Mail keeps minimized windows in Dock between launches
05. Nov, 2009 
5 Comments
If you quit Mail with message windows minimized to the Dock, those same messages will reappear in the Dock when you reopen Mail.
Editor’s note: This is something I’ve done with Mail for a while; I use it as a way to remember things I need to do based on correspondence. I thought it was something that most document-based apps did, but after testing with iChat, TextEdit, and a couple others, it seems like this may be a special trick up Mail’s sleeve. Anyone know if Apple makes this functionality available to third-party developers and most just haven’t been interested in implementing it?
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It also works the same way in Firefox for me; I'm running Snow Leopard and Firefox 3.7a1pre.
I know when you resore windows in Safari it will minimize windows that were minimized when it was saved. I think I will experiment with saving window location and state to see if it works. I'll let you guys know.
Alright, I have a working example http://pzich.com/junk/1076E041-A135-43DB-88FF-1... . The app should open with two windows, one minimized and one not. Create new windows, close windows, resize windows, minimize and unminimize windows. When you Quit or Save, it will save the window states to its plist file, when you open or Revert to Saved it will read its plist file and create the windows in their location with their title and correct minimized state.
As a user, I’m not all that excited about this behavior. How do I close the 30 Mail windows that sit in my dock? I cannot get rid of them without opening each one individually.
Please PM me also if you know.
The easiest way I can figure is to click each window in succession, then use Command+Option+W to close them all at once. This will also close any Mail Viewer windows you have open, but that will be easy to re-open from the File menu or by clicking the Mail Dock icon. You could also simply leave that window minimized while you run the window closing command.