Six ColorsModify

2026-01-27 01:15:01

Some of us are old enough to remember using pine and other Unix screen-based email readers. Younger folks might have cut their teeth on Eudora and other Mac apps (back when we called them “software programs”) that could seamlessly log into a mail server, retrieve email locally, and let us interact with it. The first widely successful protocol of that type was Post Office Protocol (POP).¹

POP’s job was to download mail. If you left it on the server, it was just a giant mailbox. However, it was all we had, and we liked it!²

POP is now over 40 years old and has been effectively superseded by IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) for decades. The easiest comparison between the two is that POP is like a huge stack of printed messages, while IMAP is a desk organizer with labels in which paper has been sorted for easy retrieval.³

However, because many of us started with POP, we wound up just continuing to use it. (I only switched to IMAP in the late 2010s.) Six Color reader Neil writes is one of those people. He writes:

I have over 20 years of email, and several accounts, on my Mac, all housed in Apple’s Mail.app, categorized in several dozen folders (but my “All Inboxes” has grown to almost 10,000 emails – sigh).…it didn’t matter because I didn’t have a second email client reading the same emails.

However, because he now reads email on multiple devices, he’s found POP frustrating. He wants to migrate to IMAP, but his host doesn’t offer a migration path while retaining the same mailbox. He has to delete his old POP mailbox and create a new IMAP account. Of course, he doesn’t want to lose any of the email archive that he’s left stowed online in the POP account.

My hunch is that it is doable (maybe even straightforward), but I’m afraid to just try it for fear of losing some or all of my archives.

I can bring good tidings: there’s no technical issue with migrating your email from POP to IMAP, and you won’t lose anything if you take care. The less-good news: it requires some methodical work and a bit of patience.

Why POP stuck around so long

POP’s appeal was always its simplicity. Your email client downloaded messages from the server with an option to delete them afterward (or after a set period). Because of storage limits, you could typically keep a relatively small number of messages on the server, and regularly had to move everything else to local storage on your Mac. The server was mostly a temporary repository.

This worked well in a mostly single-device era, or when we had a desktop computer in one location and a laptop in the other. I developed a habit of using POP to read email on my laptop by having the email app on that computer download messages without deleting them. I would then download and delete the messages on my desktop computer and sort them into folders.⁴ That kept my mailbox from getting too huge, but I could read email away from my desktop.

Once you had multiple devices on which you wanted to read email, everything went out the window for POP. IMAP’s first version appeared not that long after POP’s initial release, but it took many more years for companies offering mail services to adopt IMAP. This was almost certainly because mail hosts had constrained storage space—as did we all—and pushed their users to download mail, something POP was well-suited for. As storage costs plummeted and people wanted more access to the same email in different locations, IMAP’s higher computational and storage needs made financial sense. (Or, with Google and Gmail, competitive sense.)

IMAP treats the server as the source of “truth.” Your mail client shows you what’s on the server, and actions you take—reading, deleting, filing into folders—sync back. Multiple devices see the same state. I have more gigabytes of storage than I need on most of my email hosts, so I can leave email there indefinitely. (Leaving your mail on solely on a server comes with huge risks! I’ll write about that sometime.)

The slight catch for longtime POP users is, of course, that all that mail you’ve accumulated over the years is likely just on your Mac, not on a server. You may need to do a few kinds of copying.

Download all those messages as a new archive

Having 10,000 messages on a server, whether POP or IMAP, personally makes me nervous. I’m not sure if Neil—or you, dear reader—has made a local copy of those emails, but his note indicates he’s filed some into folders, which indicates local storage.

The only way to ensure you have retrieved every message locally from a POP email server before deleting them is to perform a clean download. If you set up another account for the same mail host in Mail in your regular macOS account, I’m concerned about the conflicts that could result.

Instead, I suggested setting up a new macOS account, which can be temporary, for the most likely successful outcome. Here’s how:

1. Create a new macOS account, then log into it.
2. Launch Mail and follow prompts to duplicate your email account set up for POP in that account.
3. Set the download option to keep messages, not delete them, after retrieval.
4. Choose Mailbox: New Mailbox, and then choose On My Mac, and name the mailbox something identifiable, like downloaded POP email.
5. You can’t drag the Inbox folder to the On My Mac section, but you can click the POP Inbox folder, choose Edit: Select All, then drag the file selection on top of the new On My Mac folder you just created.

After the messages have downloaded, you can create an archive that you can import later if you need to:

1. Control/right-click the mailbox under On My Mac.
2. Choose Export Mailbox.
3. Select a location to save the mailbox that you can access from your main account.
4. Log out of this account and log back into your main macOS account. Mail exports it as a standard mbox file that can be imported into Mail or any modern email app.
5. In the Mail app, you can choose the exported mbox file into Mail by choosing File: Import Mailboxes, selecting “Files in mbox format,” clicking Continue, selecting the file, and completing the remaining steps.

After you’ve imported those messages, you can delete the new macOS account if you don’t think you’ll need it again. (I like to keep a secondary login for Mac tasks that work best outside my primary account.)

The migration strategy

In Neil’s case, there’s a split between locally stored email, which appears in the Mail app under the On My Mac section of the Mail sidebar, and email stored on a server, such as Apple’s iCloud or another mail host.

If you don’t see an On My Mac section, then you don’t have mail stored locally. If you haven’t followed the steps in the previous section, you should return to it and download all your messages via POP, then copy them locally.

As always, start with a backup. Make sure your Mac is backed up (always good advice), and then, in particular, that the Mail folder at ~/Library/Mail is completely up to date. If you’re using a different email app, make sure you know where it keeps its local mail store, and back that up.

Now you can proceed:

1. Delete all the messages from your POP mailbox on the mail host. It may be much faster to log into the host’s Webmail interface and delete the messages. Be sure you don’t delete your account, just the messages or POP mailbox.
2. At this stage, you may be required to delete the Mail account entry for the POP mailbox: select it in the Accounts sidebar, click the minus icon, and then confirm its removal.
3. Now you can use the mail host’s procedure for creating an IMAP account.
4. Once configured, go to Mail: Settings: Accounts, click the plus + icon at the lower-left corner, and follow the steps to add the IMAP account.⁵
5. With the account set up, you can use the Webmail interface or the Mail app to create folders on the server.
6. If you want to copy mail back to the server to have access to it while not at your Mac, you can go to the folder under On My Mac, select some or all of the contents, and drag those items to the appropriate folder in the new IMAP account’s section in the sidebar.

If you have gigabytes of email to resync to IMAP, it can take a long time, even with a fast connection, because IMAP servers aren’t particularly efficient. This might be a good overnight operation after you get it started and make sure it’s copying as expected. Double-check your storage limits on the server, too, so you don’t exceed the maximum space, which can interrupt an upload.

For further reading

Joe Kissell’s Take Control of Apple Mail explains setting up accounts across Mac, iPhone, and iPad, as well as plugins, automation, and solving common problems.

He’s also got a new title out, Take Control of MailMaven, which explains the ins and outs of migrating and using a sophisticated, newly released email app.

[Got a question for the column? You can email [email protected] or use /glenn in our subscriber-only Discord community.]

2026-01-27 01:00:41

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2026-01-26 22:45:34

Apple Newsroom:

Apple’s second-generation Ultra Wideband chip — the same chip found in the iPhone 17 lineup, iPhone Air, Apple Watch Ultra 3, and Apple Watch Series 11 — powers the new AirTag, making it easier to locate than ever before. Using haptic, visual, and audio feedback, Precision Finding guides users to their lost items from up to 50 percent farther away than the previous generation. And an upgraded Bluetooth chip expands the range at which items can be located. For the first time, users can use Precision Finding on Apple Watch Series 9 or later, or Apple Watch Ultra 2 or later, to find their AirTag, bringing a powerful experience to the wrist.

Long rumored. There’s also a louder speaker. The new version maintains compatibility with all existing products and comes at the same price as the original: $29 for one, $99 for a four pack.

Now, pardon me: I have to go shovel out from a foot and a half of snow.

Go to the linked site.

Read on Six Colors.

2026-01-24 05:59:16

Netflix and Paramount continue their battle for Warner, why Ted Sarandos might not be the villain he’s painted to be, plus letters and TV picks. (Downstream+ listeners also get: YouTube’s letter, Oscar noms, Star Search, and Heated Rivalry.)

Go to the podcast page.

2026-01-23 01:15:54

In October, I wrote a little piece about how I was concerned over the lack of a clear strategy with Apple’s creativity apps—in particular, the recently-acquired Pixelmator and Photomator, as well as the inconsistent development effort behind Apple’s video apps. As speculated and rumored, progress was being held for a pro apps bundle, Creator Studio, but only sorta-kinda.

It’s not the first time Apple has made a bundle for its pro creativity software. People may remember Final Cut Studio, which included Final Cut Pro, Motion, and Compressor (as well as other software). So Apple glued Logic Pro to that. Then they glued Pixelmator Pro to that. Then they said, “Do you know what’s just like these? (Pregnant pause.) Our productivity office applications.” and bundled those in as well, but only freemium beta features. When I think of Final Cut Pro, I certainly think of “extra things I can do in Freeform.”

While it’s positive that people who have paid for apps, or just like iWork, get to continue to use them, the way the features are partitioned between all of these versions makes very little sense, and will probably make even less sense over time. Take Pixelmator, which is supposed to be Apple’s answer to Photoshop. It will still be available to buy in the Mac App Store, but won’t have the new warp tool.

Sure, that’s the one thing in your Photoshop competitor that requires a subscription, the improved warp tool.

Just one more thing…

What’s the deal with Photomator?

Pixelmator Pro received an update and an iPadOS app, but there are no updates for Photomator, a Lightroom analog, and it is not a part of the Creator Studio bundle. It continues to be a product that you can pay a separate subscription for on a monthly ($8), or yearly (there are three $30 a year plans, and one $40 a year plan, with no clear differences) basis that offers nothing beyond bug fixes.

It seems unlikely Apple is going to kill Photomator, because when Creator Studio was announced, Apple didn’t say anything about it—while it announced that Pixelmator Classic for iPhone wasn’t going to receive any updates.

We’ll get back to Photomator. But first, let me explain how maddening that announcement about Pixelmator Classic was.

Pixelmator Classic was the only Photoshop-like app on the iPhone that was truly Photoshop-like. Adobe’s own iPhone Photoshop apps (there have been many) have all been attempts at reimagining Photoshop for the iPhone, and seemingly aimed at customers who find Photoshop too intimidating. Unfortunately, its solution has just been less elegant than Pixelmator Classic’s.

I pay Adobe for Creative Cloud and don’t use their Photoshop iPhone app. Instead, I use Pixelmator Classic, which is bizarrely being put out to pasture with no imminent or announced replacement. Maybe there will eventually be a Pixelmator for iPhone, and maybe that will eventually be in this Creator Studio bundle. There will simply be no way to know until, and unless, it happens. Apple loves its little surprises!

Why not forecast that possibility by telling us what will happen with the multi-platform app Photomator? It’s the direct analog to Lightroom, making it the most obvious missing piece in Apple’s bundle. If it’s because there are no updates to announce for Photomator after over a year, then I would ask, “Why is Apple charging $30 a year for the existing version of Photomator?”

If it’s because Photomator will instead be a $30 a year freemium unlock for the Photos app, then I would ask, “What’s the Creator Studio bundle for if it doesn’t include photography? And why is Apple still charging $30 a year?”

Let’s say it’s going to make it a separate up-sell for Photos. Then we’ll probably find out in June, but it won’t ship until the fall. Conveniently, that gives me just enough time to start another yearly billing cycle for Photomator, so I will have paid $60 since Apple acquired Photomator and did nothing with it.

I am not arguing that Photomator should be free. Free is unhealthy, because then there’s no motivation to improve the software. I’m arguing that if there’s a subscription fee I’m paying annually, then there needs to be at least annual development of the software. I don’t need massive updates, but I need some sign that there is, and will continue to be, value in paying an annual subscription.

This isn’t software from a small, independent company any longer. It’s now software from Apple, which embarrassingly struggles to release its yearly OS updates for its platforms, and still can’t match its multi-platform apps feature for feature.

There’s something very strange in Apple branding this as a Creator Studio, seemingly targeting independent “content” creators, but then not having a single iPhone app with a video, photo, illustration, image editing, or music specialization when the iPhone is the platform the creatives are the most concerned with as the final destination for their creativity.

That just leads me back to the same conclusion that I drew in October: What is the promise Apple is making by asking for these annual payments? The mismatched nature of the bundle, and Apple’s spotty updates before this, makes me question if it thinks that just continuing things as they were, but with a subscription fee, is good enough.

Needless to say, I’m skeptical of the Creator Studio being a Creative Cloud replacement when Apple can’t even say what its answer to Lightroom is, when they bought their own answer to Lightroom over a year ago.

2026-01-23 00:36:34

There was a time when QuickTime was more than just a playback utility; I used it frequently to perform simple video edits, like removing commercials from an off-air recording or tacking the contents of one file on the end of another.

Since those days ended with the deprecation of classic QuickTime, I’ve never really had a go-to utility for these kinds of trims. Sure, I can import the video into an editor and then re-export it, but that requires a second round of lossy encoding, which can make video look lousy. Better is to edit the already-compressed video itself. (This is what I use Rogue Amoeba’s excellent Fission to do with audio. Fission lets me edit an MP3 file without re-encoding it and adding a whole second layer of compression artifacts.)

[Update: Reader Michaël wrote in to point out, amazingly, that at some point years ago Apple added editing features back to QuickTime Player. If I knew about this, I forgot it. If you press Command-Y, you can split clips, and you can delete and re-order those clips. The issue is that the final file you save is a MOV container featuring those clips, which (I believe—tell me if I’m wrong, Michaël!) means that in the end you have to re-encode the video to get a seamless mp4 file for a video podcast.]

A few weeks ago after a Total Party Kill session, I found myself once again needing to perform some trims to the “video bootleg” of the session. In the middle of the game, we took a ten-minute break, and I didn’t want viewers of the video to have to fast forward through 10 minutes of dead air.

This time, I decided to look for a visual utility (i.e., not something I have to drive from Terminal) that could solve this problem. And I found it: the open-source app LosslessCut, which provides a nice interface atop the powerful FFmpeg command-line app.

If I’m being honest, the app is not exactly intuitive, but there’s a bunch of documentation and after about five minutes I had learned every single keystroke required to do exactly what I wanted. The app let me cut segments out of the video, but it also supports rearranging segments, combining tracks, and an enormous set of other features I don’t care about, though you might.

Since the app is open-source and on GitHub, you can get it for free, or you can get it on the Mac App Store for $19 and support the work of developer Mikael Finstad, which is what I did.