Prefer Plain-Text Emails

Once upon a time all email was sent in plain text, but nowadays HTML emails —that feature alternative fonts, colors, and images—have become the norm. Yet most of these emails come with a plain-text version hidden inside them. This is included for those who might have email clients that can’t display HTML.

While the Mail app in OS X is fully compatible with HTML email, you can hit Option+Command+ P to switch the email currently being viewed to a plain-text rendition, sans any kind of formatting.

This is only temporary, however. Just select another email in your email list, and then select the original email again to view it with its formatting intact.

Setting Plain-Text View

To always view emails in plain text, you can change a secret setting that makes it prefer the plain-text component of emails, if they’re included in the message (and they nearly always are). This will mean you should never see another HTML email!

To activate the setting, shut down Mail, open a Terminal window (open Finder, select the Applications list, and then in the list of applications double- click Terminal within the Utilities folder), and type the following:

defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText -bool TRUE

Restart Mail, and you’ll see that any HTML mails are now shown as plain text. Should you subsequently want to view the full HTML-formatted email, you’ll see that most messages include a link at the top that lets you view the email at the sender’s website.

Restoring Default Settings

To return to Mail’s automatic displaying of HTML emails, again close Mail, open a Terminal window, and type the following

defaults delete com.apple.mail PreferPlainText

Restart Mail for the changes to take effect.