitelist windows.
  • The diagnostic reporter can now check whether the application package is damaged
  • SpamSieve is better at detecting and reporting problems with the launch agent.
  • Logged errors now use indentation to improve readability.
  • SpamSieve now fixes the permissions of the log file if it can’t append to it (and worked around an OS bug reporting such errors).
  • Improved the Apple Mail debug logging.
  • Improved the reporting of corpus reset errors.
  • Improved the error reporting for damaged files.
  • Documentation and Help menu links to c-command.com now use https instead of http.
  • Made various code modernizations.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause a -10004 error when filtering messages for Microsoft Outlook 2016.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when processing incoming Apple Mail messages on macOS 10.13.
  • Fixed a bug where some Preferences window labels were truncated on Mac OS X 10.10 due to OS font changes.
2.9.28—February 27, 2017
  • Works with Apple Mail under macOS 10.12.4. It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.28 before updating to 10.12.4. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve.
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • The Save Diagnostic Report… command in the Help menu now works with all versions of macOS that SpamSieve supports.
  • Improved the following sections of the manual:
  • Made various internal code modernizations.
  • Made the task code more robust.
  • Worked around an OS bug that could cause a crash when creating a diagnostic report.
  • Fixed a bug where Apple Mail messages trained as good didn’t move to the inbox when the Mac was running in Russian.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when logging errors.
  • Updated the Danish and German localizations.
2.9.27—December 9, 2016
  • Works with Apple Mail under macOS 10.12.2. It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.27 before updating to 10.12.2. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve.
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • The new Save Diagnostic Report… command in the Help menu provides an easier way of recording error logs and other information to send to technical support (requires macOS 10.12).
  • The Apple Mail - Remote Training script now lets you specify a different spam mailbox name for each account.
  • The Quit when mail client quits feature now works with Airmail 3.
  • The Outlook - Filter Mailboxes script now filters messages in inboxes with localized names.
  • Improved the following sections of the manual:
  • Made various changes to SpamSieve’s logging to work better with macOS 10.12.
  • Improved SpamSieve’s checking of the launch agent’s owner and group.
  • Improved the debug logging when training as spam in Apple Mail.
  • Fixed a regression where the Change Settings command in Apple Mail did not show the current settings using the default button.
  • SpamSieve now removes the Show Tab Bar menu item and associated functionality on macOS 10.12, since they don’t make sense for its user interface.
  • Updated to Xcode 8.1.
2.9.26—October 18, 2016
  • Works with Apple Mail under macOS 10.12.1. It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.26 before updating to 10.12.1. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve.
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • SpamSieve now tells Apple Mail’s junk filter when incoming messages are not junk (instead of only when they are junk). This should help prevent the confusing behavior of Mail displaying good messages in gold/brown text if its filter (or a server filter) disagreed with SpamSieve. Reminder: You can also have SpamSieve override the message text color by enabling AppleMailAllJunkMessagesUseBlackText in the esoteric preferences.
  • SpamSieve now uses the new os_log subsystem on macOS 10.12.
  • Adjusted the sizes of the Dock icon status indicators to work around a font change in macOS 10.12.
  • The version number of the Apple Mail plug-in is now synchronized with the version number of SpamSieve itself to reduce confusion for those using Mail Plugin Manager.
  • Added the Apple Mail - Mark Server Spam Messages as Read script.
  • Improved the following section of the manual:
  • Worked around a badly worded OS certificate error when checking for a software update.
  • Adjusted SpamSieve’s package resources to work around several code signing issues with macOS 10.12.
  • Fixed a bug where Apple Mail could repeatedly report the same error message.
  • Fixed a bug where the Portuguese localizer was not given credit in the About SpamSieve window.
2.9.25—September 19, 2016
2.9.24—March 1, 2016
  • Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.11.4. It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.24 before updating to 10.11.4. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve.
  • Made some optimizations so that SpamSieve launches faster and sorting and deleting in the Blocklist, Whitelist, and Corpus windows is faster.
  • The Train as Good command in Apple Mail is better at finding which inbox to move the message back to.
  • The Outlook - Filter Mailboxes.app file is now codesigned for Gatekeeper, so it will work without your having to change System Preferences to allow applications downloaded from Anywhere.
  • The Apple Mail - Move If Spam script can now color or flag messages based on how spammy they are.
  • Improved the following sections of the manual:
  • SpamSieve now uses a different and more reliable strategy to prevent the OS from keeping it stuck in a partially launched state.
  • Added an experimental option for Apple Mail to use black text for messages marked as junk but not processed by SpamSieve, overriding the low-contrast color that Mail added in Mac OS X 10.11. For SpamSieve’s black text, click here; for the default brown text click here.
  • The Uninstall Apple Mail Plug-In… command now removes the Launch SpamSieve.scpt file.
  • When running as background applications, the Apple Mail - Remote Training, Apple Mail - SaneBox, and Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox scripts no longer launch Mail if it is not already running.
  • Improved the error handling in the Apple Mail - Discard Spam script so that it can now delete most of the messages even if a few result in errors.
  • Reduced SpamSieve’s memory use when type-selecting in the Corpus, Blocklist, and Whitelist windows.
  • SpamSieve is better able to function when the system is unable to tell it where the user’s home folder is.
  • Improved the error reporting for the Software Update… command.
  • Modernized the Software Update code that checks whether your OS version is new enough to run the new version of SpamSieve.
  • The SpamSieveHelper application will now quit in the rare event that another copy is already running.
  • Made some changes to try to work around a rare bug where SpamSieve’s Apple Mail plug-in didn’t load until after the first few messages had been downloaded from the server, leading to them being filtered directly to the Spam mailbox rather than through SpamSieve.
  • Worked around an issue where an internal path conversion error from NSFileManager could cause SpamSieve to interrupt spam filtering with an error dialog. Now SpamSieve will simply log an “Error looking up image for address” message to the Console and continue filtering.
  • Made various code modernizations.
  • Made various changes to the build system.
2.9.23—December 8, 2015
  • Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.11.2. It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.23 before updating to 10.11.2. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve.
  • Made a variety of changes to work around a bug in Mac OS X 10.11 in which (in rares cases) the system would start to launch SpamSieve but not load any of its code, leaving it stuck in a partially launched state. This would particularly happen if Mail itself was auto-launched by the system after your Mac booted. This could lead to Apple Mail hanging (while waiting for SpamSieve), spam messages left in the inbox (because the Mail plug-in was forced to assume they were good), and high Mail memory use. SpamSieve’s launch agent now tries to detect this situation and quit the stuck SpamSieve process, allowing it to relaunch normally. If this is unsuccessful, the Mail plug-in will report an error explaining what is going on and how you can manually fix it.
  • The Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox script can now move the spams to per-account spam mailboxes, has better error reporting, and has an option to enable debug logging.
  • The Apple Mail - SaneBox script now has an option to enable debug logging.
  • Made some improvements to the statistics database to be more resilient to errors and also report them better.
  • SpamSieve is better at handling errors if it gets disconnected from Apple Mail in the middle of processing a message.
  • SpamSieve will no longer try to use Apple Mail’s background activity count scripting property on Mac OS X 10.11 because it’s known to be broken. This will reduce unnecessary error logging to Console.
  • SpamSieve no longer creates an App Store Receipts folder, since it would always be empty.
  • Updated code for Xcode 7.1.
  • Fixed the size of the distribution disk image window.
  • Worked around a Finder bug that could cause the disk image’s icons to be misaligned if the AppleShowAllFiles option was enabled.
2.9.22—October 21, 2015
  • Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.11.1. It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.22 before updating to 10.11.1. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve.
  • If SpamSieve detects that training a message didn’t work because of an AppleScript bug in Mac OS X 10.11, it will now direct you to the new Duplicate Apple Mail Accounts section of the manual for a workaround.
  • When filtering incoming messages, Apple Mail will now wait longer for SpamSieve to launch in case the system delayed respawning the launch agent. Thus, spam messages are more likely to be filtered rather than left in the inbox.
  • If the launch agent is set to be continuously running, it no longer quits itself when Mail quits or SpamSieve quits/crashes. This should help ensure that Mail is able to relaunch SpamSieve right away, without Mac OS X 10.11 throttling the launch agent.
  • The Apple Mail - Discard Spam script now has an option to set the retry delay to work around a problem with spam messages being left in the trash if Mail failed to delete them.
  • Improved the following sections of the manual:
2.9.21—September 28, 2015
2.9.20—June 3, 2015
General
AppleScript
Error Handling
  • SpamSieve will now recreate the log file’s folder if it unexpectedly disappears after the application has launched, perhaps due to CleanApp. If this affects you, SpamSieve will make a note in the Console log.
  • Improved SpamSieve’s error handling and recovery when there is an error creating or updating the log file.
  • The Uninstall Apple Mail Plug-In… command will now retry if there’s an error communicating with Mail and report a better error if it still doesn’t succeed.
  • When training from Apple Mail, SpamSieve will now report a better error if it detects that the necessary SpamSieveHelper application is not running.
  • If SpamSieve detects that one of its files is missing, i.e. that the application is damaged, it now presents a better error message.
  • When there is an error reading the corpus or history database, the error alert now has a clickable Help button instead of inline URL text.
  • The Entourage scripts can now log errors to Console.
  • SpamSieve will now log an error if it’s not installed in the Applications folder, as this can prevent proper functioning with Airmail (due to sandbox restrictions).
  • Improved the error message if Apple Mail can’t launch SpamSieve.
  • Errors for corrupt files now link to the relevant Web pages that explain how to fix them.
  • Improved the error message when you’re using a version of SpamSieve that’s too old for your version of Apple Mail.
  • Improved error reporting when a temporary folder cannot be created.
  • Improved the error message for incorrect serial numbers.
  • SpamSieve now reports permissions information if there’s an error opening the statistics database.
Bug Fixes
  • Worked around a bug where Microsoft Outlook does not always correctly return a message’s source. This could lead to spam messages being classified as good because SpamSieve had no information to work from. To get this fix, choose Install Outlook Scripts from the SpamSieve menu.
  • Worked around a text conversion bug in Mac OS X 10.10.3.
  • SpamSieve will no longer repeatedly try to fix a file’s owner if ownership is ignored on the volume.
  • Fixed a bug where SpamSieve could report an internal error if it received an Apple event while in the process of quitting.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause an internal error writing to SpamSieve’s log file when the application was quitting.
  • Fixed a regression where the Outlook 14 installer didn’t properly migrate installed script files.
  • Fixed a bug abbreviating long rules in the log.
  • Date formatters now use the POSIX local where appropriate.
2.9.19—January 27, 2015
  • Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.10.2. It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.19 before updating to Mac OS X 10.10.2. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve.
  • To make future OS updates smoother:
    • You can wait to update Mac OS X until a new version of SpamSieve has been released. The latest compatibility information is always available at the top of the SpamSieve Support page. To prevent Mac OS X from updating itself without asking you, go to the App Store section of System Preferences and make sure that Install OS X updates is unchecked.
    • You can sign up to receive the public beta versions of SpamSieve. Then you will likely already have a compatible version of SpamSieve installed when the OS update first becomes available.
  • Added the Uninstall Apple Mail Plug-In… command in the SpamSieve menu.
  • SpamSieve is now more aggressive about auto-training whitelist rules to prevent false positives.
  • SpamSieve is now 33% faster at reading the corpus and 48% faster at writing it. This improves the launch time and overall application responsiveness.
  • The Apple Mail Train as Good command is better at determining when a message is inside of a junk mailbox with a localized name.
  • The Apple Mail - Remote Training script no longer times out when there are lots of messages in the training mailbox. It also has new options for changing the name of the spam mailbox and for enabling debug logging.
  • The Apple Mail - SaneBox and Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox scripts now set the junk status and color for spam messages.
  • Added the following sections to the manual:
  • Improved the following sections of the manual:
  • Added improved instructions for installing and running supplemental AppleScripts.
  • If Outlook reports an error when creating the Uncertain Junk category, SpamSieve now explains how you can create it manually.
  • SpamSieve can now log the contents of the LaunchAgents folder if there is a problem.
  • When the SpamSieve application is damaged and needs to be reinstalled, it now links to some more extensive online instructions for doing so.
  • Improved the error reporting when SpamSieve’s log file can’t be written to.
  • If there’s an error removing the old copy of the Apple Mail plug-in and fixing the file permissions/ownership doesn’t help, SpamSieve now instructs you how to remove the file manually.
  • Improved the text in the Welcome window. Also, the window is now shown later in the launch process so that the referenced Help menu is available.
  • The About SpamSieve window now uses the new system font on Mac OS X 10.10.
  • The About SpamSieve window now uses the system language names when crediting localizers, to reduce the number of strings that localizers need to keep up-to-date.
  • Increased the font size in the Software Update… window on Mac OS X 10.10.
  • Added the ShowResetAlert user default to show the corpus/history reset window if the user can’t hold down the proper modifier keys.
  • Added QuitMailWhenMacSleeps to the esoteric preferences. This quits Mail when the Mac sleeps and relaunches it when the Mac wakes. This works around an OS bug that can cause messages not to be moved to the Spam mailbox if Mail received them right after the Mac woke from sleep.
  • Worked around a string encoding bug in Mac OS X 10.10.
  • Fixed a bug where the Apple Mail plug-in would cause unnecessary messages about LSUIElement and the sandbox to be logged to Console.
  • Fixed a bug where a change in system font metrics caused some text in the Preferences and Statistics windows to be truncated.
  • Fixed spurious log messages from SpamSieveHelper when running on Mac OS X 10.10.
  • Added defensive check to prevent trying to fix the ownership of certain folders.
  • Fixed a bug where toolbar buttons in the rules and corpus windows were always enabled when running on Mac OS X 10.10.
  • Worked around an OS bug that prevented bookmark files from being resolved.
  • Worked around an OS bug that could cause SpamSieve’s log file to be created in the wrong location.
  • Updated the German and Spanish localizations.
2.9.18—November 17, 2014
  • Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.10.1. It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.18 before updating to Mac OS X 10.10.1. (To prevent Mac OS X from updating itself without asking you, go to the App Store section of System Preferences and make sure that Install OS X updates is unchecked.) In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve.
  • Added preliminary support for Microsoft Outlook 15.3 (part of Office 365). This is described in the “Setting Up Outlook 365” section of the manual.
  • Added the following sections to the manual:
  • Improved the following sections of the manual (among others):
  • The Apple Mail - Discard Spam script is faster and more reliable for large mailboxes.
  • Improved the error reporting when writing to the log file and the disk is full.
  • SpamSieve is better able to recover from incorrect launch agent file ownership.
  • The Quit when mail client quits feature now works with Airmail 2.
  • The Blocklist and Whitelist windows now display the number of rules using commas if there are more than 1,000.
  • The Purchase… window now accepts serial numbers copied and pasted from a PDF of an order confirmation, after the browser has transliterated the dashes.
  • Updated the toolbar icons for Mac OS X 10.10.
  • Updated the disk image icon for Mac OS X 10.10.
  • Worked around a bug in Mac OS X 10.10 that could cause SpamSieve to freeze at launch.
  • Worked around a string encoding conversion bug in Mac OS X 10.10.
  • The crash reporter now reports more information if it couldn’t find any matching crash log files.
2.9.17—October 16, 2014
2.9.16—September 17, 2014
2.9.15—June 30, 2014
  • Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.9.4. It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.15 before updating to Mac OS X 10.9.4. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve.
  • Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite.
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • SpamSieve now requires Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later. Versions of SpamSieve for Mac OS X 10.5 and earlier are available.
  • Modernized lots of code and removed old code that’s no longer needed for compatibility with legacy OS versions.
  • Made changes so that SpamSieve launches faster, especially when cfprefsd is slow to respond.
  • Added the Why are messages marked as spam in Apple Mail but not moved? section to the manual.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the Install Outlook Scripts command to fail if Parallels Desktop was installed and its stub application for the Windows version of Outlook was enabled.
  • The Apple Mail - SaneBox script now reports errors to Console (since Mail was suppressing them) and no longer times out for very large mailboxes.
  • The Software Update… feature is better at explaining what you can do if installation fails.
  • Adjusted the way the Purchase… window displays the remaining demo time to try to make it clearer.
  • Improved the reporting of file permissions errors and damaged sound files.
  • Improved the handling of localized strings when the application is damaged.
  • Fixed a bug where the release notes in the Software Update… window were shown in the wrong font.
  • Fixed a bug where SpamSieve would auto-train even if you had unchecked all of the filters.
  • Updated the Dutch, Japanese, and Spanish localizations.
  • We need help keeping SpamSieve’s Japanese localization up-to-date. Please contact spamsieve@c-command.com if you’re interested.
2.9.14—May 15, 2014
  • Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.9.3. It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.14 before updating to Mac OS X 10.9.3. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve.
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • Added the Does SpamSieve protect me from viruses? and “Why does SpamSieve always need an update when macOS is updated?” sections to the manual.
  • Improved the Spam Message Colors in Apple Mail, Correct All Mistakes, “Sending in the SpamSieve Log File”, “Using a Spam Mailbox on the Server,” “Why does the “Junk” mailbox appear in Apple Mail?,” and Checking the Mailsmith Setup sections of the manual, as well as various instructional alerts and error messages.
  • The Import Addresses… command no longer has a file size limit.
  • SpamSieve no longer prompts to access the system contacts database if you have Use macOS Contacts unchecked.
  • Made some changes to make SpamSieve launch faster, especially when cfprefsd is slow to respond.
  • Rewrote the Apple Mail - Discard Spam script to not rely on GUI scripting and to avoid deleting messages that were already in the trash.
  • The Setting Up Postbox command works better with pre-release versions of Postbox.
  • SpamSieve now checks the permissions on more of Apple Mail’s folders.
  • If an error occurs during Install Outlook Scripts, SpamSieve will now try to determine whether this was because Microsoft Outlook was not installed properly.
  • If your copy of Apple Mail is damaged, SpamSieve will now report this, but it will still let you install the plug-in.
  • The training commands in Apple Mail work better with localized mailbox names.
  • Added more logging for the Outlook Train as Good command.
  • The images in the PDF manual and Apple Help are now Retina-resolution.
  • Adjusted the font sizes in the PDF manual.
2.9.13—February 25, 2014
  • Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.9.2. It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.13 before updating to Mac OS X 10.9.2. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox without consulting SpamSieve.
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • On Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Apple Mail is slower at moving messages to the Spam mailbox when you choose SpamSieve - Train as Spam and the inbox when you choose SpamSieve - Train as Good. This version of SpamSieve includes some changes to speed this up. It also includes workarounds to move messages faster by using GUI scripting instead of regular AppleScript. To enable the workarounds, please see the AppleMailTrainSpamGUIScripting and AppleMailTrainGoodGUIScripting options in the Esoteric Preferences section of the manual.
  • Documented the AppleMailPlugInSetIsJunk esoteric preference, as it can be used to speed up filtering on Mac OS X 10.9.
  • Improved the Setting Up Airmail section of the manual to recommend not deleting messages from the Spam mailbox when using Airmail 1.3.1 (223).
  • Added the “Why does the “Junk” mailbox appear in Apple Mail?” section to the manual.
  • Improved the Setting Up a MailMate Drone and iPhone Spam Filtering sections of the manual.
  • The AppleMailTrainSpamGUIScripting esoteric preference now works if you’ve selected the trash as your mailbox for trained spam messages.
  • Optimized and fixed a possible Apple Mail crash when using the Setting Up an Apple Mail Drone configuration.
  • SpamSieve is now able to log more diagnostic information to help track down problems with Apple Mail.
  • When a Mac OS X update disables SpamSieve’s Apple Mail plug-in, and your Mac is running in a language other than English, SpamSieve is better able to detect this and auto-reinstall the plug-in.
  • SpamSieve now cleans up empty folders of disabled Apple Mail bundles.
  • When training messages from Microsoft Outlook, SpamSieve now logs errors to the Console. You can also enable extended error logging via the OutlookScriptDebug default.
2.9.12—December 16, 2013
  • Works with Apple Mail under Mac OS X 10.9.1. It’s easiest if you update to SpamSieve 2.9.12 before updating to Mac OS X 10.9.1. In any case, if you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu. Otherwise, with the SpamSieve plug-in not installed, Mail will move good messages to the spam mailbox
  • On Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Apple Mail is slower at moving messages to the Spam mailbox when you choose SpamSieve - Train as Spam. SpamSieve includes a workaround to move messages faster by using GUI scripting instead of regular AppleScript. To enable the workaround, please see the AppleMailTrainSpamGUIScripting option in the Esoteric Preferences section of the manual.
  • Versions 1.2.1 and later of the Airmail e-mail client include support for SpamSieve. The Setting Up Airmail section of the manual describes how to use SpamSieve with Airmail.
  • It is now possible to set up a spam filtering drone using the MailMate e-mail client. This is described in the Setting Up a MailMate Drone section of the manual.
  • The Flash PowerMate feature is now compatible with (and requires) version 3.0 of the Griffin PowerMate software.
  • You can now hold down the Option key when you click Check Now in the Software Update… window to always download the latest version, even if your version is already up-to-date. This is an easy way to download and re-install a fresh copy of SpamSieve if yours is damaged.
  • Added the AppleMailTrainGoodClearFlags esoteric preference, for people who use colored flags on their spam messages for purposes other than indicating the spam level.
  • If Microsoft Outlook is not able to retrieve a message’s source, SpamSieve will now log the message’s subject to Console.
  • Worked around an OS bug that could cause a crash when SpamSieve was processing certain types of multi-part e-mail messages.
  • Improved various error messages.
  • Tried to work around a crash by disabling JavaScript in the release notes view.
2.9.11—November 7, 2013
  • Works with the Mail Update for Mavericks 1.0.
  • Added a workaround for some rare cases where SpamSieve’s commands were not showing in Apple Mail’s Message menu.
  • Updated the Apple Mail - Discard Spam script.
  • Added some defensive coding to protect against a bug in _NSDispatchData that could cause a crash on Mavericks.
  • Made various updates and improvements to the manual.
2.9.10—October 22, 2013
  • SpamSieve is now compatible with the updated GM build of Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks. It is recommended that you update to SpamSieve 2.9.10 before installing Mavericks. If you’ve updated to Mavericks first, and you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu.
  • The “How can I hide SpamSieve’s Dock icon?” section of the manual has been updated for Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks.
  • Improved various other parts of the manual and Read Me.
  • Tried to work around a problem where the Outlook installer received an error from the system when the Mac was running in French.
2.9.9—October 7, 2013
  • SpamSieve is now compatible with the GM build of Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks. It is recommended that you update to SpamSieve 2.9.9 before installing Mavericks. If you’ve updated to Mavericks first, and you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Apple Mail’s Message menu, be sure to choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu.
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • Microsoft Outlook 2011’s notification sounds are now available in SpamSieve’s Notification preferences.
  • Added the Apple Mail - Server Junk Mailbox script. When it’s not possible to turn off a server-side junk filter (e.g. iCloud’s), this lets SpamSieve save you from mistakes that the server junk filter made by moving any messages that SpamSieve thinks are good back to the inbox. It will also consolidate the spam messages from all the accounts into a single spam mailbox (the same one where SpamSieve is already putting your spam).
  • Can now repair the ownership and permissions of the SpamSieve and Apple Mail preferences files if needed. This fixes problems where SpamSieve would lose its registration information or Apple Mail wouldn’t show the SpamSieve menu commands.
  • Fixed some problems where the Open Window command in Apple Mail was not available or did not always open the specified window.
2.9.8—September 12, 2013
  • SpamSieve is now compatible with Mac OS X 10.8.5.
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • The Train as Good command in Apple Mail now considers the message’s CC recipients when determining the proper account inbox.
  • The installer is better at working around incorrect Apple Mail folder permissions.
  • Improved the Why is SpamSieve not catching my spam?, “Open Log”, Setting Up Outlook 2011, SpamSieve and Multiple Macs, and various other sections of the manual.
  • The AppleScript for Setting Up a Spam Filtering Drone runs faster now.
  • Automatic software updates no longer fail if Hazel is set to move files in the Downloads folder.
  • The Help menu now includes direct links to important sections of the manual.
  • Removed unused code from the Apple Mail plug-in.
2.9.7—May 1, 2013
  • Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X.
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • SpamSieve no longer links against AppleScriptKit. This removes some GUI scripting functionality (which is now largely available by other means) but works around an OS bug that could prevent SpamSieve from launching.
  • Worked around a bug in Apple Mail’s iCloud rule syncing.
  • SpamSieve is better at moving trained messages when Outlook has lost track of the special Junk E-mail folder.
  • Fixed a problem where Apple Mail couldn’t communicate with SpamSieve when the file permissions were incorrect.
  • Fixed a bug where SpamSieve couldn’t load any addresses from Outlook if it reported an error while getting the e-mail address of a contact.
  • Fixed a bug editing counts in the Corpus window (due to suspected 64-bit OS bug).
  • Added more checks that the folders SpamSieve relies upon have the proper permissions.
  • Improved error reporting for Apple Mail, Growl, and more.
  • Improved handling of file permissions errors.
  • The Apple Mail drone script now sets the junk status.
  • Wrote a script that allows SpamSieve to filter messages (in Apple Mail) that have been organized by SaneBox.
  • Improved the Japanese localization.
  • SpamSieve now requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later.
2.9.6—December 19, 2012
  • Worked around a bug in Mac OS X 10.8.2 that could cause spam operations in Postbox to be very slow. If you’re using Postbox, you can update your SpamSieve plug-in by following steps 1 through 6 in the Setting Up Postbox section of the manual.
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • SpamSieve now understands that @icloud.com, @me.com, and @mac.com are equivalent, so it’s better at finding the proper inbox in Apple Mail when you train a message as good. (For non-Apple IMAP and POP mail accounts, you can define aliases manually, as before. Go to the Accounts tab of Mail’s preferences and enter all the addresses—separated by commas—in the Email Address field.)
  • Customers have reported that Sync Services does not work reliably on Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. Thus, rather than having Outlook use Sync Services to sync its contacts with the system address book, SpamSieve now offers a feature to load the Outlook address book directly. (This ensures that SpamSieve doesn’t mark messages from people in your address book as spam.) Outlook users are encouraged to make sure that Use Entourage/Outlook address book is checked in SpamSieve’s preferences and to click the Load button. For more information, see the Use Entourage/Outlook address book section of the manual.
  • SpamSieve is now better able to handle invalid data received from a mail program.
  • When “Using a Spam Mailbox on the Server,” SpamSieve is better at handling errors from Mail that could cause a trained spam message to go to the local spam mailbox instead.
  • Training a message as good in Apple Mail now removes any flags, in case you were using Spam Message Colors in Apple Mail.
  • Added How should I configure the junk filter on my mail server? to the FAQ.
  • The Automatically Deleting Old Spam Messages section of the manual now includes instructions for Outlook.
  • Worked around various file permissions problems that could prevent training in Apple Mail from working.
  • Worked around a bug in Migration Assistant that could prevent SpamSieve from working properly with Apple Mail.
  • The plug-in and scripts installers are better able to handle non-standard folder structures.
  • Fixed a bug where SpamSieve was unable to see the contents of certain malformed messages, leading to poor filtering accuracy.
  • Fixed a bug where sometimes setting the date in the Statistics window didn’t work when SpamSieve was running in 64-bit mode.
  • Fixed a regression where where messages trained as good in Apple Mail didn’t move back to the inbox if you were using a local spam mailbox and no inbox matched the message’s recipients.
  • Made various improvements to the manual.
2.9.5—September 21, 2012
  • Updated the Apple Mail plug-in to work with Security Update 2012-004 (Snow Leopard) for Mac OS X 10.6.8. If, after installing this update, you don’t see the SpamSieve commands in Mail’s Message menu, it may be necessary to go to the SpamSieve menu and choose Install Apple Mail Plug-In.
  • The AppleScripts for controlling the Griffin PowerMate seem to trigger a crashing bug in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. Thus, SpamSieve’s Flash PowerMate option has been turned off. You can try re-enabling it in the preferences if desired.
  • When training a message as good from Apple Mail, SpamSieve is better at figuring out which account it came from.
  • Worked around problems on some Macs that could prevent SpamSieve from receiving training commands from Apple Mail on OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
  • Import Blocklist Regex Rules is a sample AppleScript that shows how to create blocklist rules using the contents of a text file.
  • Made various improvements to the manual.
2.9.4—September 4, 2012
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • Revised and expanded the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) to make it easier for people to find, fix, and report problems.
  • Fixed a problem where SpamSieve could crash when processing messages from Apple Mail on OS X 10.8, particularly after the Mac had awakened from sleep.
  • Worked around an issue on OS X 10.8 that could cause training SpamSieve from Apple Mail to be very slow.
  • The Train as Good command in Outlook will now move messages from the trash back to the inbox.
  • Made various updates to the manual for OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, for example clarifying that SpamSieve works (via Apple Mail) during a Power Nap.
  • Worked around a problem where Apple Mail couldn’t communicate with SpamSieve if the /etc/hosts file was damaged.
  • Improved the error reporting when SpamSieve detects that one of its files is damaged.
  • Added defensive coding to try to track down a notification icon problem when running in French.
  • You can now set the MJTSoundLoadFromApps default to false if you want to prevent SpamSieve from looking for notification sounds installed by other applications, e.g. to prevent mounting an encrypted Microsoft User Data folder.
  • Fixed a bug handling errors if a software update failed; if it succeeded, the .dmg file is now deleted to reduce clutter.
  • After purchasing, SpamSieve used to show your user image to indicate that it had been successfully personalized. It now shows a generic checkmark to avoid prompting you for Contacts access on OS X 10.8.
  • Added an icon for the crash reporter, since it’s now displayed under OS X 10.8.
  • Fixed a bug where Apple Mail on Mac OS X 10.5 would log (harmless) errors about _NSAutoreleaseNoPool.
  • Fixed a bug where the Apple Mail plug-in sometimes logged confusing error messages about not being able to launch SpamSieve even though it was already launched.
  • Fixed a bug where the Apple Mail plug-in reported the wrong installation path in an error message when running on OS X 10.8.
2.9.3—July 19, 2012
  • Added support for the forthcoming Mac OS X 10.7.5.
  • Fixed a bug that could prevent SpamSieve from auto-launching on the forthcoming OS X 10.8.
  • SpamSieve is now able to recover from certain unexpected system errors on OS X 10.8.
  • Fixed a layout bug in the German-localized Statistics window.
  • Improved the Automatically Deleting Old Spam Messages instructions.
  • SpamSieve now tells the system that it can use the integrated GPU, which should reduce battery use on newer MacBook Pros.
  • SpamSieve’s disk image background is now displayed at Retina quality on eligible Macs running Mac OS X 10.7 or 10.8. (On Mac OS X 10.6, due to an OS bug, it will incorrectly display at double size.)
  • Fixed a regression where SpamSieve’s disk image icon didn’t display properly.
2.9.2—July 5, 2012
  • Improved compatibility with the forthcoming OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
  • The recommended condition for the Apple Mail rule is now Every Message rather than Message Type Is Mail. SpamSieve will auto-update your rules at launch on Mac OS X 10.7 if Mail is running.
  • SpamSieve is better at detecting a certain type of tricky spam message.
  • Worked around an OS bug that prevented SpamSieve from properly analyzing some message attachments.
  • False negative files now have the .eml extension so that they work with Quick Look, etc.
  • The Setting Up a Spam Filtering Drone section of the manual has been updated with simpler instructions for Apple Mail and new instructions for setting up a drone using Microsoft Outlook 2011.
  • Added the “Using a Spam Mailbox on the Server” section of the manual (for Apple Mail).
  • Updated various graphics for retina displays.
  • If the Apple Mail plug-in cannot be installed due to a folder ownership problem, SpamSieve will now ask for an administrator password to try to fix the folder for you.
  • Reverted to version 1.2.3 of the Growl SDK to avoid problems with high CPU usage, internal errors, and crashes.
  • Improved SpamSieve’s reporting of unexpected errors as well as script errors from Apple Mail.
  • SpamSieve no longer responds at all to certain invalid commands. This should work around an OS bug that could lead to crashes.
  • The crash reporter can now make recommendations for you based on the contents of the crash log.
  • Added a link to the forum in the Help menu.
2.9.1—April 26, 2012
  • Added support for Microsoft Outlook 2011 SP2 (a.k.a. 14.2.x). If SpamSieve can detect that you were using Outlook 2011 before, and that SP2 has been installed, SpamSieve will auto-update its scripts automatically. Otherwise, you can choose Install Outlook Scripts from the SpamSieve menu. Either way, the SpamSieve rules in Outlook will continue to work without modification.
  • SpamSieve now tries to detect whether its Apple Mail plug-in is damaged and auto-heal the installed copy if necessary.
  • If there’s an error updating SpamSieve’s Apple Mail plug-in, it now reports more information to try to diagnose the problem.
  • If the Apple Mail plug-in detects that it’s damaged, it will alert the user to download and install a fresh copy.
  • SpamSieve now checksums the Outlook script files (both the installed and built-in copies) to detect whether they are damaged.
  • Made a change to eliminate a particular cause of false positives for some users.
  • SpamSieve no longer triggers Mac OS X’s “accept incoming network connections” firewall dialog.
  • Added some exception guards to work around bugs in the Growl SDK.
  • When an unexpected error occurs and no stack trace is available, SpamSieve will now try to report the approximate location.
  • Improved the What information should I include when I report a problem? section of the manual.
2.9—April 3, 2012
  • Added support for upcoming versions of Mac OS X.
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • SpamSieve is now code-signed using a Developer ID certificate for Gatekeeper.
  • When training an Exchange message as good in Apple Mail, SpamSieve is better at moving it to the proper inbox.
  • Processing incoming messages with Outlook is more efficient. To take advantage of this change, choose Install Outlook Scripts from the SpamSieve menu.
  • If you’ve used the SpamSieve - Change Settings command in Apple Mail to tell SpamSieve not to use a local spam mailbox, training a message as spam will now try to move the message to a spam mailbox on the same server account, rather than always using the first account.
  • Added support for training messages as spam via Herald (version 2.1.2 and later), a notification plug-in for Apple Mail.
  • When sorting spam messages by color in Apple Mail, you can now use Grey as a synonym for Gray.
  • The score script command has a new auto training parameter that can be used to override the setting in the preferences on a case-by-case basis. This might be useful, for example, if you’re writing an AppleScript to triage messages that have already been classified, and you just want to get SpamSieve’s opinion without having to make any corrections.
  • Adjusted the drone AppleScripts so that they’re easier to troubleshoot.
  • If Apple Mail gives SpamSieve empty data for a message, the plug-in now assumes the message is good and does not pass it on to SpamSieve for analysis.
  • Added support for Growl notifications via GNTP (requires Mac OS X 10.7 or later).
  • SpamSieve is better at handling file permission errors.
  • SpamSieve is better at handling errors when running helper tools.
  • Improved SpamSieve’s ability to still function when the application package is damaged.
  • Added the AddStandardRules esoteric preference, which lets you prevent SpamSieve from creating its built-in blocklist and whitelist rules if you prefer to manage the rules yourself.
  • Fixed a bug that could reduce SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy for some messages with attached files.
  • Made various improvements to the documentation.
  • Updated the German localization.
2.8.8—November 17, 2011
  • Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X.
  • Added support for Postbox 3.0.
  • Added support for Growl 1.3.
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • The Exclude my addresses feature now lets you specify additional addresses via Terminal, if you don’t want to clutter your “Me” card in Address Book.
  • The Apple Mail plug-in installer is more resilient to permissions errors.
  • Added example of using colored flags to sort spam messages in Apple Mail by spamminess.
  • Added some logging to detect obscure errors when loading SpamSieve’s Apple Mail plug-in.
  • Improved the French localization.
2.8.7—August 31, 2011
  • Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X.
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • SpamSieve now runs as a 64-bit application on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. This allows for faster launch times and reduced overall system memory use if you are running exclusively 64-bit applications. It also prevents problems caused by buggy input manager haxies. You can use the Finder’s Get Info window to set SpamSieve to run in 32-bit mode if you want to play classic Mac OS notification sounds or to reduce the memory use of SpamSieve itself.
  • When training an Apple Mail message in the Spam mailbox as good, SpamSieve is now better able to match it up with the proper inbox.
  • Offloaded more PDF processing to the helper tool so that SpamSieve itself doesn’t crash if you receive a message with a corrupt PDF attachment.
  • Made the Apple Mail plug-in installer more robust and better at reporting errors.
  • An error finding the built-in copy of SpamSieve’s Eudora plug-in will no longer prevent SpamSieve from launching, unless it actually needs to install the plug-in.
  • Entourage is supposed to create the Entourage Script Menu Items folder, but for extra robustness SpamSieve will now create it if it’s missing.
  • If SpamSieve’s PDF reader detects that the CTLoader input manager is loaded, it now logs a warning that this may cause SpamSieve to hang.
  • Tried to work around an unconfirmed issue that could prevent SpamSieve from processing the first few Apple Mail messages on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.
  • Fixed a bug with re-personalizing the application via URL.
  • Clarified the Do an Initial Training section of the manual.
  • Updated the Import Addresses… instructions for Microsoft Outlook.
  • The Setting Up a Spam Filtering Drone section of the manual now includes instructions for setting up a drone for multiple mail accounts.
  • The manual now explains how to open the Library folder on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.
2.8.6—July 6, 2011
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • Improved compatibility with Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion).
  • Added support for Postbox 2.5.
  • Updated the Setting Up MailMate instructions for the new preferences in MailMate 1.1.2.
  • Updated the Setting Up Outlook 2011 instructions for Microsoft Office 2011 Service Pack 1.
  • Updated the Setting Up Postbox instructions to ensure that messages that you train as spam are moved to the junk mailbox or trash.
  • Worked around a rare OS/hardware condition that could prevent SpamSieve from launching.
  • The Apple Mail plug-in is better at reporting errors when it’s unable to fully load itself.
  • Made various other clarifications to the manual.
  • Adjusted the help page titles to fit better in the menu and search results.
2.8.5—March 1, 2011
  • Improved SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • Improved compatibility with the Thunderbolt MacBook Pros and pre-release versions of Mac OS X.
  • Freron Software’s MailMate now works with SpamSieve, as described in the Setting Up MailMate section of the manual.
  • Whitelisting Previous Recipients now works with Microsoft Outlook 2011.
  • The Train as Good command can now move spam messages out of the spam folder when running a localized version of Microsoft Outlook 2011.
  • SpamSieve’s Apple Mail plug-in helper now runs as 64-bit on Mac OS X 10.6, where possible, to prevent input manager haxies from interfering with the training commands.
  • Added a workaround to prevent SpamSieve from hanging if the address book database is damaged.
  • Clarified the text in the Welcome and Purchase windows.
  • Improved the instructions for using Microsoft Outlook and Entourage with Exchange accounts.
  • Updated the Setting Up Postbox section of the manual.
  • Made various improvements to the documentation.
  • Updated the Danish and Spanish localizations.
2.8.4—October 13, 2010
  • SpamSieve now integrates with Microsoft Outlook 2011. For more information, see the Setting Up Outlook 2011 section of the manual.
  • SpamSieve now integrates with Postbox, an enhanced version of Thunderbird. For more information, see the Setting Up Postbox section of the manual.
  • Adjusted SpamSieve’s tokenizer to improve the filtering accuracy.
  • The Train as Good command in Apple Mail is better at moving messages in the spam folder or trash back to the inbox.
  • Fixed a regression where the whitelist and blocklist windows wouldn’t open when running SpamSieve under certain localizations.
  • Improved the localizations.
2.8.3—August 31, 2010
  • Adjusted SpamSieve’s tokenizer to improve the filtering accuracy.
  • Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Apple Mail.
  • MailForge now works with SpamSieve, as described in the Setting Up MailForge section of the manual.
  • Made some changes to better support the upcoming Microsoft Outlook 2011. (Full support will come when Office ships.)
  • Added various updates and clarifications to the manual.
  • Fixed a regression where SpamSieve wouldn’t be able to install its Apple Mail plug-in if Mail’s folder had been redirected using an alias.
  • Fixed a bug where SpamSieve would sometimes quit when coming out of trial mode.
  • Fixed a bug where sometimes the Hits column in a rules window couldn’t be resized.
  • Worked around an OS bug that could cause an internal error when reporting a corpus error.
  • Made various modernizations to SpamSieve’s code and interface files.
  • The Apple Mail plug-in now shows up with the proper name in Mail Plugin Manager.
  • Updated the disk image layout.
2.8.2—May 25, 2010
  • Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X.
  • Added Dutch, Italian, and Swedish localizations.
  • Made various code improvements and modernizations.
  • SpamSieve is better able to recover from certain types of damaged corpus files.
  • Updated the “Setting Up Eudora” section of the manual.
  • Improved the layout of the Software Update… window.
  • Adjusted the packaging of the disk image and the installation instructions.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when parsing messages with an invalid Date header.
  • Fixed a regression where SpamSieve would sometimes bring up an alert sheet to report that you already had the latest version.
  • Fixed a crash in the software updater.
2.8.1—March 24, 2010
  • Fixed a regression in the SQLite build that could cause SpamSieve to crash when running on a PowerPC-based Mac.
2.8—March 24, 2010
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • Adjusted the SpamSieve - Train as Good command in Apple Mail to reduce confusion. Training a message as good now will only move the message into the inbox of an enabled account. If no account matches the message or if the proper account is disabled, it will move the message into the inbox of the first enabled account (even if it doesn’t match). Thus, the message will always move out of the Spam mailbox, and it will no longer seem to disappear because it was moved into an inbox that was hidden.
  • Made various code modernizations.
  • Apple Mail now auto-launches SpamSieve sooner, to speed up the filtering of the first messages.
  • Improved the support for server-side Spam mailboxes in Apple Mail.
  • Clarified the instructions in the Do an Initial Training section of the manual.
  • Added the “How do I make SpamSieve catch spams sent from my own address?” section to the manual.
  • Expanded the Correct All Mistakes section of the manual.
  • Improved the Apple Mail troubleshooting instructions.
  • Improved the styling of the Apple Help.
  • Improved SpamSieve’s launching speed.
  • Fixed a bug where, in rare circumstances, SpamSieve didn’t filter all of the first batch of messages when using Apple Mail on Mac OS X 10.6.
  • SpamSieve will now warn you if it looks like its Apple Mail plug-in has been damaged by an application slimming utility. This could lead to Mail continually reporting that the plug-in was incompatible.
  • SpamSieve will now complain if it looks like you’ve manually installed the Apple Mail plug-in in the wrong folder instead of using SpamSieve’s installer.
  • Made a change to try to work around a bug in Apple Mail that could make training a message as good create a duplicate copy of the message.
  • Improved the Purchase window to reduce confusion about the demo period, serial numbers, and the number of seats that you’ve purchased.
  • Modernized the Software Update window and code.
  • Changed the way the Software Update feature finds the downloads folder on Mac OS X 10.5 and later because sometimes the one that Internet Config returned would be invalid or unwanted.
  • Fixed a bug where SpamSieve would crash when processing certain invalid URLs.
  • Fixed an error where a newly added whitelist/blocklist rule might not be auto-selected.
  • Removed the Dutch, Italian, and Portuguese localizations because they were out of date. If you would like to update the translation for one of these languages, please contact spamsieve@c-command.com.
2.7.7—October 20, 2009
  • Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X.
  • Made some changes to improve SpamSieve’s filtering accuracy.
  • Fixed a bug where the “Train as Good” command in Apple Mail didn’t move Exchange messages back to the inbox.
  • Encoded HTML mail is spam is now off by default, to reduce the number of false positives.
  • Modernized the code.
  • Updated the Vietnamese localization.
  • Updated the Apple Mail script for discarding spam.
2.7.6—September 9, 2009
  • Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X.
  • Expanded the Can I delete spam messages that are in the junk mailbox? section of the manual.
  • Fixed a bug in the Setting Up a Spam Filtering Drone instructions.
  • Improved number entry in the corpus window.
  • Improved the reporting of unexpected errors.
  • Updated links to indicate that Mailsmith is now available from Stickshift Software.
  • Added a Console warning if the Apple Mail plug-in detects that CTLoader is installed.
  • The crash reporter works better with Mac OS X 10.6.
  • Fixed a mistake in the French localization.
2.7.5—July 29, 2009
  • Made various accuracy improvements.
  • Fixed a problem where Apple Mail (running on pre-release versions of Mac OS X 10.6) could freeze at launch if you had a rule involving address book groups.
  • Rewrote the Setting Up a Spam Filtering Drone instructions.
  • Added Why does the Spam mailbox in Apple Mail appear empty even though there’s a number beside it? to the frequently asked questions.
  • Updated the Automatically Deleting Old Spam Messages instructions to include Entourage.
  • The search fields are now scrollable.
  • The Apple Mail plug-in is better at detecting when SpamSieve’s Dock icon is hidden.
  • Worked around a problem where Mail could crash if you had installed two copies of the SpamSieve plug-in at the same time.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause SpamSieve to freeze when applying a whitelist/blocklist rule involving certain regular expressions.
  • The crash reporter works better with pre-release versions of Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).
  • Fixed a bug that could prevent SpamSieve from launching.
  • Updated the Dutch, Japanese, and Korean localizations.
2.7.4—April 13, 2009
  • Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).
  • SpamSieve is better able to recover from corpus files that were damaged due to disk errors.
  • Improved the Entourage installer’s error handling.
  • Improved the error reporting when saving the corpus.
  • Improved the troubleshooting instructions.
  • Fixed a problem where messages trained as good in Apple Mail could be moved into the inbox of a disabled account.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause harmless error messages to be logged to the Console when playing System 7 sound files.
  • The crash reporter now warns before sending a report without an e-mail address.
  • You can now press Enter to click the Send Report button in the crash reporter.
2.7.3—January 26, 2009
  • Rewrote and restructured the manual to make the setup and troubleshooting instructions clearer.
  • Replaced the Training Tip window with an alert that’s displayed when SpamSieve’s corpus is empty. This goes along with the more explicit guidance that ongoing training is only necessary to correct mistakes.
  • The Entourage installer no longer asks before replacing existing script files. If you want to customize the scripts (rare these days, since there are so many built-in configuration options), you should use copies with different names to avoid having SpamSieve overwrite them.
  • Changed the recommended Entourage rule setup to better handle uncertain messages. The installer now creates the Uncertain Junk category if necessary.
  • Made the Apple Mail plug-in installer more robust.
  • Worked around a problem parsing certain multipart messages.
  • Adjusted the built-in blocklist rules for better accuracy.
  • Reduced memory usage when processing message attachments.
  • Fixed a bug sorting in rules windows.
  • Fixed a bug marking incoming Entourage messages as Uncertain Junk.
  • Updated the localizations.
2.7.2—October 29, 2008
  • Made various accuracy improvements.
  • Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). There are now two separate versions of SpamSieve’s Apple Mail plug-in. Version 1.3 is for Mac OS X 10.4; version 1.4 is for Mac OS X 10.5 and later. SpamSieve will auto-choose which one to install (or update) based on the version of Mac OS X that you’re running.
  • Added new sections to the manual about Whitelisting Previous Recipients and iPhone Spam Filtering. Expanded the Auto-train with incoming mail section.
  • Worked around a problem where the Edit Log command would try to open SpamSieve’s log using Script Editor if Launch Services was confused.
  • Rewrote filesystem code to improve performance and error reporting.
  • If there’s an error getting the downloads folder for a software update, SpamSieve now defaults to Downloads rather than Desktop.
  • Worked around a problem where training (using Apple Mail on Mac OS X 10.5) could be interrupted.
  • Added Korean localization.
  • Moved .nib files that don’t need localization out of the English.lproj folder. This should make it easier to run SpamSieve in a language other than English without changing the default language on your Mac.
  • Fixed some small memory leaks.
  • Improved reporting of unexpected errors.
  • Added placeholder text to the Purchase… window.
  • Added Help button to the Software Update window.
2.7.1—June 4, 2008
  • Fixed a regression in version 2.7 where SpamSieve was slow loading certain large corpus files when running on Mac OS X 10.5.
  • Worked around a bug in Mac OS X 10.4 that could cause a crash when training a message with Apple Mail.
  • Made some minor accuracy improvements.
2.7—May 21, 2008
  • Now requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
  • Made a variety of accuracy improvements, focused on dealing with obfuscations, image attachments, URLs, and HTML.
  • Improved corpus speed and memory use.
  • Made various improvements to the column widths and alignments in the rules and corpus windows, and added alternating row colors.
  • Fixed a rare problem where Apple Mail on Mac OS X 10.5 might hang if you trained a message as spam while Mail was downloading messages.
  • If the OS reports an error when playing a sound as an alert sound, SpamSieve now plays it using the normal sound channel.
  • Increased the range of possible values for the uncertain spam threshold.
  • Improved sorting of sound names in the pop-up menu.
  • Fixed bug where SpamSieve wouldn’t launch if the Microsoft User Data folder had been replaced by an alias file that was invalid.
  • No longer shows the Reset Corpus/History alert at launch if you hold down other modifier keys in addition to Command-Option.
  • Updated the Dutch localization.
2.6.6—January 23, 2008
  • Made various accuracy improvements.
  • Rewrote internal corpus storage to work around a performance bug in Mac OS X 10.5 that could, in some circumstances, make SpamSieve very slow to launch.
  • Worked around a problem on Mac OS X 10.5 where the Apple Mail plug-in would sometimes try to launch multiple copies of SpamSieve (and then they’d all self-quit, leading to -609 errors).
  • Made some internal changes so that Use Growl global notification system works more reliably on Mac OS X 10.5.
  • The Flash PowerMate notification feature now works with version 2.1 of the PowerMate software.
  • If SpamSieve’s corpus file or history database is damaged, you can now hold down the Command and Option keys at launch to reset them.
  • Growl notifications are now posted from a background thread, to speed up message filtering.
  • Fixed bug where the open panel for the Import Addresses… command was slow.
  • Worked around a problem that could cause corruption of SpamSieve’s Entourage scripts.
  • Fixed rare crash when processing HTML messages.
  • If SpamSieve is unable to install its Apple Mail plug-in, it now does a better job of helping you complete the installation manually.
  • Integration with Apple Mail and Entourage no longer relies on the mydefaults command-line tool, since it had some limitations and there were occasional problems installing it.
  • The software updater is better at handling invalid downloads folders.
  • Added Dutch localization and updated the other localizations.
2.6.5—November 14, 2007
  • Now requires Mac OS X 10.3 or later.
  • Made various accuracy improvements.
  • Added high-resolution version of the application icon.
  • Adjusted the appearance of the status indicators (•, G, S) for better visibility in the Leopard Dock.
  • Updated the default whitelist rules.
  • Updated documentation for Mac OS X 10.5.
  • Updated to PCRE 7.4.
  • Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Entourage 2008.
  • The Train as Good command in Apple Mail now recognizes spam mailboxes whose names end with “Spam”, and it works with the Trash mailbox on Mac OS X 10.5.
  • Worked around change in Apple Mail on Mac OS X10.5 that could cause the Train as Spam command not to move the messages.
  • Fixed bug where the Apple Help didn’t work on Mac OS X 10.5.
  • Fixed hang processing some pathological HTML spams.
  • Fixed bug where Growl notification preferences got reset if you ran SpamSieve under different localizations.
  • Fixed unnecessary Console logging when loading Entourage addresses.
  • Updated Italian localization.
2.6.4—August 20, 2007
  • Made more accuracy improvements for messages with attachments.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause crashes when processing messages containing PDF attachments.
  • Updated localizations.
2.6.3—August 3, 2007
  • Made various accuracy improvements, particularly for messages with attachments.
  • Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
  • Fixed bug where the Software Update… checker didn’t always re-check for new updates.
  • Restored progress bar when loading Entourage addresses.
  • Updated the localizations.
  • Improved the documentation.
  • Fixed help book icon.
2.6.2—May 4, 2007
  • Made changes to prevent a crash on Mac OS X 10.4.9 when quitting in response to a mail program quitting.
  • Slight changes for better accuracy.
  • Fixed regression where the Import Addresses… command didn’t always work for text files in the default encoding.
  • Blocklist and whitelist rules that use Body (any text part) can now match text from the headers of bounced messages (which e-mail clients often display as part of the message body).
  • The Software Update… feature now checks whether the updated version can run on your installed version of Mac OS X.
  • Better logging of messages that don’t have a sender.
  • Fixed a threading bug.
  • Made an optimization to the Apple Mail plug-in.
  • Adjusted the setup instructions for Apple Mail to avoid problem with the Previous Recipients list.
  • Modernized the crash reporter code.
  • Updated the French and German localizations.
2.6.1—April 9, 2007
  • Fixed regression where SpamSieve wouldn’t launch if you had a large number of Mac OS 9 sound files.
  • Fixed bug where Thunderbird messages that were manually marked as junk weren’t moved to the junk folder. If you are using Thunderbird, first update to SpamSieve 2.6.1, then choose Install Thunderbird Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu to update the plug-in.
  • Made change prevent crash on Mac OS X 10.4.9 when quitting in response to a mail program quitting.
2.6—March 19, 2007
  • SpamSieve now works with Mozilla Thunderbird.
  • Improved detection of image spams and phishing messages.
  • Made various message analysis improvements to increase the accuracy of the Bayesian filter.
  • AppleScripting the whitelist and blocklist is much more efficient for scripts that access a lot of rules.
  • Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
  • When installing a plug-in for a mail program, SpamSieve now opens the relevant page of the Apple Help to help you complete the installation.
  • The alert when SpamSieve has auto-updated its Apple Mail plug-in is now non-modal, so it doesn’t interfere with spam filtering.
  • The Software Update… checker now works behind an HTTP proxy, and the auto-updater is now compatible with FileVault.
  • Can now import addresses from the incorrectly encoded .vcf files that are generated by recent versions of Address Book.
  • Growl notifications are now enabled by default.
  • The Apple Mail plug-in is more robust.
  • Fixed some small memory leaks.
  • Made some performance optimizations to the message tokenizer.
  • SpamSieve is more robust when processing incomplete messages.
  • The Entourage “Train Good” command now moves messages out of the Uncertain Spam folder.
  • The Apple Mail “Train as Good” command now moves messages out of zSpam mailboxes.
  • Updated to PCRE 7.0.
2.5—October 30, 2006
  • Made lots of changes to the parser and classifiers to improve accuracy, especially for HTML and image messages.
  • The in-memory corpus representation is much more efficient, which should lead to lower memory use and greater speed.
  • Rewrote the Software Update… feature. When a new version is available, it can now show you the release notes. SpamSieve now downloads the new version itself, rather than relying on your browser. On 10.3 and later, the Download & Install button will cause SpamSieve to auto-update itself to the latest version.
  • Improved accuracy on messages containing misspelled words.
  • Now requires Mac OS X 10.2.8 or later.
  • Auto-training now places a higher priority on corpus balance compared to learning from novel messages.
  • Improved the Apple Mail plug-in’s Train as Good script to work around a bug in Mail.
  • Improved the reliability of the Apple Mail training commands.
  • Made further changes to improve the success rate of the Apple Mail plug-in installer.
  • Updated to PCRE 6.7.
  • Entourage training progress messages no longer block if Entourage is in the background.
  • Worked around OS bug that prevented the Statistics sheet from properly parsing dates when the user’s date format started with a two-digit year.
  • No longer quits with an internal error if the mydefaults tool can’t be installed.
  • Added keyboard shortcut for Hide Others.
  • Fixed bug with Purchase window sheet.
  • Removed some old, unused code.
  • Updated the toolbar icons.
  • Various localization and documentation improvements.
  • Fixed bug with display of remaining demo time.
  • The Entourage script installer is more robust when contacting Entourage via AppleScript fails.
  • Improved compatibility with Leopard.
  • The date in the Statistics window more closely matches the user’s preferences (10.4 and later).
  • Better at detecting damaged corpus files (instead of crashing).
  • Fixed bug where Uncertain Spam growls were always sent, even if disabled in SpamSieve’s preferences.
  • Adjusted workaround for Help Viewer bug.
  • Increased the maximum width of the Hits column in rule list windows.
  • Added thousands separators throughout the Statistics, Corpus, and rules windows.
  • Fixed bug where adding a rule didn’t create a new rule if there was already a rule with a blank “Text to Match.”
  • Fixed rare crashing bug when performing operations during idle time.
  • Removed the Import Messages command (which let you train SpamSieve directly from a file in mbox format), because there are now very few situations where it is useful, and it was confusing people.
  • Added screenshot showing where to find Entourage scripts.
2.4.4—July 13, 2006
  • Made various changes to improve SpamSieve’s accuracy, particularly when processing blank messages, HTML messages, and messages containing images.
  • The following strings may now be used in rules to match headers that are missing: <SpamSieve-Unknown-Subject>, <SpamSieve-Unknown-From>, <SpamSieve-Unknown-FromName>, <SpamSieve-Unknown-To>. It is somewhat common for messages to have a blank subject (which can be matched using the empty string), but legitimate messages that omit the Subject for From header are rare, and now these can easily be matched by creating the appropriate rules on the blocklist.
  • Quit when mail client quits is now enabled by default.
  • Log entries are now abbreviated when the string that matched the rule is long.
  • The Apple Mail Train as Good command can now move messages out of submailboxes of the Junk mailbox.
  • The Apple Mail plug-in installer works better when the folder permissions are messed up.
  • Can now auto-recover from damaged message store files, rather than complaining to the user about them.
  • If SpamSieve is hidden when launched, it will refrain from opening the Training Tip window.
  • Improved the documentation, training tips, and localizations.
  • Various code modernization and bullet-proofing throughout.
  • Fixed localization bugs that could cause crashes.
  • Fixed crash when hiding the progress panel.
  • Fixed crash when saving false negatives to disk.
  • Made changes to the Entourage scripts to try to work around an OS bug that causes them to grow and eventually become corrupted.
  • Worked around OS bug to prevent freezes when attempting to play damaged sound files.
2.4.3—March 30, 2006
  • Improved SpamSieve’s accuracy by counteracting various spammer tricks.
  • Removed the delay, when using Apple Mail on Tiger, between choosing “Train as Good” or “Train as Spam” and when training actually started.
  • The Entourage scripts now report progress part way through bulk trainings and allow you to cancel. They also warn if it looks like you’re training SpamSieve with too many messages, and they’re better at preventing duplicate categories from being created in Entourage. The “Train Spam” script now removes the spam messages from the server.
  • Growl notifications from people in the address book now include the “To” address for mailing list messages. This makes it easier to decide whether to ignore the notification.
  • Fixed bug that caused part of SpamSieve’s corpus to be written to disk incorrectly when running on Intel. In most cases, no ill effects would have been observed, and SpamSieve will repair the corpus file the first time you launch 2.4.3.
  • Improved the error messages.
  • Improved the display of the demo time remaining.
  • Updated the localizations.
2.4.2—February 23, 2006
  • SpamSieve is now much better at catching a new type of spam message that previous versions had been inconsistent at catching.
  • Worked around some more spammer tricks to improve accuracy.
  • Improved the way message attachments are analyzed.
  • Fixed bug that could cause improper analysis of messages from Apple Mail or Eudora, leading to reduced accuracy.
  • Improved phish detection.
  • Improved the performance of the Apple Mail training commands on Tiger and Jaguar.
  • Made some changes to the way spam messages are colored in Apple Mail. Now, the most spammy color (blue) is reserved for messages with scores 99 or higher, i.e. messages that matched a blocklist rule, had encoded HTML parts, or were known to definitely be spam.
  • The Show Window command in Apple Mail can now open the SpamSieve help.
  • Under certain circumstances, SpamSieve can now detect at launch whether the application package is damaged, rather than too-quietly reporting errors in the log during message processing.
  • Improved the troubleshooting documentation.
  • Updated the Japanese localization.
2.4.1—January 25, 2006
  • SpamSieve is now a universal binary.
  • Made various changes to SpamSieve’s tokenizer and HTML parser to improve accuracy.
  • Improved filtering of messages containing attachments.
  • Added Apple Mail settings to control whether messages trained as spam are marked as read and/or left on the server.
  • Better at finding notification sounds that are built into mail clients.
  • Now shows uncertain growls when notification is suppressed.
  • SpamSieve now delegates more file reveal operations to Path Finder 4, since it fixes a bug in Path Finder 3 that prevented certain reveals from working.
  • Rather than typing (or copying and pasting) your name and serial number to personalize SpamSieve, you can now click the x-spamsieve:// URL that’s sent to you when you purchase SpamSieve or get a serial number reminder.
  • Fixed bug where the rules list would scroll one rule up if it was scrolled to the bottom and you edited a rule.
  • Added Spanish localization and updated the Danish, Italian, Swedish, and Vietnamese localizations.
  • Improved the installation and troubleshooting documentation.
  • Removed spurious Section 4.4.1 of the manual.
2.4—November 16, 2005
  • Made various changes to the Bayesian engine to improve accuracy.
  • Added some heuristics for detecting phishes.
  • Apple Mail messages can now be filed into different mailboxes based on how spammy they are (requires 10.3 or 10.4).
  • The Apple Mail plug-in is now a Universal Binary, so SpamSieve can be used on Intel-based Macs without running Mail in Rosetta.
  • Added support for the new (non-haiku) Habeas headers.
  • SpamSieve now plays notification sounds using the alert volume rather than the master volume, and they’ll be played on the same output device as alerts and sound effects. (The old behavior is still in effect when playing classic sound files and when running on Jaguar.)
  • Added suppressing notification AppleScript parameter. You can use this to prevent SpamSieve from bouncing its Dock icon or showing Growls when recalculating the spam scores of old messages.
  • The Software Update alert is now a sheet, so it won’t interfere with spam filtering.
  • If Path Finder is running, it will be used instead of the Finder to reveal files/folders.
  • Made various tweaks to keep PowerMates from flashing when they shouldn’t.
  • Adjusted the standard set of rules.
  • You can now tab back and forth between the search field and table in the corpus and rules windows (requires 10.4).
  • Predicted entries in the log now show the message’s sender.
  • Added preference to control whether Apple Mail false positives are marked as unread.
  • Added Technical Support & Feedback item to the Help menu.
  • The Entourage scripts try even harder to avoid creating duplicate categories.
  • SpamSieve now avoids loading the address book except when absolutely necessary. Thus, if your address book is corrupted such that loading it would cause a crash, you’ll still be able to receive mail if you turn off SpamSieve’s address book–related features.
  • Messages with empty senders are no longer considered to be from people in the address book, even if the address book contains a contact with such an address.
  • Fixed longstanding bug in which sorting the blocklist or whitelist by Header or Match Style would group the rules appropriately, but wouldn’t order the groups alphabetically by the localized text in the column.
  • Improved the error messages in the application and in the Apple Mail plug-in.
  • Made a change to prevent Apple Mail from deadlocking (in rare circumstances) when training SpamSieve on Mac OS X 10.4.3.
  • Fixed regression where Trained: (Auto) log entries occurred before the corresponding Predicted ones.
  • The Apple Mail training commands now respect the preference for whether to color messages.
  • Added hidden preference LogSpam that you can turn on with defaults write com.c-command.SpamSieve LogSpam YES to make SpamSieve keep a maildir-style folder of the spam messages it’s seen. Right now, this is not recommended for general use on slower machines.
  • Updated link to Habeas Safelist.
  • Updated eSellerate, PCRE, and SQLite libraries.
  • Added Danish localization and improved the other localizations.
  • Various documentation improvements, including:
    • Described how to place Entourage messages in different mailboxes based on how spammy they are.
    • Added section describing how to redirect non-spam Apple Mail messages to another account, e.g. to filter the mail that you receive on your Blackberry.
2.3.2—August 8, 2005
  • Made various improvements to increase SpamSieve’s accuracy.
  • Added Quit when mail client quits option.
  • Sped up filtering when Growl notifications are enabled. Improved the text/layout of the Growl notifications.
  • Re-installing or updating Eudora could have the effect of re-enabling Eudora’s built-in junk plug-ins. This could reduce the filtering accuracy and cause unexpected behavior as multiple plug-ins acted on the same messages. Now, if SpamSieve detects that its Eudora plug-in is installed, it will automatically disable any other Eudora junk plug-ins.
  • When you reset the corpus, SpamSieve automatically creates a dated backup so that it’s possible to revert, if need be.
  • The pop-up menu for selecting the uncertainty threshold now supports scores as high as 98. This makes it possible to designate all non-blocklisted spam messages as uncertain.
  • The S and G indicators are now only shown in the Dock icon after manual training, not auto-training.
  • The log is now UTF-8 rather than ASCII, so it should be much more readable for people using localized versions of SpamSieve.
  • More errors are now logged.
  • Better at finding sound files that are built into Mailsmith.
  • Worked around Tiger bug that would cause archived log files to not decompress automatically when opened.
  • Fixed regression where SpamSieve could crash if you tried to install the Entourage scripts when Entourage was not installed.
  • Fixed bug in Apple Mail’s Train as Good, where it didn’t always move messages out of the Spam mailbox if there were lots of recipients.
  • Fixed Entourage Train Good script to not make a new Uncertain Junk category when one already exists (but Entourage says that it doesn’t).
  • Worked around AppleScript error that could occur when running Entourage scripts.
  • The regex code is more bulletproof in the face of rare OS errors.
  • Added better heuristic for determining which files SpamSieve can import addresses from. This should prevent some rare crashes.
  • Updated the Habeas link in the Preferences window.
  • The history database is more robust on Tiger.
  • The Purchase window now makes it more clear when the serial number has been successfully entered. Merged the Web Purchase… and Instant Purchase… buttons.
  • Adjusted the way the remaining demo time is displayed, as it led many people to believe that they had less than a month of total trial time.
  • Improved training tips and the manual.
  • Added French translation of manual. Updated Vietnamese manual. Fixed regression where the Italian and Vietnamese manuals were inaccessible.
2.3.1—May 16, 2005
  • Works with Apple Mail on Mac OS X 10.4.1. SpamSieve should automatically install a new copy of its Apple Mail plug-in the first time it’s launched, but if it doesn’t you can do so by choosing Install Apple Mail Plug-In from the SpamSieve menu.
  • Various accuracy improvements.
  • Renamed the Apple Mail training commands to Train as Good and Train as Spam.
  • Train as Spam is much faster in Apple Mail on 10.4 when there are multiple messages selected.
  • If SpamSieve’s Dock icon is hidden, a new SpamSieve - Open Window command will appear in Apple Mail’s Message menu. This lets you quit SpamSieve or access its windows and settings while its menu bar is hidden.
  • Worked around Apple Mail bug so that Train as Good now moves spam messages out of Mail’s Spam folder on 10.4, provided that SpamSieve had put them there.
  • Reduced the maximum size of the Growl notification bubbles.
  • Better at parsing malformed messages.
  • The HTML parser is much faster with certain pathological spam messages that could previously drag parsing out for a minute or more.
  • Worked around Entourage bug that could lead to the creation of multiple Uncertain Junk categories.
  • SpamSieve no longer complains about the permissions on Apple Mail’s Bundles folder if you’re using a different mail program.
  • Removed the Prune Corpus command. With auto-training being much smarter than in earlier versions, it’s almost never advisable to prune, and improper pruning severely reduces accuracy.
  • The demo reminder window updates the number of days remaining if you leave SpamSieve running for days or weeks at a time.
  • Fixed bug that could cause a crash when using Instant Purchase.
  • Worked around crash caused by bug in 10.2.
  • Updated localizations.
2.3—April 25, 2005
  • General
    • Works with Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger).
    • Made lots of improvements to SpamSieve’s parsers and tokenizer for better accuracy. To fully take advantage of this, you will need to reset SpamSieve’s corpus and re-train it (e.g. with 300 recent good messages and 600 recent spams). However, this is certainly not required, and I expect that most people will opt for the simpler upgrade of just installing the new SpamSieve application.
    • Auto-training works better. SpamSieve is smarter about selecting which incoming messages to train itself with, so that it reaches a high level of accuracy sooner, and it is better at adapting to new types of mail that you receive.
    • Improved the training tips and the training section of the manual so that it’s clearer what the best practices are.
    • When training the whitelist, SpamSieve will now create rules that match the addresses of the other recipients. This should reduce false positives from people who haven’t previously sent you mail, but who correspond with the same people you do.
    • Added Update Address Book “Me” Card command.
  • Scriptability
    • Added selection AppleScript property, which can be used to get the selected token infos in the corpus or the selected rules in the whitelist or blocklist window. One use of this is demonstrated in a script that adds the addresses of the selected whitelist rules to the Address Book.
    • Added AppleScript properties and commands to access SpamSieve’s windows and log. One use of this is demonstrated in a script that lets you open SpamSieve’s windows if its Dock icon is hidden (and thus the menu bar is inaccessible).
  • Notification
    • Added option to control whether Growl notifications contain excerpts of the message body.
    • The new message count in SpamSieve’s Dock icon is now auto-positioned.
    • Fixed regression where dragging the slider to adjust the size of the number in the Dock icon didn’t temporarily show the number so that you could preview the results.
  • Apple Mail Integration
    • Improved accuracy due to better decoding of Apple Mail messages.
    • The commands for training SpamSieve from Apple Mail are now in Mail’s Message menu, rather than in the Scripts menu. This lets you access those commands in the same way on 10.2 through 10.4, and you don’t have to worry about changing the scripts around if you boot into a different version of the OS.
    • The Apple Mail plug-in is faster at processing messages.
    • If the Apple Mail plug-in is installed but disabled for some reason (e.g. a location switch or OS re-install), SpamSieve will automatically re-enable it (takes effect when you relaunch Mail).
    • Worked around bug in Mail that could prevent Train Good or Train Spam from working properly when training multiple messages at once that were already in their final destination.
  • Eudora Integration
    • The installer no longer asks you to find Eudora except when absolutely necessary.
    • The Eudora plug-in is now installed in the Application Support folder rather than inside the Eudora application package. Thus, it’s no longer necessary to re-install the plug-in when updating Eudora, although you still may need to disable the SpamWatch and SpamHeaders plug-ins if updating Eudora re-enables them.
    • Added a Cancel button to the alert that you get if Eudora is already running when you ask SpamSieve to install the Eudora plug-in, in case you don’t want to quit Eudora at that time.
  • Fixes and Tweaks
    • The Apple Help is now multiple linked pages, rather than a single page, so you can now use Help Viewer’s search box.
    • Simplified the setup instructions in the manual, and added new sections on customization.
    • Improved duplicate message detection.
    • Fixed bug where e-mail addresses were not always correctly parsed out of mail headers.
    • Tweaked the format of Trained entries in the log.
    • Worked around OS bug that could cause SpamSieve to freeze when installing AppleScripts.
    • SpamSieve is better at following aliases and more tolerant of incorrect permissions when looking for its support files.
    • Updated to eSellerate Engine 3.6.1.
    • Improved serial number name entry.
    • Various localization fixes.
    • The ? buttons in the Preferences window now open the specific help sections on Jaguar.
    • Fixed longstanding unreported bug where you could launch multiple instances of SpamSieve if you were using Jaguar.
2.2.4—February 10, 2005
  • Increased the speed of SpamSieve’s message processing.
  • Processing messages with Entourage is much faster. To realize the speed increase, re-install SpamSieve’s Entourage scripts and let it replace the existing ones.
  • Improved accuracy through better HTML and header processing. (It is not necessary to reset the corpus.)
  • Colors to indicate spamminess in Apple Mail are now enabled by default.
  • Can now play sounds (and bounce the Dock icon) when mail arrives, even if SpamSieve or a mail program is frontmost.
  • Added option to Entourage’s Change Settings to make all spam messages marked with category Junk instead of marking some of them with Uncertain Junk.
  • Added more standard blocklist rules for non-Latin character sets.
  • AppleScript errors complaining about not being able to find the SpamSieve application should be much less common now. If you do see such an error, asking SpamSieve to re-install the scripts for Apple Mail or Entourage (and letting it replace the existing scripts) should cure things.
  • Improved name and serial number entry.
  • The Edit Log command is no longer an alternate menu item.
  • Can now load Entourage addresses when Launch Services can’t find Entourage.
  • The default classifier reports better scores.
  • The behavior of the default classifier (if no rules or other classifiers match, and the Bayesian classifier is disabled) may now be changed by setting the DefaultIsGood default. Normally this is YES, but you can set it to NO to make SpamSieve treat all non-whitelisted messages as spam.
  • Pruning now is recorded in the log.
  • Updated the Russian localization.
  • Added Swedish and Vietnamese localizations.
  • Expanded and improved the manual.
  • The Entourage scripts no longer mark messages with multiple copies of the same category.
  • Fixed bug where SpamSieve would sometimes incorrectly think that it had made a mistake (if auto-training was on and the user had asked it to reclassify a message).
  • Fixed bug in the Change Settings scripts.
  • No longer reports an error when trying to reset an empty initial corpus.
  • Fixed crash when quitting after resetting an empty corpus.
  • Fixed bug where SpamSieve would crash when reading a damaged corpus file.
  • Worked around OS bug that could cause crashes when creating the Uncertain Junk category in Entourage.
  • Notification dismissal now works on Tiger.
  • Apple Mail’s scripts are now installed in the correct location when running on Tiger.
2.2.3—November 15, 2004
  • Fixed bug where SpamSieve would complain of a permissions error at startup.
2.2.2—November 14, 2004
  • Can notify with Growl when good messages arrive, and to help spot false positives without looking through the entire contents of the spam folder.
  • Added Change Settings commands for Apple Mail and Entourage, which let you configure script options (spam folder name, behavior when using Train Good and Train Spam, etc.) without having to edit the scripts. The settings are stored in SpamSieve’s preferences file, so they will persist if you update or re-install the scripts.
  • Fixed bug where SpamSieve would report a syntax error when processing certain messages (typically in non-ASCII character sets).
  • Better accuracy due to improved header and body analysis.
  • Better accuracy due to smarter auto-creation of From (name) rules.
  • Auto-training now takes scores into account; the corpus is updated using messages that were harder to classify, to forestall errors.
  • Better handling of spam messages that lie about their encoding.
  • Entourage now uses two separate categories for spam messages, so that you can see which ones are more (or less) spammy.
  • Improved accuracy when processing messages in German.
  • Any Address rules now match SendTo addresses.
  • Better handling of messages with “From ” lines.
  • Worked around Mail performance problem where Add Good would hang if there were a lot of recipients.
  • The Dock (and DragThing) good message counter no longer increases for messages received while the mail program is active.
  • Added Russian localization.
  • Improved the French localization.
  • Better recovery from damaged Rules and History.db files.
  • Added Italian-localized installation instructions.
  • Improved launch time.
  • Better parsing of PGP messages.
  • Worked around 10.2 bug that could cause crashes when the Training Tip window was updated.
  • Fixed bad interaction between auto-training and duplicates when the corpus was small.
  • More tolerant of incorrect file and folder permissions.
  • If Launch Services cannot find the Eudora application, the installer will now try some heuristics and prompt the user to locate Eudora, rather than giving up.
  • The Apple Mail and Eudora plug-ins are better at finding and launching the SpamSieve application, and they will notify the user if they are unable to do this.
  • Updated to eSellerate 3.5.9, which provides support for registration names using non-ASCII characters.
  • When you type in your serial number, SpamSieve normalizes its spacing and case.
  • The Add Good and Add Spam AppleScripts have been renamed Train Good and Train Spam. When installing the new scripts, SpamSieve will automatically move the old ones to the trash.
  • The Entourage spam folder is now called Junk E-mail instead of Spam, since Entourage 2004 already has a so-named folder.
2.2.1—September 20, 2004
  • Shows count of new good messages in DragThing 5.3 and later, if you install an integration script. (This script will be built into future versions of DragThing.)
  • Fixed accuracy regressions from 2.1.4 and made some accuracy improvements.
  • Added Italian localization.
  • Auto-training will no longer add duplicate messages to the corpus, because they interfere with undo.
  • You can now start a new paragraph in the crash reporter by pressing Return rather than Command-Return.
  • Tries to add itself to the Launch Services database at launch, to make it easier for the scripts and plug-ins to find the SpamSieve application.
  • Fixed bug where the help buttons in the Preferences window didn’t work unless the main help had previously been opened.
  • Improved the French and Japanese localizations.
  • The Edit Log command will now open the log using an editor, rather than Console, if BBEdit is unavailable.
  • Improved accuracy statistics when using Apple Mail IMAP accounts.
  • The mailbox parser is faster and more tolerant of malformed mbox files.
  • No longer tries to roll over the log more than once per day.
  • Fixed regression where adding to the whitelist or blocklist didn’t work if a disabled rule matched the message.
  • Fixed crash that could happen when showing progress bar at launch.
  • Fixed crash when scanning System 7–format sounds.
  • Fixed bug where slightly spammy Apple Mail messages would be colored and recorded as spam, but not moved to the Spam mailbox.
2.2—August 24, 2004
  • Accuracy Improvements
    • SpamSieve is smarter about what text to tokenize, it extracts more information from messages, it’s better at detecting invisible text, and it can undo more spammer obfuscations.
    • The Bayesian classifier can leverage the results of SpamAssassin’s heuristic tests. It also assigns better word probabilities and is better at deciding which parts of the message are important.
    • Messages containing Habeas headers are now checked against the Habeas Whitelist. This protects against spam messages that include Habeas headers in order to get through filters.
    • Removed the Import Seed Spam command, as it would reduce accuracy with recent versions of SpamSieve.
  • General Improvements
    • Auto-training is more automatic. There is now a single checkbox to enable auto-training and, if it’s on, SpamSieve will try to do the right thing when it processes new messages. That is, it will train itself using messages of the types that it needs to see more of, and it will prevent the corpus from growing unbalanced or overly large. Also, it will update the whitelist using every incoming good message, so that you can have a complete whitelist without bloating the corpus.
    • The rules and corpus windows now have toolbars, and they support iTunes-style filter-searching.
    • The corpus and rules are now scriptable, and SpamSieve now supports AppleScript Kit terminology.
    • Assorted performance enhancements make SpamSieve faster and improve the responsiveness of its user interface.
    • Added Portuguese localization.
  • Blocklist and Whitelist
    • Rules support more match fields: From (name), Any Recipient, Any Address, Any Character Set, and Any Attachment Name.
    • The new Import Addresses… command lets you import blocklist and whitelist rules from text files (e.g. address book exports or mbox files).
    • Added default blocklist rules for .pif and .scr attachments and a default whitelist rule for lists.c-command.com.
    • Rules can now match the empty string, e.g. when there is a subject header, but the subject is blank. They can also match absent headers by matching against, e.g. <SpamSieve-Unknown-Subject>.
    • The Text to Match field now abbreviates using an ellipsis if the text won’t all fit.
  • Notification
    • Can make a Griffin PowerMate flash when new good messages arrive.
    • Now supports System 7–format notification sounds as well as Entourage sound sets. In addition to the Library/Sounds folders, SpamSieve will now look for sounds installed with Apple Mail, Entourage, Mailsmith, and PowerMail.
    • Doesn’t play the notification sound if you are using fast user switching and SpamSieve is running in one of the background sessions.
    • Notifications that require dismissal (continuous bouncing, PowerMate flashing) are no longer triggered when SpamSieve or the mail program is already frontmost. Thus, you don’t have to deactivate the mail program and then activate it again to dismiss the notification.
  • Apple Mail Integration
    • Sets the colors of spam messages to reflect how spammy they are, making it easier to skim the Spam mailbox for false positives.
    • Protects against Web bugs by telling Mail not to load the images from messages that are classified as spam.
    • The Add Good script is better at moving messages from the Spam folder back to the correct inbox, and it will mark them as unread when it does so.
    • The Add Good and Add Spam now work with Mac OS X 10.3.5.
    • The plug-in will look for SpamSieve in the Applications folder, even if Launch Services is confused and says it can’t find it.
  • Entourage Integration
    • The Exclude my addresses switch now also applies to the Entourage address book, to reduce the chances of a forged spam getting through.
    • Added new scripting verb add entourage addresses. This will allow you to keep the Entourage addresses in sync by using an Entourage shutdown schedule.
    • Can automatically add the recipients of the messages you send to the whitelist.
    • Sanity-checks addresses that are loaded from Entourage. For instance, if both the name and the address were entered in Entourage’s address field, SpamSieve will now extract just the address, rather than taking Entourage’s word for it.
    • The Add Good script now works with the Possible Spam folder and marks false positives as unread.
    • Messages can have more than one category, so SpamSieve now adds and removes the Junk category from the message, rather than replacing the category. This means that marking a message as junk doesn’t wipe out other categories on the message.
    • Shows a progress bar while importing Entourage addresses.
  • Eudora Integration
    • Removed the option to use the full Eudora junk score range; this setting is now always in effect.
  • Mailsmith Integration
  • PowerMail Integration
  • Statistics and Log
    • The Statistics window shows the number of blocklist and whitelist rules and the number of spam messages received per day. The date sheet has a Now button that enters the current date and time.
    • The log is now stored in ~/Library/Logs/SpamSieve. The Open Log command now opens the log in Console, so that it’s easier to monitor as it changes. To get the old behavior of opening the log in a text editor, hold down Option and choose Edit Log.
    • If the log file grows larger than 5 MB, SpamSieve compresses it, archives it by date, and starts a new log.
    • When SpamSieve makes a mistake, the log records which classifier made the error and what the message’s score was. The log also now records parse errors and the number of messages in the corpus.
  • Fixes and Tweaks
    • SpamSieve can optionally show an alternate, more photo-realistic, icon in the Dock.
    • There is a new mailing list for discussion of SpamSieve.
    • Each tab of the Preferences window now contains a help button that will open the corresponding section of the Apple help.
    • Updated to PCRE 4.5 and SQLite 2.8.15.
    • Fixed bug where SpamSieve could crash when generating a message’s identifier if a system routine failed.
    • Fixed bug in EDMessage that could cause crashes when decoding certain quoted-printable messages.
    • Better handling of 8-bit subjects with no specified encoding.
    • Worked around Panther bug that could cause crashes or drawing artifacts on the desktop by no longer trying to draw on the Dock icon when it’s hidden.
    • Worked around OS bug that prevented certain notification sounds from playing.
    • Fixed bug where the selection was not always preserved when editing blocklist and whitelist rules.
    • The Show Corpus, Show Statistics, and Preferences… commands in the Dock menu now bring SpamSieve to the front.
    • The progress window when exporting the corpus sometimes lagged a bit before closing automatically.
    • Fixed bug where SpamSieve would get confused if you entered the empty string as a date.
2.1.4—April 15, 2004
  • Fixed bug where SpamSieve could crash when installing the Eudora plug-in if you were using Eudora 6.0.x.
  • Fixed regression where SpamSieve couldn’t process certain messages, resulting in a script error and reduced accuracy.
  • Added French localization.
  • Updated AOL instructions, since AOL now supports IMAP.
2.1.3—April 13, 2004
  • Added menu commands for installing the Apple Mail plug-in and scripts, the Eudora plug-in, and the Entourage scripts. These items are now stored inside the SpamSieve application package.
  • Scripts for the other applications are now stored inside the application bundle, not at the root of the disk image. The Show Other Scripts menu command will reveal them in the Finder.
  • Apple Mail and Eudora users should update their plug-ins, using the commands in the SpamSieve menu.
  • Added the score script command, which returns an integer between 0 and 100 indicating how spammy the message is. 50 and higher mean spam.
  • The Predicted lines in SpamSieve’s log now show the scores of the messages.
  • Can now use Eudora’s full 0-to-100 junk score range if you check the appropriate box in the Advanced preferences.
  • Improved parsing of messages with 8-bit transfer data.
  • Faster at processing messages.
  • Added support for Outlook Express 5.
  • Worked around OS bug that could cause SpamSieve to come to the front each time a message was processed in Apple Mail or Eudora (usually if an X11 application was frontmost).
  • Fixed bug where errors encountered while processing messages were not reported in the log.
  • Worked around Cocoa problem where certain notification sounds wouldn’t play.
  • Made the Purchase window easier to understand, and added a button for looking up lost serial numbers.
  • Trims the text in the serial number field so people don’t accidentally paste the number in twice.
  • Software updater is better at checking whether the computer can connect to the Internet.
  • SpamSieve now tries to parse Eudora messages according to RFC822, even though this will sometimes fail, as many Eudora messages are not RFC822-compliant.
  • Adjusted the list of headers that SpamSieve ignores.
  • Added keyboard shortcuts for Apple Mail scripts.
  • Improved the training tips.
  • Updated to SQLite 2.8.13.
  • Updated to eSellerate SDK 3.5.5.
  • The Send Report button in the crash reporter is no longer a default button, so there’s no longer confusion about entering returns in the comment field.
  • No longer prints fragments of spam messages to the console when it gets confused.
  • Replaced the copy of the manual outside the app with a read-me.
2.1.2—January 26, 2004
  • SpamSieve can now move Apple Mail POP messages to the Spam folder. Thus, it now fully supports Apple Mail on Jaguar and Panther.
  • Honor Habeas headers is now off by default.
  • Fixed regression where blocklist and whitelist rules got deselected after editing their text.
  • When loading addresses from Entourage, SpamSieve now picks up addresses that are not associated with any contact (that is, they appear only in a group).
  • The default date shown in the Statistics window is now the date that SpamSieve was first launched, rather than September 2002.
  • The Apple Mail Add Good script is better at finding the proper inbox when moving false positives out of the Spam folder.
  • The Apple Mail Mark If Spam script can mark the spam messages as read.
  • The Purchase window now makes it more clear when a serial number has been accepted.
  • In the Statistics window, Set… is now Set Date… and Copy is now Copy Stats.
  • Fixed crash that could happen when processing messages in Japanese encodings.
  • Added Japanese localization.
2.1.1—January 8, 2004
  • Much faster at processing messages when there are many blocklist and whitelist rules. Also improved the speed of loading, deleting, and sorting rules.
  • Improved accuracy tracking with the Panther version of Apple Mail; previously, SpamSieve couldn’t always tell when it was being corrected.
  • Catches more spam because it knows about more spammer obfuscation tricks and also which headers it should ignore.
  • Fixed bug (introduced in 2.0) where the Bayesian engine didn’t work if Mac OS X’s default language was set to Japanese.
  • The SpamSieve Eudora Plug-In is better at launching the SpamSieve application if it is not already running.
  • Loading Entourage addresses now adds to the addresses that were previously loaded, rather than replacing them. This makes it possible for Entourage users who have more than one Entourage identity to give SpamSieve the addresses from all their address books (by loading once for each identity). Hold down Option when clicking Load to get the old behavior of replacing the previously loaded addresses.
  • The sound pop-up menu in the Preferences window now immediately notices when new sounds are installed; previously, it would only check when updating the rest of the preferences window.
  • You can now add a rule without a the Blocklist or Whitelist window being frontmost. SpamSieve will ask which type of rule to add.
  • Regex rules can now start with an options modifier such as (?-i).
  • Copying rules to the clipboard now just copies the text to match (typically an e-mail address), not all the columns. To get all the columns, you can print to PDF.
  • The Entourage Add Good script now finds localized inboxes, rather than creating a folder called Inbox.
  • The Entourage Add Spam script can now remove spam messages from the server.
  • The Statistics window now shows percentages instead of ratios.
  • SpamSieve will now quit at launch if another copy of the application is already running.
  • Re-targeted broken Habeas URL.
  • Added the following menu commands: Close All Windows, Minimize All Windows, and Zoom.
2.1—December 9, 2003
  • Added support for Apple Mail POP accounts. POP messages can be marked as junk and colored, but (due to limitations in the present version of Apple Mail) they cannot be moved to another mailbox.
  • Added a Training Tip window that gives advice on how to improve SpamSieve’s accuracy, based on the current state of the corpus and preferences.
  • Rules in the whitelist and blocklist are no longer limited to just matching sender addresses. They can now match a variety of message fields (To, CC, Subject, etc.), as well as the message body. In addition to exact matches, rules now support the following match styles: contains, starts with, ends with (useful for matching domains), and Perl-compatible regular expressions. You can now edit rules and add new rules manually (as opposed to automatically, as a result of training SpamSieve with a message).
  • When trained with a good message from a mailing list, SpamSieve will automatically create a whitelist rule based on a mailing list header, if present.
  • SpamSieve can now read in the Entourage address book and use it as a whitelist. Thus, the Entourage rule can now give SpamSieve all the messages, not just the ones that were from unknown senders. This means that SpamSieve can now accurately notify the user when non-spam messages are received. Also, the statistics it keeps will be more complete.
  • Improved the accuracy of the Bayesian classifier when the corpus is unbalanced.
  • Made a variety of low-level changes to improve SpamSieve’s accuracy, for instance: adjusted the list of headers that are analyzed and how words are tokenized.
  • The Apple Mail Add Spam script now has an option to control whether the messages are moved to the Spam folder.
  • The Entourage Add Good script now moves messages to the inbox if they’re located in the Spam folder.
  • Mailsmith users can now auto-train using only spam or good messages by turning off training in Mailsmith and turning on one of the auto-train checkboxes in SpamSieve.
  • Improved the importing of mbox files that do not have blank lines between the messages, such as some Eudora mailboxes. Fixed a bug where the mbox parser could crash if a message had length zero. Also, SpamSieve now shows a progress bar while counting the number of messages that will be imported.
  • Improved the corpus and rule list displays. You can now enter and leave editing mode by typing Return. Type-ahead works better; for instance, if you type “g” and there are no rows that start with “g,” it will look for one that starts with “f.” When you delete a word or rule, you can cancel out of the confirmation sheet by typing Escape. To avoid the confirmation sheet entirely, you can delete using Command-Delete instead of Delete. When a word or rule is deleted, SpamSieve selects a nearby rule so that you don’t lose your place. When deleting many words at once, SpamSieve no longer shows a progress window for deletions that will not take very long.
  • Entering the name and serial number to personalize SpamSieve is now more foolproof: SpamSieve strips leading and trailing whitespace, and it detects when you enter a coupon code in the serial number field. Fixed regression where SpamSieve rejected names containing non-ASCII characters. In addition, there’s a new button for quickly redeeming coupons.
  • Updated to the latest eSellerate SDK so that purchasing SpamSieve from within the application is faster.
  • SpamSieve now requires Mac OS X 10.2.6 or later.
  • Fixed bug where dates entered in the Statistics window were sometimes parsed in GMT instead of the local time zone, thus causing the date to be off by a few hours.
  • Improved the reliability and user interface of the crash reporter.
  • No longer crashes when parsing certain non-RFC822-compliant Eudora messages.
2.0.2—October 1, 2003
  • Now works with Apple Mail (IMAP and .Mac only, not POP).
  • The message count in the Dock icon now resets when an e-mail client becomes active (rather than just when SpamSieve became active). You can also control the size and position of the number in the Dock icon.
  • Much faster at deleting lots of rules at once.
  • Replaced the message store database with custom code that’s faster and more reliable.
  • Improved accuracy for HTML messages containing links.
  • Importing mbox files is faster.
  • Fixed bug where you couldn’t use Web registration after the demo period had expired.
  • The log records which addresses matched the whitelist or blocklist.
  • The log records corpus imports.
  • Auto-training is faster.
  • The Entourage Add Spam script can close the frontmost window if it’s spam.
  • Fixed bug where the date in the Statistics window could get cut off if you changed it to use a more verbose format.
  • Worked around OS bug that caused dates like “01.09.2003” to be interpreted as January 9 in German-style locales.
  • Added Copy button to the Statistics window.
  • Fixed problem updating certain history databases from 1.3.1.
  • More resilient to minor corpus file corruption.
  • Fixed crash that could happen with improperly formed multi-part messages.
  • Shows the number of blocklist or whitelist rules in the title bar.
  • The whitelist now contains some c-command.com addresses by default.
  • Fixed crash when opening the Statistics window while adding messages.
  • The Statistics window shows ratios, where applicable.
  • Assorted minor performance improvements.
  • The modification dates of the AppleScripts are now the actual modification dates, not the date the distribution was built.
2.0.1—September 17, 2003
  • Replaced the database engine that was being used to store the corpus with some custom code. This should be much faster and more reliable.
  • Loading and saving the rules is faster, due to a better file format.
  • The rules and corpus message counts are now saved to disk during idle time rather than when quitting. This should prevent data loss in the event that SpamSieve doesn’t quit normally.
  • The whitelist and blocklist are more memory-efficient.
  • Plugged memory leak in EDMessage.
  • Fixed crash involving certain really long header lines.
  • Fixed bug where the Whitelist and Blocklist windows weren’t always up to date.
  • Table views are smarter about not scrolling unnecessarily to maintain their selections.
  • The Whitelist and Blocklist windows now secondary sort by sender.
  • Changes to the preferences are saved to disk immediately.
  • Fixed bug where tables saved their sorted columns but didn’t restore them.
  • When SpamSieve gets a fatal error, it now quits like it says it will.
2.0—September 10, 2003
  • SpamSieve now extracts a lot more information from each message. This makes it much more accurate and also makes it learn faster.
  • Now integrates with Eudora 6 (Sponsored or Paid) via a plug-in. It can now process every incoming Eudora message and can be trained using the Junk and Not Junk commands in Eudora’s Message menu.
  • SpamSieve now has a blocklist and a whitelist. These are automatically maintained based on the senders of messages that SpamSieve is trained with. The blocklist makes sure that all messages from known spammers are caught and speeds processing for these messages. The whitelist lets you be sure that certain messages will never be marked as spam; this was possible before, but now you don’t have to clutter your address book with addresses from online retailers, etc.
  • You can now control how conservative or aggressive SpamSieve is at catching spam.
  • SpamSieve can now play a sound or bounce its Dock icon after a batch of non-spam messages has arrived. This is meant to replace your e-mail client’s new mail notification, which you don’t want going off if all the new messages are spam.
  • Shows the number of new good messages in the Dock icon.
  • Now parses HTML so that it can better extract relevant information from HTML messages, and also handle various HTML-based tricks that spammers use to fool filters.
  • New method of calculating word probabilities makes SpamSieve better at discerning which words in the message are important.
  • Includes a corpus of seed spam, to jump-start spam recognition for users who do not have many saved spam messages.
  • The corpus is now stored in databases rather than in a property list. This makes it launch faster and use much less memory, as the corpus doesn’t have to be all in RAM at the same time.
  • The statistics file format (for History.db) has changed in order to enable performance improvements and more statistical displays in future versions.
  • Handles more types of plain text obfuscations, and is much faster at undoing them.
  • Added option for the address book whitelist to only use other people’s addresses, so that spam messages from your own address don’t match the whitelist.
  • Can mark all messages with Habeas headers as good.
  • Can mark all messages with some variant of “ADV” at the start of the subject as spam.
  • Can mark all base64-encoded HTML messages as spam.
  • New probability combiner increases accuracy.
  • Uses stop words to speed processing and reduce false negatives.
  • When filtering a message, considers the number of occurrences of the words, not just which words are present.
  • Can import messages from mbox files.
  • Can import the corpus from and export it to an XML property list (the same format used by 1.x).
  • SpamSieve can now check for updated versions of itself.
  • Added crash reporter.
  • Added Dock menu containing frequently used commands.
  • The entries in the log are more detailed.
  • The corpus now stores the date at which each word was last accessed.
  • Fixed bug where storing statistics would fail on systems that didn’t know about GMT.
  • Fixed bug where SpamSieve could throw away long runs of HTML thinking they were attachments.
  • Added button for opening the Mac OS X Address Book from inside SpamSieve.
  • The Statistics window now has a contextual menu item for copying the displayed information.
  • SpamSieve no longer wastes cycles updating the Statistics window after it’s been closed.
  • The Statistics window is smarter about updating only the portions that could have changed.
  • No longer shows Good Words and Spam Words stats.
  • Logging has less overhead.
  • Updates the history asynchronously, resulting in faster message processing.
  • Checks for mistakes in a background thread.
  • False negatives are now written to disk in a background thread.
  • Re-arranged the Corpus window.
  • Pruning the corpus now works by access date rather than by word counts. Of course, you can manually prune the old way by sorting the Corpus window by Total.
  • Updated to SQLite 2.8.6 and tuned it for speed.
  • Updated to PCRE 4.3.
  • Updated to eSellerate 3.5, which should fix crashes some people saw after registering on 10.2.6.
  • Now looks at headers of subparts of messages from Mailsmith.
  • Time-consuming operations now either have a progress bar or a progress spinner.
  • Better at extracting malformed e-mail addresses from headers.
  • Copying rows from the Corpus window to the clipboard now uses the order of the columns in the window rather than the default column order.
  • Fixed regression where the Entourage scripts no longer created the Spam folder if it didn’t exist.
  • Fixed potential crash with regex replacements at the end of a string.
  • The history and the corpus files can now be aliases.
  • Automatically trims carriage returns and other illegal characters when you paste in your name and serial number.
  • Now saves the name and serial number to disk as soon as they’re entered.
  • The Spam folder in Entourage no longer has to be top-level.
  • Entourage can mark good messages as unread.
  • Type-selecting in table views is quicker.
  • No longer nags constantly when unregistered.
  • Fixed bug where it could look as though SpamSieve had hung if it started up in the background with an empty corpus.
1.3.1—June 18, 2003
  • Added direct integration with Mailsmith 2.0 and later. Enabling SpamSieve is as easy as clicking a checkbox. You can train SpamSieve directly from Mailsmith’s Message menu. Bare Bones Software has seamlessly integrated it with Mailsmith’s powerful filtering system, and Mailsmith knows not to bounce its Dock icon after receiving a batch of messages that are all spam.
  • Fixed crashing bug triggered by incorrectly encoded headers.
  • Regex substitutions are faster and much more memory efficient.
  • When adding spam messages to the corpus, the default is now for SpamSieve to move them to the Spam folder.
  • The PowerMail Move If Spam script now changes the color of spam messages.
  • The Emailer scripts now pass text and HTML attachments on to SpamSieve for analysis.
  • Added instructions for using the Entourage and PowerMail address books as whitelists.
  • Compacted the ED frameworks to reduce application size and memory use.
  • Disabled SQLite’s file locking so that SpamSieve’s data folder can now be located on an AppleShare volume.
  • Caches the Address Book to speed whitelist lookups 100 fold.
  • The statistics database is faster due to an updated version of SQLite.
  • Fixed bad pointer in header extractor that caused unnecessary fallbacks to the secondary parser (reducing accuracy).
  • Added experimental support for moving Entourage messages on IMAP accounts to the (local) Spam folder. This can be enabled by editing the scripts with Script Editor.
  • For clarity, the names of AppleScripts that ask SpamSieve to predict the category of a message now contain the word “if.”
  • Added lots of minor clarifications to the documentation.
1.3—February 11, 2003
  • More resilient to spammers’ tricks for obfuscating words.
  • Can use e-mail addresses in the system Address Book as a whitelist. Messages sent from those addresses will never be marked as spam.
  • Greatly reduced overall memory usage as well as launch and quit times.
  • Can save false negatives to disk for later reporting to SpamSieve’s developer.
  • You can edit the spam and good counts associated with a word, remove selected words from the corpus, and reset the corpus entirely.
  • Type-ahead navigation in the Corpus window. Type the first few letters of a word or number to select it (and scroll to it).
  • You can hide statistics from before a set date, to better see the current accuracy and spam reception rate.
  • Improvements to the Corpus window: Shows all words rather than only those considered statistically significant. Re-sorting by numeric columns is twice as fast. You can copy the selected rows to the clipboard or drag them to another application. The selection is preserved when you change the sort column, you can sort in descending order, and the sorted column is remembered between launches. The Home and End keys work.
  • The Prune Corpus command now tells you how many words it would remove and asks for confirmation.
  • The statistics tracking is smarter about handling duplicate messages.
  • The statistics have tooltips explaining what they mean, and you can copy all of the statistics to the clipboard at once.
  • Improved accuracy tracking of PowerMail and Emailer messages.
  • Eudora Integration: Can mark spam messages as read and/or mark them for removal from the server.
  • Expanded the AppleScript dictionary, to enable better integration with mail and news clients.
  • Entourage Integration: Creates Junk category if there isn’t one, and can mark spam messages as read.
  • Mailsmith Integration: The adding scripts now set the appropriate message properties.
  • Better parsing of messages with illegal characters in the headers.
  • SpamSieve’s Info.plist file contains an LSUIElement entry. Change the 0 to a 1 to hide the application’s Dock icon. (You’ll need to change it back to access the preferences.)
  • The message count display has moved from the Corpus window to the Statistics window.
  • Better error message when the corpus couldn’t be saved.
  • Added tooltips to preferences.
  • The registration window gives better feedback when you personalize.
  • Better recovery from errors in the corpus file.
  • The secondary parser is better at handling DOS linebreaks.
1.2.2—November 20, 2002
  • Fixed bug in the PowerMail Add Good script.
  • Added uninstaller for Eudora users.
  • Better handling of errors while adding messages to the corpus.
  • Removed bloat from the Entourage Mark Spam script.
  • The application icon now has an alpha channel, so it doesn’t appear with a white halo when viewed on a colored background.
  • Minor changes to the manual.
1.2.1—November 18, 2002
  • Modified Info.plist to work around a bug in Mac OS X 10.1 that could cause the Finder to crash when launching SpamSieve.
1.2—November 18, 2002
  • Added support for Emailer 2.0v3 and Eudora (5.2 and later).
  • Decodes base64 and quoted-printable text parts, thus finding words that spammers try to hide from anti-spam software.
  • Decodes subjects that use different character sets (e.g. big5).
  • Adds special tokens for MIME entities such as part boundaries and uninterpretable message parts.
  • Keeps track of the messages added to the corpus, and can optionally prevent you from adding the same message more than once (biasing the counts). Thus, you no longer have to remember which messages you’ve already added.
  • You can now “undo” adds to the corpus, e.g. if you added a message as good when you meant to add it as spam.
  • Can now add messages to the corpus as they are filtered, so after the initial training you only have to add messages when SpamSieve makes a mistake.
  • When filtering a message, SpamSieve can optionally check whether the message is in the corpus. If it is, SpamSieve looks up the answer rather than trying to predict. One use of this feature is that if SpamSieve makes a mistake, you can Add Spam and then Label/Move If Spam and be sure that the message will be labeled/moved.
  • Keeps a log of additions to the corpus, filtering results, and errors.
  • Mailsmith: If SpamSieve thinks a message is spam, it sets the deleted property of the message to true; otherwise it sets the flagged property of the message to true. Therefore, if SpamSieve has classified the message then exactly one of the properties will be true, and if it hasn’t they’ll both be false. (Normally, neither of these message properties is used by Mailsmith itself.)
  • Entourage and PowerMail: If you tell SpamSieve to move spam messages to a spam folder and the spam folder doesn’t exist, the script will create the spam folder for you.
  • When you add spam messages to the corpus, can optionally move them to a Spam folder.
  • Added status indicators in the Dock icon (like Norton DiskLight).
  • The spam probability of unknown words is now 0.4 instead of 0.2.
  • The Corpus window uses less memory and sorts much faster.
  • Accuracy tracking is faster and uses less memory and disk space.
  • Fixed bug where accuracy tracking didn’t work for some Mailsmith messages with multiple parts.
  • Improved the manual’s instructions for e-mail client integration.
  • Compiled with GCC 3 for greater speed.
  • Uses the latest version of the eSellerate SDK, which eliminates a crash at startup under certain circumstances.
  • No longer shows the “Upgrading From 1.0” message when starting with a blank corpus.
1.1—September 19, 2002
  • E-Mail Client Integration
    • Added support for PowerMail.
    • Added instructions and an AppleScript for making Mailsmith download and filter mail faster.
    • Added an AppleScript for Entourage that moves spam into a Junk folder.
  • Performance
    • Launches about 60% faster than 1.0.
    • You can now prune the corpus to remove words that are taking up memory without contributing to spam recognition. This can also dramatically decrease SpamSieve’s launch time.
    • Recalculating spam probabilities is about 10% faster and uses less memory.
    • Quitting is faster because SpamSieve now writes corpus changes to disk during idle time.
    • Saving the corpus is slightly faster.
  • Displays statistics about the number of messages filtered, SpamSieve’s accuracy, and the types of words in the corpus.
  • SpamAssassin’s X-Spam-Status headers are now treated as single words. This means that if SpamAssassin is running on your mail server, SpamSieve will learn to respect (or ignore) its judgment.
  • Does a better job of ignoring e-mail attachments, thus reducing corpus bloat.
  • Installs the eSellerate Engine if it’s not present, thus enabling “Instant Registration” for more users.
  • Asking SpamSieve to categorize a message now forces an update of all the word probabilities. Previously, the update only happened during idle time.
  • Highlights the sorted column in the Corpus window. The columns themselves have shorter names. There’s a new “Total” column. Auto-resizing of the columns works better. You can now manually resize any column, and manual resizings and reorderings are saved between launches.
  • Shows fatal errors as alert panels rather than just printing them on the console.
  • The Corpus.plist data file is now sorted by word. This makes it easier to examine the corpus manually, and to compare it to other users’ corpora.
1.0—September 10, 2002
  • First public release.
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