Hi Gary,
because of security concerns I want to set up Apple Mail to use always plain-text instead of rich-text oder HTML for presenting incoming mails.
How can I do this with Apple Mail?
Are there any workarounds or shell commands?
By now I don’t want to switch to a different Mail client.
I use macos High Sierra 10.13.4 with Apple Mail 11.3.
Thanks.
—–
User
I don't think you can do this with any mail client. When you get an email message, the information in the email can be encoded as HTML or as plain text. Or, it can contain both. But both is rare nowadays as most (all?) email clients can display HTML email just fine. Sometimes it is text-only when people (like me) prefer to send email that way because they mostly send simple messages.
But if an email is HTML-only, like most are, then trying to view it as text will either get you nothing (no text portion to the message) or HTML code which could be difficult to read with non-coder eyes.
What is your security concern? I'm not aware of any danger involving HTML email messages and the Mac Mail app. Most, if not all, threats come from when people download and install applications that they get on the web or possibly in an email. Just viewing an HTML email message won't cause any issues.
Of course the best defense against any problem emails is to have a good spam filter -- one that works on the server side by blocking bad servers and emails sent without proper credentials. You get this by using a good email service like iCloud or Gmail, and not your ISP's email service. If you are using your ISP email, and concerned about security, then you should start there as that is a much bigger problem than simply viewing HTML email.