Download Mail attachments to Downloads folder

Sep 02, '09 07:30:02AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

One thing that annoys me with Apple's Mail app is that it stores attachments to be opened in a separate folder (in ~/Library/Mail Downloads). I wanted to make those Mail attachments appear in a subdirectory of my Downloads folder (or alternatively, in the Download folder itself, or in /var/tmp, which I clear regularly with a cron task).

It's relatively simple to move the Mail Downloads folder to another directory, and then provide a symbolic link so that Mail.app can access it. Quit Mail if it's running, then open Terminal. Stay in your home folder (where Terminal starts you off), and enter this command:

$ mv Library/Mail\ Downloads Downloads/; cd Library; ln -s ../Downloads/Mail\ Downloads
Or alternatively, to make Mail downloads appear directly in the Downloads folder:
$ mV Library/Mail\ Downloads/* Downloads/; mv Library/Mail\ Downloads/.* Downloads/; cd Library; rmdir Mail\ Downloads; ln -s ../Downloads Mail\ Downloads
[robg adds: I tested this (moving the entire folder into the Downloads folder) in 10.6, and it seemed to work just fine.]

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