How to Whitelist a Domain in Mac OS X Mail App

This article explains how to whitelist, or safelist, a domain in the Mac OS X Mail app, which allows mail from specified domains to come right through. Instructions apply to Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) and later.

Steps for Safelisting a Domain

To safelist all email from a specific domain in the Mail app in Mac OS X or macOS:

1. In the Mac OS X Mail top menu, click Mail > Preferences.

   The keyboard shortcut is Command+, (comma).

2. Click the Rules tab.

3. Click Add Rule.

4. Type a name in the Description field, such as "Safelist: example.com," to identify the new rule.

5. For the conditions, set the first dropdown menu item to any, so that it reads: If any of the following conditions are met.

6. In the next two dropdown menus, select From in the first, and Ends with for the second.

7. In the text field following Ends with, enter the domain's name that you want to safelist. Include the ampersand "@" before the domain name to make the filter specific — for example, to safelist all mail from the example.com domain, but not mail that might come from one of its subdomains (such as @subdomain.example.com), type "@example.com" into the field.

8. Click the plus sign next to the last condition to add another domain with the same criteria to safelist more domains.

9. In the Perform the following actions section set the dropdown items to: Move Message and Inbox.

   You can specify a different mail folder if you want.

10. Click OK to save the rule.

11. Close the Rules window.

Setting Rule Order in Mac Mail App

The order of the rules you have set matters. Mail executes them one after the other, moving down the list. This point is important to consider because some messages may satisfy the criteria established in more than one rule you've created, so you'll want to consider the logical order in which you want each rule to be applied to incoming messages.

To ensure that the rule you've just created that safelists a domain is executed before others that might also apply the same message, click and drag that rule to the top, or near the top, of the rules list.

For example, if you have a filter that color-codes certain messages based on keywords in the subject, move your domain safelist rule above that labeling rule.

Junk Mail Filtering Settings in Mac Mail

Junk mail filtering is active by default in the Mail app. You can find these settings by following these steps:

1. In the Mac OS X Mail top menu, click Mail > Preferences.

2. Click the Junk Mail tab.

3. You can tailor your junk mail filtering settings, including specifying where junk mail should go and defining exemptions for junk mail filtering.

4. Click Reset to return the junk mail settings to the defaults.