Notifications and Search

Notifications and Search

Herald watches for new mail and posts macOS notifications. Search is instant local filtering (conversations) plus server-side search (messages).

New-mail notifications

NewMailNotifier (HeraldKit/Sources/HeraldKit/Notifications/NewMailNotifier.swift:21) is an actor that:

• Observes MailStore for new messages
• Filters by user preference (Settings → Notifications) and suppresses the first sign-in and first mailbox listing so a fresh install is not flooded
• Posts a NewMailNotification via the NewMailNotificationPosting protocol

UserNotificationCenterAdapter (Herald/Support/UserNotificationCenterAdapter.swift:13) implements the protocol and posts to the macOS Notification Center via UNUserNotificationCenter.

Many arrivals at once are grouped into one banner. Clicking a banner switches to the right account and opens the conversation.

Dock badge

The dock badge (red circle with unread count) is managed by DockBadge (Herald/Support/NotificationSettings.swift:28), which calls NSApp.dockTile.badgeLabel when unread count changes.

Search

Herald has two search modes:

1. Local search (instant) — As you type, rows are filtered across subject, sender, recipients, and cached body text. ⌘F focuses the field; clearing it takes effect immediately.
2. Server search — Return (or a thin local result) asks the server for the current mailbox and folder, with a status line for progress, count, or offline. Server-only results can be opened and acted on like any other row.

Search highlighting is handled by SearchHighlighter (Herald/Design/SearchHighlighter.swift:12), which marks matching text in results.

---

Last updated: 2026-08-19 — notifications and search; fact-checked against the code for v0.3.0