Here are some of my current rules for email that help keep things tidy server side with Fastmail.

Newsletters

I have a few set of rules meant to capture newsletters. The first:

  • If all of the following conditions are true:

    • A header called list-id exists.
    • Anywhere unsubscribe
    • Sender is not a contact

  • Then

    • Move to Newsletters

  • If all of the following conditions are true:

    • A header called List-Unsubscribe

  • Then

    • Move to Newsletters

I then have the Newsletters folder delete all email greater than 31 days old.

Calendar Invites

Because calendar invites show up in my calendar app/apps of choice, having the email is really unhelpful. So:

  • If all of the following conditions are true:
    • Anywhere filetype:calendar
  • Then
    • Mark read
    • Move to Calendar Invites

I then have the Calendar Invites folder delete all email greater than 31 days old.

Political Email to Trash

I donate to some political causes, but their email is inescapable. Here are some conditions that have helped (note: this works for US Democratic candidates largely. We don’t talk about the other side). The first three grab common software used by Democrats, the next two are just examples of things I add when specific candidates tend to find their way around this:

  • If any of the following conditions are true
    • A header called List-Unsubscribe contains actionkit
    • A header called List-Unsubscribe contains dccc
    • A header called List-Unsubscribe contains ngpvan
    • A header called Reply-to contains info@contact.kamalaharris.com
    • A header called Reply-to contains info@contact.joebiden.com

I edited this section to better match how I wrote the other sections, which was to mirror the GUI versus the actual search terms used to make these rules.

Specific Annoying Emails

Sometimes there’s a sender I want to subscribe to that has some specific spammy tendencies. For example, I don’t need my bank to tell me each time it initiates some scheduled transfers I have. I typically find the subject line of those common emails, mark as read and move to trash because I don’t need to get your “We started a Surprise Savings transfer” email four times a month. Similarly, notifications from online shopping I use commonly will get a header-based rule that moves them to Newsletters (I used to have a separate shopping folder, but it’s not worth it).

Sometimes, there’s a pernicious bit of spam. For example, I frequently got emails from a fake account that listed as payments <payments@bills.com> for these weird invoice things. No matter how many times I marked as spam, this particular joy kept getting through. So now it’s a rule that moves that email to spam.

Takeaway

There’s a whole lot of content in email headers (like those List-Unsubscribe fields) that are incredibly useful for automatically sorting your email and making things go away you don’t want to see. I don’t want to unsubscribe to every list I’m on, but I also don’t want my Inbox to be clogged up by non-urgent messages. I have very few folders and generally go Inbox -> Archive and use searching to find my mail. So by organizing a few top level folders for “Email I still basically want to receive, but isn’t really valuable or something I want at my fingertips” coupled with server-side mail rules and auto-delete cleanup makes my personal email relatively quite and pleasant.