Please tell me how I can disable this feature. Who asked for it in the first place? I want to attach photos, pdfs etc normally, as file attachments, not as giant annoying, distracting inline images. Yes, I'm gonna keep asking until you ban me from this forum.
macness75 wrote:
Please tell me how I can disable this feature. Who asked for it in the first place? I want to attach photos, pdfs etc normally, as file attachments, not as giant annoying, distracting inline images. Yes, I'm gonna keep asking until you ban me from this forum.
Your forum account is safe. People have been asking for this as long as I can remember (almost 18 years now). I see no evidence that you will suffer any discipline for asking again. I also see no evidence that Apple is going to change anything. I'm positive that Apple already knows that some people don't like the current behaviour. I'm also positive that Apple has run the numbers and decided that this is till the best course of action for its user base.
All attachments are just that - regular e-mail attachments. The part that is causing such consternation is how the attachment is displayed - inline or as an attachment.
The problem is the many different types and versions of PC e-mail clients. Each one handles attachments differently. Apple has carefully crafted Mail's message format so that the recipients of your e-mails will be able to read the message and access any attachments. Apple knows users better than anyone else. They know that most PC users will be unable to open an attachment image. It has to be displayed automatically. So that's what Apple Mail does.
The option to "show as icon" is meaningless. That only changes how the image is displayed before you send it. It does not change how the recipient sees the message or the attachment.
This treatment applies to any image or "image-like" document. You can break it by making sure your images are no-longer "image-like". But if you do that, you'll make your documents harder to access. I've seen people recommend compressing images in zip files before sending. That will work. But then you'll have to do tech support for your recipient and explain to them how to open a zip file. If you assume they they can already do that, you're wrong.
Probably the easiest solution is to use multi-page PDF documents. Having more than one page breaks the "image-like" quality. You can reasonably assume that recipients can open PDF documents.
macness75 wrote:
Please tell me how I can disable this feature. Who asked for it in the first place? I want to attach photos, pdfs etc normally, as file attachments, not as giant annoying, distracting inline images. Yes, I'm gonna keep asking until you ban me from this forum.
Your forum account is safe. People have been asking for this as long as I can remember (almost 18 years now). I see no evidence that you will suffer any discipline for asking again. I also see no evidence that Apple is going to change anything. I'm positive that Apple already knows that some people don't like the current behaviour. I'm also positive that Apple has run the numbers and decided that this is till the best course of action for its user base.
All attachments are just that - regular e-mail attachments. The part that is causing such consternation is how the attachment is displayed - inline or as an attachment.
The problem is the many different types and versions of PC e-mail clients. Each one handles attachments differently. Apple has carefully crafted Mail's message format so that the recipients of your e-mails will be able to read the message and access any attachments. Apple knows users better than anyone else. They know that most PC users will be unable to open an attachment image. It has to be displayed automatically. So that's what Apple Mail does.
The option to "show as icon" is meaningless. That only changes how the image is displayed before you send it. It does not change how the recipient sees the message or the attachment.
This treatment applies to any image or "image-like" document. You can break it by making sure your images are no-longer "image-like". But if you do that, you'll make your documents harder to access. I've seen people recommend compressing images in zip files before sending. That will work. But then you'll have to do tech support for your recipient and explain to them how to open a zip file. If you assume they they can already do that, you're wrong.
Probably the easiest solution is to use multi-page PDF documents. Having more than one page breaks the "image-like" quality. You can reasonably assume that recipients can open PDF documents.
Your best bet is to use a different email client if you don't care for Mail.
To disable inline
defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool yes
to re-enable
defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool no
And what specific part of those instructions deals with how to attach images as an attachment not as an embedded image? EDIT: ok, there's the control + click and view as icon. That's a bit better, still not the same thing as an old school attachment and it does state that this doesn't guarantee the recipient won't view it as an embedded image. Plus kind of annoying that you have to do that every time.
To reiterate, the option to "show as icon" is meaningless. It doesn't matter if you are doing it through the user interface or with some command-line "defaults" hack. It does not change how the image will be displayed to recipients.
How about you let Apple know directly by submitting your request here: Product Feedback - Apple
macness75 wrote:
Please tell me how I can disable this feature. Who asked for it in the first place? I want to attach photos, pdfs etc normally, as file attachments, not as giant annoying, distracting inline images. Yes, I'm gonna keep asking until you ban me from this forum.
Are you following these instructions to attach a file to an email?
Add attachments to emails in Mail on Mac - Apple Support
OMG STOP with inline attachment feature in Mail.app
