But I have a strong suspicion that it hasn’t always been handled correctly in the past when POP was the standard email protocol.
I created my own Gmail account to test this, and it seems that Apple Mail currently handles all of this label manipulation correctly. The complexity of Gmail’s labeling system has made it impossible for any third party mail application to “do it right” over time. Since few people understand how it works, it’s no surprise that Apple has had a hard time figuring out how to make Apple Mail leverage IMAP to interpret Gmail’s “Labels”.
And historically, third party Mail applications such as Apple Mail, Microsoft Outlook or even Eudora have had a huge challenge in how to handle mail both the normal way, and the Gmail way. Gmail is the only email service that leverages this unique “labeling” system. When using the Gmail web interface, to delete a “folder” (referred to as a Mailbox in Apple Mail), the actual command is “Delete Label.” This removes the label/tag from all messages and deletes Mail’s “Smart Mailbox” that filters by that label, but it leaves the messages themselves in the All Mail folder with no labels attached to them…now forever lost in the abyss of the All Mail folder. If you create a new Mailbox in Apple Mail, Gmail creates a label and filters the All Mail area by that label/folder/mailbox name. In the Gmail web interface, folders are referred to as Labels and behave similarly to what we call Smart Mailboxes in Apple Mail. And hypothetically, when you empty the Trash, then the message is actually deleted from your “All Mail” folder… maybe so, maybe not.īasically, Gmail tags messages with labels so they can be filtered by the view you choose. When you delete a message from your Inbox, the “Inbox” label is replaced with a “Trash” label. When you go to your Inbox, what’s actually happening is that the All Mail area is being filtered by the label “Inbox,” and you only see messages tagged as “Inbox”.
If a message is to be found in a different location, such as the Inbox or the Sent folder, then the message is tagged with a data label such as Inbox, or Sent, or Trash. This is where all of your messages are stored. Your Gmail account has a catch-all area called “All Mail”. Ever wonder why you are using so much server space on Gmail? Or why your Gmail syncing is so slow on all of your Apple devices? When you delete a message, do you wonder if it’s really gone? Maybe so, maybe not.
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