Start a new Mail message from anywhere

Nov 09, '09 07:30:03AM

Contributed by: wmertens

My workflow is very email-centric and I've often wished I could start a new email in Mail by pressing a keyboard combo in any program. I use QuickSilver, and the regular way of searching for a contact's email address and then creating a new mail that way seems awkward to me compared to the email address completion Mail.app offers.

After many tries, I finally found out how to get Mail.app to open a new message window using AppleScript:

tell application "Mail"
  set t to make new outgoing message
  set visible of t to true
  activate
end tell
Save this as an AppleScript using AppleScript Editor, and then tie a keyboard shortcut to that script using your favorite keyboard shortcut creation tool. Tested with 10.6.1.

[robg adds: This also works in 10.5, and probably many releases before that. Spark is one of many program you can use to create the keyboard shortcut. In 10.6, you could also create this as a Service using Automator, and assign a keyboard shortcut in the Keyboard Shortcut's System Preferences panel.]

Comments (13)


Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20091028101802295