How to Manually Highlight Any Email With a Background Color in Mail Message List

Apple Mail contains customization options that let you filter, sort, and mark emails automatically based on various criteria. Of course, whatever tasks its rules can do, you can also perform manually. One setting lets you change the background colors of messages in your inbox. Doing so calls extra attention to important emails as soon as you receive them. Here’s how to set and change the email color backgrounds in Mail’s inbox. To change a message’s background color in Mail’s message list:

How to Remove Color Highlighting From a Message in the Mail Message List

You may want to reset a message’s highlight color to the default when you no longer need it to stand out. Here’s how to do it. The Color Wheel tab shows an array of colors along with a slider that lets you adjust the contrast. This option is the fastest way to pick a color.

How to Automatically Apply Color Highlighting to New Mail Messages

If you want Mail to apply background highlights to messages in the Message list as they arrive, you can set up a rule to do this. Here’s how.

Use contains to look for a particular keyword or phrase. This option is most useful if you’re filtering based on the subject line.Use does not contain to exclude a keyword or phrase. For the purposes of this rule, this condition won’t be useful.Begins with lets you enter a word or phrase such as a username.Ends with is useful if you want to highlight messages from a particular domain, such as the one your employer uses.Is equal to is best for picking out a specific email address.

Choose Don’t Apply to only highlight new messages.Select Apply to also highlight past emails.