Exemptions
Some senders generate a lot of mail that doesn't need a reply — weekly digests, automated reports, bot reviews, FYI notifications. Exemptions (managed under Settings → Tracking Profile) are per-sender and per-subject rules that tell MailPrism's response tracking how to treat that mail, so the Needs Action list stays meaningful.
MailPrism ships with curated defaults that handle most of the common noise. You only need exemptions when you want to tune behaviour for a specific sender.
Exemptions shape what enters tracking. To control how tracked threads move and resolve, see Tracking profiles; to map states to Gmail labels, see Tracking labels & sync.
How a rule matches
Each exemption matches on any combination of three patterns (at least one is required):
| Pattern | Matches on |
|---|---|
| Sender | user@domain.com for one address, or @domain.com for any sender at that domain. |
| Subject | A substring of the subject (case-insensitive), or the full subject when exact match is on. |
| From display name | The sender's display name — useful for splitting a bot from a human on the same address (e.g. [bot] matches "Renovate [bot]" but not the person). |
Rules can apply to all accounts in your workspace, or to specific Gmail accounts only. A priority decides order when several rules could match — lower runs first.
The four modes
A rule's mode decides what happens when a matching email arrives.
| Mode | What it does |
|---|---|
| Mute | Skip state evaluation entirely — the email never gets a tracking state. Best for high-noise senders you trust. |
| Mute first only | Skip the first message of a new thread; replies track normally. |
| Alerts only | Pass through, but surface only true incidents (failed payment, account locked, breach) and filter the rest. |
| Always track | Force tracking past the cold-outreach and automated filters — for senders MailPrism's filters incorrectly hide. |
Mute and Mute first only skip tracking. Alerts only and Always track let the email through but change how it's evaluated. That distinction matters for the retroactive tool below.
The audit view ("Why this fired")
Every exemption keeps a history of its recent decisions, reachable from the rule's History link. Each entry shows the timestamp, what the rule did (skipped, passed as alerts-only, forced tracking, or retroactively untracked), and the email it acted on.
Each rule also shows a match counter — how many times it has fired and when it last did — so you can spot rules that are doing nothing, or doing too much. Older audit entries are pruned after 90 days.
Retroactive apply
A new exemption normally affects new mail only. Retroactive apply runs the rule against emails you've already received and untracks the matches — handy after you add a rule for a sender that's been cluttering your Needs Action list for weeks.
Before it runs, MailPrism shows you a preview: how many emails match and a few example subjects, so you understand the blast radius.
Untracking is not automatically reversed if you later change or delete the rule — you'd re-track those threads manually from the inbox. For very large batches, MailPrism asks you to type the rule's name to confirm.
Retroactive only works on Mute rules
Retroactive apply is available for Mute and Mute first only rules — the ones that skip tracking, so there's a clear "untrack these past emails" action.
It is not available for Alerts only or Always track, because those change how new emails are evaluated rather than skipping them — there's nothing past to undo. To clean up history for one of those senders, temporarily switch the rule to Mute, run Retroactive, then switch it back.
Related
- Tracking profiles — conditions, per-state labels, actions, and reminders.
- Tracking labels & sync — designate Gmail labels and sync both ways.
- Response tracking overview — the states and the Replies view.