Regardless of whether you use your Mac at work or home, chances are you get a lot of email everyday. And what better way to help you organize your email than with Mail.app’s new Smart Mailbox feature. Smart Mailboxes can be used for anything from sorting emails from your boss to a different folder than those from your friends, or sorting your messages based on when they were received.

For example, let’s say you want to create two Smart Mailboxes, one for email messages you’ve received today, and another for messages you’ve received this week. To create these Smart Mailboxes, follow along here:

• Launch Mail.app by clicking its icon in the Dock or double-clicking its icon in the Finder
• From the Mailbox menu, select the “New Smart Mailbox” item
• In the “Smart Mailbox Name” field, type in “Today’s Email”
• Change the “From” pop-up to “Date Received”, and leave the second pop-up set to “is today”
• Click OK

That creates a Smart Mailbox that when selected only displays the messages in your Inbox that came in today. Now let’s create another Smart Mailbox for email that’s come in this week:

• From the Mailbox menu, select the “New Smart Mailbox” item
• In the “Smart Mailbox Name” field, type in “This Week”
• Change the “From” pop-up to “Date Received”
• Change the second pop-up from “is today” to “is this week”
• Click OK

The possibilities are limitless, so use your imagination and create Smart Mailboxes to automatically sort and sift your messages to your heart’s content!