Home Forums Mac Software Mac Applications How to stop autocomplete in Mail

Like Artie I know of no way to turn the Mail address autocomplete off completely or otherwise, nor am I sure you would really want to do that, but you can delete the entire previous recipients list with five keystrokes…

1. On the Mail menu bar click on Window
2. On the Window menu click on Previous Recipients
3. Click on any entry in the list
4. Press Command+A (⌘A) to select all previous recipients
5. At the bottom of the window click on the button labeled "Remove From List"

Job done 👍

Names in Contacts that have email addresses will still be autofilled when you start entering their name in the mail address bar. If you want to prevent those names being autofilled a workaround would be to copy their email address to the Notes area in Contacts then delete any entires in the email field. That you would have to do one at a time (unless you are good at writing Swift or Python programs) 🤔. NOTE: since email address in the Contacts list are often used to identify "good" email senders, moving the email address could easily result in important messages ending up in the spam folder, so you would want to be very selective in choosing or you can turn off all spam detection and live with the junk mail.

Of course the Previous recipients list will immediately begin to repopulate with each new email message you send, but there is always the five keystrokes. It might even be possible to create an Automation or AppleScript to erase the Previous Recipients List, but that is a LOT more work than five keystrokes. 😳