How do I stop Apple Mail from opening because of iCal appointments?

Question

I use only webbased Gmail for mail, but Mail.app keeps popping up as a result from iCal-appointments that have a e-mail reminder setting. I also get these reminders from Gmail anyway and I would like to disable the Mail.app program altogether.

I'm kind of fed up of doing "forcequit Mail.app" from Alfred several times a day. How can I solve this? Is there some kind of hook like "When Mail.app launches, kill it"? Mail.app cannot be removed from OSX.

Answer 1

There's really only one way to kill Mail.app (as per my comment on waiwai's answer). Open Terminal.app from Applications/Utilities and enter:

sudo chmod 000 /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail

This will prompt you for your administrator password.

To reverse this, enter:

sudo chmod 755 /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail

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I originally thought iCal was using the Launch Services database to open Mail, but in order to get the communication working, it relies upon AppleScript instead. You can find the script here:

/Applications/iCal.app/Contents/Resources/Mail.applescript

Unfortunately, it says:

… changes to this file will not be reflected in iCal behavior unless manually recompiled.

Thus you can't just delete or move away this file. You won't see any difference.

Answer 2

For those with Mountain Lion, you can try this: http://www.quora.com/OS-X-10-8-Mountain-Lion/Is-there-a-way-to-completely-disable-OS-X-Mail-app-to-fire-up-and-send-Calendar-notifications

In Calendar.app, click Calendars to show your calendars in the left sidebar. Then right-click the calendar in question, choose Get Info, then click Ignore alerts. This way you'll continue to receive your Google Calendar email alerts, but not the additional OS X Calendar alerts.

Answer 3

I renamed /Applications/Mail.app to /Applications/Mail.disabled using the following command in Terminal:

sudo mv /Applications/Mail.app /Applications/Mail.disabled

Answer 4

This is happening because Google calendar is trying tho send the email notification. If you don't need the email notification but an alarm is enough you can just adjust settings in Google calendar to not send email notifications and it will stop trying to start Mail.app every time you have an appointment coming.

Answer 5

For complete Mail.app killage (and not just changing default mail app), open Terminal (inside /Applications/Utilities in an administrative account and enter

sudo chmod 000 /Applications/Mail.app

It will prompt you for your password. Enter it, and then try to open Mail. It won't open!

To undo:

sudo chmod 755 /Applications/Mail.app

(If using Terminal, then you could also remove the app too, I guess, but I'd suggest just chmodding it in case you need it in a year's time.)

Answer 6

Wouldn't it work to just disable all alerts in iCal, so that it never tries to send an alert via Mail?

In iCal preferences, click on Advanced, then click on "Disable all Alerts".

This leaves Mail executable in case you ever want to use it for another purpose (like looking at locally archived email).

Answer 7

Highlight "Mail" in applications folder. "Command I" or "get info" from file menu. At bottom in "sharing and permissions" you must unlock, then highlight the user, and click the "minus" sign below. This places a tiny red minus sign on the Mail folder and disables it

Answer 8

Open Mail.app, then open the preferences. On the General pane set the "Default Email Reader" to whatever you actually use (like Firefox.app). Mail.app will stop opening then!