I noticed the change in Tahoe. My unread email count plummeted.
For years, the unread count (typically 300-500) stopped being information and became ambient guilt. Apple’s shift is essentially saying: an inbox is not a moral ledger. Not everything that lands there deserves a red badge or my cortisol.
A few reasons it’s quietly smart:
Unread ≠ urgent
Most unread mail is noise: newsletters, receipts, systems talking to systems. Counting only what’s actionable reframes attention as a finite resource.
Cognitive load reduction
A low unread count changes how to approach Mail. You open it to do, not to confess.
Implicit triage
Apple is doing first-pass sorting, so I don’t have to. It’s not perfect, but it nudges behaviour away from compulsive checking.
Psychological honesty
An inbox with 8 unread that matter is more truthful than one with 3,482 that don’t.
Yay.
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