Why does terminal say: "You have mail"?

Question

Any idea why my Mac terminal says:

You have mail in /var/mail/lofye

How can I make it stop saying that every time I open terminal?

Best answers are available here: http://unix.stackexchange.com/q/2432/16253 — Anthony Ananich, May 10 '16 at 07:09

score 189 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 17 '12 at 02:01

189

Somehow you've had a script or something similar deliver mail to your account on your local machine which is stored in /var/mail/$USER

You can either remove the file /var/mail/$USER which will remove the alert that you have mail (as it will alert you if that folder is present and/or has unread messages) or you can use mail to read the messages before deleting them.

edited Jun 17 '12 at 02:01

Community

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answered Aug 19 '09 at 15:07

Chealion

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Thanks for the tip. Turns out a CRON is mailing me... 36,061 times :( Deleted with command: d 1-36061 – lo_fye Aug 19 '09 at 15:15
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See this question. http://superuser.com/questions/7677/stop-cron-from-emailing-me – Richard Hoskins Aug 19 '09 at 16:45
You can direct the cron output to /dev/null to avoid the mail. – Chris Nava Aug 19 '09 at 19:18
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Where is this default text located on Mac OS X? I'd like to leave it active but change the message. – Jan 17 '12 at 21:20
How can I disable only notifications without losing emails? – Vitaly Zdanevich Dec 29 '16 at 09:03
http://xkcd.com/1728/ Funny because it's true :) – camelBase Jan 20 '17 at 05:37

score 49 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 03 '17 at 07:34

49

Type mail to view the mail. I believe d deletes it.

edited Apr 03 '17 at 07:34

smottt

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answered Aug 19 '09 at 15:09

Gren

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* d should delete everything. – lyarwood Aug 19 '09 at 15:11
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When using mailx d* will delete everything. Mail itself won't. – BinaryMisfit Aug 19 '09 at 15:46
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Doing `mail` and then `d *` removed all mails for me on Mac OS X. – yagooar Nov 13 '14 at 13:11
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See https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/28745/how-do-i-delete-all-terminal-mail to delete all messages. – Shaun Dychko Sep 24 '20 at 18:43
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This answer did not work for me. Thanks to @ShaunDychko's link, I found the reason: Make sure do to exit with `q` after the `d *` command, only that saves the changes to disk. – not2savvy Mar 08 '22 at 21:36

score 17 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 31 '13 at 14:08

17

There are several ways to remove it. The simplest is:

> /var/mail/<whatever_user>

You need to include the '>'

answered Mar 31 '13 at 14:08

Akhil

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That **wipes out** the received mail for that user. – vonbrand Mar 31 '13 at 14:33

yagooar · Answer 4 · 2014-11-18T13:49:57.483

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Open mail and then put in d * and press Enter. The d command means delete and the * selects all mails in the list.

edited Nov 18 '14 at 13:49

answered Nov 13 '14 at 13:12

yagooar

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score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 19 '09 at 15:07

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I'm willing to bet it's because there are files in that folder.

Have you actually looked at the contents of the folder? If there is something in there, it will more than likely give you an idea of what caused it, and how to prevent it in the future.

From the terminal:

cd /var/mail/lofye
ls

If you don't have mail, you won't see the message (there's not even a folder for my username under mail on my mac).

answered Aug 19 '09 at 15:07

EvilChookie

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`/var/mail` is a directory, and `loyfe` is the file within it. To view the file, one could `less /var/mail/loyfe`. – Thomas Hunter Jun 21 '13 at 13:56

score 1 · Answer 6 · edited Mar 11 '23 at 16:34

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If you are running ClamAV for Mac this is a known issue. The system mails you after each update and scheduled scan.

edited Mar 11 '23 at 16:34

Greenonline

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answered Aug 19 '09 at 15:46

BinaryMisfit

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score 0 · Answer 7 · answered May 08 '21 at 03:50

0

There is a trick way.

completely empty the email file

: > /var/mail/$User

change the attribute of email file

sudo chflags schg /var/mail/$User

As except "root", no one can change this file.

Then the annoying "You have mail" gone away.

answered May 08 '21 at 03:50

lee_jiancai

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score -4 · Answer 8 · answered Feb 15 '12 at 06:17

-4

I was able to just create a .hushlogin and I've a clean Terminal now.

$ touch .hushlogin

answered Feb 15 '12 at 06:17

Brajeshwar

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This prevents many messages from being displayed, not just the new mail message. This could be dangerous as there are certain other warnings the user would miss out on. – Thomas Hunter Jun 21 '13 at 13:59

Why does terminal say: "You have mail"?

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