Mail not playing the new mail sound

Many users have been experiencing problems with Mail in which the "New Mail" sound does not seem to be working. Mail will appear and the Dock indicators will display the number of new messages, but the alert sounds will not occur. This has even occurred for users with brand new Macs.

One user, catholicon:

"I newly bought the MacBook, and set up with the new notebook, everything was fine except that there is NO NEW MAIL SOUND whenever new mail comes."

This problem is longstanding, and has persisted despite selection of different Mail sounds, creation of new user accounts, and running permissions fixes on the hard drive. Most likely, this problem has to do with the Mail application itself, and a fix will have to come via an update from Apple, but until then there are several things users can try.

Fixes

Change sound file permissions Sound files are located in the various libraries, and should be accessible by the current user account in order to be played. If for some reason the permissions on a sound file have been altered such that the user does not have access, then this will prevent their being played in Mail. By default, sound files in the user folder should have both read and execute permissions for the owner and everyone, and those in the main library folder should be at least readable by everyone. To change the permissions back to their default values, run the following commands in the Terminal, entering the administrator password when prompted.

• sudo chmod uo=rx ~/Library/Sounds/*
• sudo chmod u=rw,go=r /System/Library/Sounds/*

Second, if the built-in sounds are not functioning, try copying them from the /Macintosh HD/Library/Sounds/ folder over to the /username/Library/Sounds/ folder to see if that allows user accessibility. Note that the Mail application will need to be restarted in order for the moved sounds to register in the program.

Disable "IDLE command" support In addition to ensuring permissions are correctly set on sound files, some users have found that unchecking the "Use IDLE command if Server Supports It" feature that's available for IMAP server types. This option is available in the "Advanced" section for each email account in the "Accounts" preference pane.

Workarounds

Install GrowlMail plug-in The GrowlMail plug-in is a notification application that interfaces Mail. Users have reported that after installing this application, Mail sounds appear to function again.

Create an incoming sound mail rule Create a rule in Mail to play sounds upon receiving new mail. In Mail's preferences, select "Rules" and create a new rule which has the conditions of "Message Type" is "Mail", and the actions of "Play Sound". This should play the sound when new mail arrives, but the drawback is that it might also play the sound when mail is sent; however, this might be tolerable for some users.

Resources