How to Block Senders in MacOS Mail

Updated August 12, 2019

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Blocking a sender in Apple's MacOS Mail is easy: Just set up a message rule (also known as a filter) in Mail to auto-delete all messages from a particular sender. This blocks them from reaching your inbox. Here's how:

Go to Mail > Preferences from the Mail menu.
Navigate to the Rules tab.
Select Add Rule.
Set the criteria as From Contains.
Type the email address you want to block.
Select Delete message under Perform the following actions.
Enter a description for the new rule.

Use something like Block user@example.com to help you easily recognize the rule from the filters list.
Choose OK.
Select Apply if you want Mail to delete existing messages from the sender(s) that you just blocked. If you don't pick this option, the rule will apply only to new messages and not existing ones.
Close the Rules preferences window.

Tips

If you already have a message from the sender you want to block, open the email and then start at step 1 above to avoid having to type the address.

You can instead open the message, select the downward-pointed arrowhead or reverse caret (⌄) that appears as you hover over the sender's name or address in the header area, and select Copy Address to easily paste (Command+V) the address during step 5.

To block a whole domain and not just a single email address from that domain, enter the domain only. For example, instead of blocking user@example.com and user@sub.example.com, you can block all @example.com email addresses by entering example.com at step 5.

Mac Mail lets you block senders by other conditions, too, such as messages where the Subject line contains certain text. This approach is useful if you often get emails from different senders that have the same text in the Subject line and you want to block all of them.