Apple’s OS X Mountain Lion brings many changes, including Mail 6. This whole number update of the Mac’s default mail client introduces Notifications, inline search, VIP sorting, new ways to share and more. Here’s an inside look at the major new features in Mail 6 and how to use them.

Sharing a webpage via email is one of the most commonly used features of Safari. With Mail 6, Apple has added new ways to share.

Of course, you can still send the whole web page (Command + I) or just the URL (Command + Shift + I). New, however, are the options to send the Reader (i.e. text + images only) version of a webpage or to compress a page and send it as a PDF.

The convenient twist is that you access the new sharing methods via the same keyboard shortcuts — use one or the other and you get all four sharing options in Mail 6′s sharing drop down.

Choose your VIPs [forget the rest]

Who is important in your life? Chances are the folks that matter are only a tiny fraction of the people who send you email.

Enter Mail 6′s VIP feature, which is a new, more convenient of assigning certain email senders a higher priority and their own mailbox.

To make someone a VIP, click the star to the left of the sender’s name in the message header. You can also move the pointer over the sender’s email address, click the arrow that appears, and choose “Add to VIPs” from the pop-up menu. Remove a sender’s VIP status by clicking the Star again.

And, this is where we segue into the next big feature in Mail 6, Notifications. Of course, this is a system-wide feature, but has special import for Mail and, by the by, VIPs.

To make a sender a VIP:

In Mail, go to Preferences, click General and then choose an option for new message notifications

You can also choose to hide all mail notifications and customize when email generates notifications, aside from VIPs, making Mail 6.0 really friendly for power users.

View Notifications in Mail 6 with a gesture

That said, if you have been away from your desk for a few minutes or a day, you will want to grab a quick look at notifications to see who’s sent you email, a message or Tweet. Rather than move the cursor, OS X Mountain Lion provides easy Notifications access via a nifty two-finger swipe (video below).

See also: Apple’s list of useful gestures in OS X Mountain Lion

Lastly, a few nice yet not major new features in Mountain Lion’s Mail 6 include Inline Find (finally, it’s 2012), pushing of mail preferences/activity to iCloud (i.e. to all your i-things) and the ability to click (tap) the bar at the top of the message list and shoot straight to the top of the list.

Lots of goodness in Mail 6 — what has you excited and will you be upgrading to OS X Mountain Lion?

via Apple’s new in Mail 6

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