I finally upgraded to OS X Mountain Lion. There are a few new things to get used to, not the least of which is the horror of having desktop notifications (even if they can be turned off). But I’m more confused by a very specific behavior in Mail.app surrounding message deletion.

I noticed that sometimes when I delete a message, Mail moves the selection to the message prior to the one I deleted in my inbox after performing the deletion. Other times, Mail moves the selection to the message after the one I deleted. Weird.

After some experimentation, I determined that the directionality of post-deletion selection seems to correspond to the last issued keyboard direction. That is, if I use the keyboard arrow keys to move down to a message, then delete it, the message below it becomes selected. If I use the arrows to move up to a message, then delete it, the message above that one will be selected.

Am I insane, or is this the way the new Mail.app behaves?

published March 4, 2013

Comments

  1. Greg Borenstein

    I have also noticed this weird behaviour, but hadn’t made the connection to keyboard navigation. Just having tested it experimentally now it seems like you’re right. Though I don’t usually use keyboard navigation so I think the direction can get reversed in other ways (such as replying/archiving through hotkeys, etc?).

  2. Carl

    False dichotomy.

  3. Nikita

    A nice case of “smart becomes stupid”.