I’m a big fan of search. Prior to my Mac I was using Google Desktop Search, and now Spotlight is a key part of my workflow. As a Mac Mail + Hosted Gmail + IMAP user, I’ve noticed my search results always include Spam, and due to the ridiculous quantity of spam I get, most searches tend to overflow with it. For example, here’s me looking for an email from someone named “becky”:
Yup, that’s a spamtastic result. In fact here’s how much spam there is in my inbox:
Now for the good news. It’s fixable. Here are the simple steps you can do to stop seeing spam in your mac mail search results. I’ve even included pretty pictures to help show all the required steps.
1. Go to your gmail (or hosted gmail) inbox, then click on settings:
2. Go to the “labs” tab, find “Advanced IMAP Controls”, and enable it. Don’t forget to save changes along the way!
3. Return to settings, click Labels, and uncheck the “show in IMAP” option.
4. OK, all done with the gmail side of things, let’s switch back to Mac Mail. First, close Mail (not 100% sure you have to do this, but it worked for me), then relaunch it. When open, scroll all the way down on the LEFT side of the screen to find the “gmail” area of your folders. Find your mail server, and right-click (aka command-click) on the word “Gmail”. In the options menu, click “synchronize” (by the way, not 100% sure this step is required either, but again, it worked for me).
5. In a moment, your spam folder should disappear, as if by magic…
Ahh, yes, the joy of hidden spam. Which is the only good kind of spam. Well, that and no spam, of course…
And just to confirm, here’s the same search for our mysterious friend becky:
And there you have it. Thanks to commentor “Andrew Wynn” on this post (scroll way down). By the way, you can use this method to hide other folders as well, such as personal content, automatic filters, etc. Hope this helps!