I mac mail

Hi Argo Rutty.

Don't worry, this change was nothing that you did, it has been implemented by Apple to increase your personal email security.

If you update your iPad and iPhone to the latest IOS then you will experience the same change in behaviour on those devices too.

The reason for the change is that when someone you don't know sends you an email, such as a mass spammer, and advertising company or a legitimate business is it reasonable that they they should know that you opened and read that email?

In the past, this used to be impossible but the senders of unwanted emails got wise and began embedding what are known as "single pixel images".

These images are just one single pixel and look even smaller than a single full stop so that the receiver of the email does not even notice them.

The you open an email containing a single pixel image that "image" is downloaded, on demand, from the email senders own servers and now they have you!

The email sender knows you read their email, they know your location in world, they know your computers IP address and they can track you across your web browsing to build a profile on you.

The result is that the number of spam emails you receive will increase, because they know you exist and where you are, and it also increase the chances that your personal information might be used for fraudulent purposes.

So Apple took the initiative to protect its customers and by default in the latest macOS and IOS for iPads and iPhones they changed the default behaviour in the Apple Mail App to disable the automatic downloading of embedded content, such as pictures, videos and other document attachments.

By taking this step the email sender can once again no longer track you unless you click that button to "Load Content Directly"

Personally, I would recommend that you leave this setting as it is, to protect you from unwanted and nefarious activity by sly operators, it is no big problem just to click that button when viewing an email from someone you know and trust to view the pictures or other attachments that they have sent you while never clicking that button when viewing emails from unknown senders.

However, if you do want to return your Apple Mail to the way it behaved in the past, and automatically download content and risk your security then:

When the Mail app is open on your desktop click the menu ribbon at the top of the desk top Mail > Preferences:

Then click Privacy and remove the check mark for Protect Mail Activity:

Once you do this your embedded content such as pictures and videos will once again appear as soon as you open the email.

I hope the above is useful to help you decide what level of personal email protection is most applicable for your situation.

Will.

Is this across all email accounts or one in particular?

Presumably you have carried out a reboot of the iMac?

If this is just affecting an iCloud email account have you tried logging-out of your iCloud account on the iMac, reboot the iMac and then log back in to your iCloud account?

By default email attachments are not automatically opened in Apple Mail but if one or more are attached you should see the paperclip symbol in the email header, click on the paper clip to access those attachment(s).

There is a facility in Mail to rebuild mailboxes, from the Mail menu ribbon click Mailbox > Rebuild after that completes click Mailbox > Synchronise All Accounts.

Is there sufficient free disk space remaining on your Mac to import any large attachments?

Finally, are you running any third-party anti-virus software, if so, check the email protection settings in that app to see if it is set to block all email attachments automatically or block attachments from identified senders?

Maybe one of the suggestions above will help.