Glossary.
Mail Shepherd 3.0 (build 454) · Updated October 21, 2026
- Blocked sender
- An address on Mail’s blocked list or on Mail Shepherd’s Blocked Senders. A Sweep, the Review pages and the delete buttons treat both alike. All of them are listed on Blocked Senders.
- Mail’s blocked list
- The senders you block in Mail (Mail → Settings → Junk Mail → Blocked), shared with Messages and FaceTime and synced to your other devices. Mail Shepherd reads it, with Full Disk Access, and never changes it.
- Blocked Senders
- Mail Shepherd’s own list of blocked addresses, kept on this Mac. Block Sender on a message’s details adds to it. Also the name of the page that lists every blocked sender.
- Blocked Domain
- A domain on Blocked Domains. Mail from it and its subdomains, from any address, is marked junk and read and moved to Trash by every Sweep, except mail from your contacts.
- Allowed Domain
- A domain on Allowed Domains. A Sweep moves its junk to your Inbox instead of to Trash, and Review Junk leaves it off.
- Contacts
- Mail from a sender in your contacts is never treated as junk or caught by a Blocked Domain; only blocking the sender blocks it.
- Exact domain, parent domain
- For news@mail.shop.example, the exact domain is mail.shop.example and the parent domain is shop.example. Blocking the parent covers all its subdomains.
- Shared provider
- A domain many unrelated people send from, such as gmail.com, or a mailing or hosting service. It can’t be blocked as a domain; block the sender instead.
- Other junk
- Junk that isn’t from a blocked sender, Blocked Domain, Allowed Domain or contact. A Sweep marks it read and moves it to Trash, marked junk, and it’s listed on Review Junk.
- Sweep
- Cleans up Junk and Trash: marks mail from blocked senders read, moves the rest of Junk to Trash (or to your Inbox for contacts and Allowed Domains), and handles your Blocked Domains. Every Sweep checks every message in Junk and Trash. See Sweep.
- Auto-Sweep
- A Sweep Mail Shepherd runs on its own, on the schedule you choose on Automate, while it’s open.
- Recent Changes
- On Automate: the latest Auto-Sweeps that changed anything, each of which opens its changes message by message.
- Message details
- What you see when you click a Review row, in place of the list: the message, and ways to block, allow, open or delete it. See Message Details.
- Action Log
- The record of everything Mail Shepherd changed, and every problem. See Action Log.
- Warning icon
- An orange triangle that appears when something didn’t work. Point at it to read the problem; click it to open the Action Log.
- Support log
- A copy of the Action Log that Send Support Log… attaches to a message in Mail, for you to send to support.
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