2023-12-24: We're happy to announce the Second beta of GPG Mail for macOS Sonoma – Happy Holidays!

Mail and GPG Suite logo on macOS Sonoma background

macOS Sonoma + GPG Mail

Today we are very happy to announce the release of our second beta of GPG Mail for macOS Sonoma.

GPG Mail for macOS Sonoma is now a Mail Extension based on Apple's official API to enhance macOS Mail.

If you plan to use GPG Mail for macOS Sonoma in production, please make sure to have a look at the list of Known Issues below.

To provide you the best OpenPGP experience possible on macOS, we continue working with Apple to fix the remaining issues.

We wish you happy holidays and a better new year!

Downloadfor macOS Sonoma

Installation & Activation of GPG Mail Extension

GPG Mail 8 for macOS Sonoma will be a paid upgrade. For the time of the beta phase an existing GPG Mail 7 Support Plan does suffice. Alternatively you can try GPG Mail 8 for 30 days if you have not started a trial in the past.

Known Issues

Please read the known issues and potential workarounds to get the best experience and stability out of this beta version of GPG Mail for macOS Sonoma.

›Messages don't properly decrypt / verify

When a message is selected, GPG Mail does not always receive all the data necessary to decrypt / verify the message.

Workaround

Re-enable GPG Mail in `Mail › Settings › Extensions` after each launch of Mail.
The first selected message might still not display correctly but every further one will be reliably decrypted / verified.

›Messages are shown as empty when no internet connection is available

If offline mode is enabled or no internet connection is available, each message will show an empty body.

Workaround

Restore internet connectivity.

›Messages fail to display in case of bad internet connectivity

A loading spinner might be shown but disappear after a while and an empty message body will appear.

Workaround

De-select / re-select the message to try again.

›State of sign and encrypt button in composing window can't be set by GPG Mail

While previous versions of GPG Mail were able to automatically toggle encryption and signing in case of a reply to a signed and encrypted message or toggle the encryption and sign button based on user configured defaults, that is currently no longer possible. Instead the last toggled state of the sign and encryption button will be remembered and restored when composing new messages.

Workaround

None. Pay special attention to verify that the sign and encrypt buttons are toggled to the state you would expect.

›No support for encrypting drafts

At the moment it is not possible to encrypt drafts, since they can't always be reliably decrypted which could result in data loss of the draft content.
If existing encrypted drafts are continued, the draft content will be stored in plain on the mail server.

›The user is not warned when replying in plain to an encrypted message

In case the user starts composing a reply to an encrypted message, GPG Mail does not know whether or not the original message was encrypted and thus is not able to warn the user in case they are about to reply in plain due to missing recipient public keys for example.

›False remote content warning banner

A banner might be shown reading "For security reasons remote content is not loaded." even though no remote content is included in the message.

›If new keys are imported it is necessary to restart Mail

The extension is currently not able to refresh the compose window signing and encryption button when new OpenPGP keys are added to the keyring or existing ones are updated.

Workaround

Restart Mail.

›Other Issues

  • › At the moment the GnuPG groups feature is not supported and will arrive in a later release
  • › PGP-Partitioned messages are not fully supported but are processed in an acceptable manner
  • › GpgOL messages can't always be properly processed
  • › GPG Mail Support Plan Activation Banner is still shown after completing activation. To fix, restart Mail