Mute in OS X Mail

Gmail offers a feature called “mute” that silently archives future email that arrives in a thread. It makes reply-all threads way nicer to work with.

Is there an add-on or something that enables this behaviour in Mail?

Solution 1:

This can be done in stock Mail.app, but it takes a few steps.

First, go to Mail » Preferences… and in the General tab, set New messages sound: to None.

Then, click the Rules tab.

Create a new rule.

Under description, type Sound.

Set the rule to apply if all conditions are met.

For any thread you do not want to sound the new messages sound, enter the content of its subject line (not the Fwd: or Re: parts) in the field for Subject then does not contain.

For the action, set Play Sound to New Messages Sound.

Whenever you want to add a thread to the exclusion list, add a condition.

If you frequently add threads to this list, this process can be scripted -- but writing that script would be another question (which you're welcome to post if you want to go this route).

Solution 2:

I'll give the correct but non-answer: No it's not possible.

Gmail's mute feature is proprietary to Gmail. Even if Apple decided they wanted to add the ability to use the feature, I don't think Gmail exposes it over IMAP anyway.