ybbond / MailTrackerBlocker

Email tracker, read receipt and spy pixel blocker plugin for macOS Apple Mail

MailTrackerBlocker

MailTrackerBlocker is a plugin (mailbundle) for the default Mail app built-in to macOS. Email marketers and other interests often embed these trackers in HTML emails so they can track how often, when and where you open your emails. This plugin labels who is tracking you and strips out spy pixels out of the HTML before display, rendering the typical advice of disabling "load remote content in messages" unnecessary.

Browse your inbox privately with images displayed once again.

Be informed. Say No To Spy Pixels.

<a style="color: #770506;">
<img src="http://cdn.website.com/newsletter/logo.png" width="438" height="42" border="0" style="max-width: 90%; height: auto" alt="logo.png">
</a>

<br>
<a href="https://website.us5.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=abdef">Click here to unsubscribe</a> or <a href="https://website.us5.list-manage.com/profile?u=abdef">Update subscription preferences</a>

-<img width="0" height="0" class="mailtrack-img" alt="" style="display:flex" src="https://mailtrack.io/trace/mail/0eabccbe98c98e9b8e9a8b89eab89ce9ab89e8bc.png?u=1234567">

Prerequisites

Apple Mail on macOS 10.11 - 11.x.

Setup

Recommended Installation via Homebrew Cask

You can install MailTrackerBlocker.pkg directly from the releases page but I strongly recommend installing as an Homebrew Cask for ease of updating.

$ brew install mailtrackerblocker

To enable and use

1. [Additional step for macOS 10.14, 10.15 only] Open Mail, goto Preferences > General > Manage Plug-ins... > check "MailTrackerBlocker.mailbundle" > Apply and Restart Mail. Note that you'll need to do this again for each update.
2. Tap on the ⓧ button to find out what was blocked.

⚠️ Disabling "load remote content in messages" with MailTrackerBlocker enabled is redundant; re-enable this option for the best experience.

To uninstall

If you installed with Homebrew:

$ brew uninstall mailtrackerblocker

If you installed the pkg manually:

osascript -e "quit app \"Mail\""
rm -r /Library/Mail/Bundles/MailTrackerBlocker.mailbundle
rm -r /Library/Application\ Support/com.onefatgiraffe/mailtrackerblocker
sudo pkgutil --forget com.onefatgiraffe.mailtrackerblocker

Building from source

A. Makefile

git clone https://github.com/apparition47/MailTrackerBlocker.git
cd MailTrackerBlocker
make

B. Xcode

1. Give Xcode Full Disk Access from System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Full Disk Access and add Xcode.
   • Required because the mailbundle needs to be installed into /Library/Mail/Bundles.
2. Open the Xcode project, hit build.
   • Big Sur and up: allow Finder access to allow Xcode to copy unsigned directly into sandboxed env

Credits

• MailTrackerBlocker project sponsors, donators and contributors
• @dhh for the spy pixel tracker block list used in HEY
• @leggett for his Simplify Gmail blocklist
• @bitmanic for the UI design

License

BSD-3.