Over here at Insanely Great Tees, we use Mail.app all the time, whether it’s tracking orders, writing with customers or just sharing cool links with each other. Why do we use Mail.app so much? In part because we’ve made it easy. A few years ago we came up with a handy shortcut that we keep in our docks to make it easy to create new messages. After receiving a lot of positive feedback from friends, we figured it was time to share it with all of you.

What is it? An icon that you stick in your dock. When you click it, a new mail message opens. Pretty simple, right? Exactly. Yet, it’s awfully handy. So we’ve posted it here for you to download. Just click the link, open the .zip file and the file inside “Create New Message” will do just that when you open it. You can stick it in your dock (just drag it onto the right side) and you’re good to go.

Download Message Maker

Download Message Maker

How does it work? Applescript? Automator? A custom application? All those are too complicated and would use too many resources. This is the simplest solution — it’s just a hyperlink in a file. It uses the “Mailto:” prefix, your mac is smart enough to open in mail. 

Now, here’s a cool trick — lets say you send out a lot of emails to one person, your girlfriend, for example. You could create a custom “Create New Message” that opens a new message with her address in it. It’s easy — open a text editor and drag the text mailto:SampleEmail@Address.com onto your desktop. This will create a file that you can double click to open a new message.

Enjoy!