Lion’s Mail: How to Fix the Toolbar

Updated January 3rd, 2016.

Ah, Lion. It’s almost as if someone is trying to make our Macs harder to use. Here’s one example: the default setting for Lion’s Mail app has the toolbar displaying icons only. Problem is, some of the icons are new, and we don’t know what they do. Solution: set the toolbar to show the icons and their labels. So much better, and so easy to do.

Here’s what the toolbar looks like in Lion’s Mail, by default:

Yeah, I know you can figure out most of these, but it’s not supposed to be a puzzle.

It would be better if the toolbar looked more like this:

So let’s do it.

1. Select “Customize Toolbar…” from the View menu.
2. At bottom left corner, change “Show Icon Only” to “Show Icon and Text.”
3. Click “Done” (bottom right).

That’s it! So much better. And so easy to do.

You can always go back to Customize Toolbar… and make other changes, including adding and deleting buttons such as “Add To Address Book” and “Smaller Bigger.” And, if you get really good at things and you want that quarter-inch of vertical screen space back, you can change back to “icon only” or even to “text only.” Nice to know you have choices.

Did this article help you?

Maybe you'd like to contribute to the
Christian Boyce coffee fund.

---

Want some some quick iPhone how-tos?
Visit me at iPhoneinaminute.com.

Looking for quick tips about Macs?
See my One-Minute Macman website!