Setting up a “Calm Inbox” View for a Distraction Free Email
Whenever I launch the Mail app on my Mac, I’m presented with a completely blank inbox (like you see above). This is not because of an Inbox Zero strategy.
Here’s a quick walkthrough for how I have my email set up with a Keyboard Maestro macro so that when I launch my email app, it takes me to a blank inbox view.
This Calm Inbox setup works using the default Mail app on macOS and a copy of Keyboard Maestro.
1: Start by creating a new mailbox in Mail by going to Mailbox → New Mailbox
2: Select the Account you want your new mailbox to exist in, and then name it.
Basically, you’re creating a folder that won’t ever get any emails put into it. I set it up as a blank inbox and titled it Calm.
3: Add your new inbox to your favorites.
You need to do this to have an automation that launches the Calm inbox when opening your email.
4: Set up a Keyboard Maestro global hotkey shortcut so that it launches the Mail app and navigates to that folder.
Note that you’ll need to have a few pauses within the KM automation. These are necessary because otherwise the automation will go through all the steps too fast and it won’t be able to select and set your Calm Inbox as the main view.
The way this Keyboard Maestro macro works is that now, whenever I use the Hot Key trigger Shift + Command + M, Mail is opened up and set to the Calm Inbox view (a blank folder that has no messages in it).
And so now, whenever I launch my email app using the global hotkey, I’m presented with a completely blank email view.
From here, I can search for any specific emails I may be wanting to get to, or write a new email completely undistracted by whatever is in my inbox.
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