GPGMAIL is ready for MacOS 15 – with limitations

Since the release of macOS 15 aka Sequoia in mid-September, more and more apps are being released that have been optimized for the new operating system – if they are not already available as updates. Apple Mail users who occasionally want to sign, encrypt, and decrypt messages should be happy with this news: The team behind GPGTools has now released a public beta of a compatible version of GPGMail. Mail extension as of beta 3 Works with both Sequoia and its predecessor macOS 14 Sonoma.

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Lots of bugs – even under macOS 14

However, manufacturers warn about a number of problems that can arise during daily use. There are some real showstopper bugs – because they affect reliability. It may happen that GPGmail suddenly loses connection to Apple Mail or crashes – and the encryption and signing buttons have not been updated accordingly, so it seems as if everything is still normal. The creators write in summary, “This allows messages to be sent in plain text that should actually be encrypted.” Even worse: the problem is currently being said to have “no known fix.”

GPGmail also requires an Internet connection. If it is not present, the signature will not be decrypted and/or verified. In case of network problems, charging “beachballs” may also appear. If it disappears again, you will only see a blank email – you will then have to select it again (if there is internet). Basically, the problem remains that GPGmail can no longer fully control the buttons. Users should therefore watch very closely to see if the correct state has been reached – to do this they may turn it off and on briefly. There is currently no provision to encrypt drafts (they also come unencrypted on IMAP servers) and there is no warning if you reply to an encrypted message without encryption.

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Apple’s Mail extensions are severely restricted

Mail Extension – in German: mail extension – Provides significantly fewer functions than older Apple Mail plug-ins. Other well-known apps like the popular spam filter SpamSieve also suffer from this. Apple introduced the change with macOS 14. Since then, the GPGTools team has also been working on compatibility.

The mail extension for macOS 14 and now macOS 15 has not left the beta stage to date. Some users have already started manually encrypting emails outside of Apple Mail.

(B.Sc.)