Email search for M365 and Gmail accounts in Mail app

[tastapod]

I would love Alfred to search my email. Gmail and Outlook web both have fantastic search these days. The Mail app seems to be seriously lagging behind.

 

The only reference I can find to Alfred and email is a thread from 2013 about a Powerpack script that doesn't work on Big Sur.

 

Ideally I would like to search (incrementally?!) in OWA or Gmail accounts, but failing that, having similarly amazing search of local mail folders (by subject, date, sender, contents, etc.)

 

Is this completely outside of Alfred's scope? Am I missing an obvious setting somewhere? Is my duck-duck-foo failing me?

 

Thanks!

[deanishe]

Hi @tastapod, welcome to the forum.

 

1 hour ago, tastapod said:

Is this completely outside of Alfred's scope?

 

Searching webmail it out of scope, and searching local mail is no longer possible because Apple has blocked 3rd-party applications from searching Mail.app's data.

 

They could all be implemented as workflows, but so far nobody capable of building the workflow has wanted it enough to build it.

 

The built-in gmail Web Search is the only option at the moment, I believe.

[tastapod]

Thanks for replying @deanishe. That's a shame! I was hoping Alfred would be my "find everything" app. That's pretty poor that Apple doesn't provide a search API into Mail, since Spotlight can index emails and messages. Where can I find out more about writing a workflow to search Mail?

[deanishe]

1 minute ago, tastapod said:

since Spotlight can index emails and messages

 

That's the API that Apple have blocked 3rd-party apps from using.

 

1 minute ago, tastapod said:

Where can I find out more about writing a workflow to search Mail?

 

Start by looking for a way to search mail that isn't blocked by Apple's access restrictions? I don't really know: I don't use any of those apps/services.

[tastapod]

Ok, thanks again!