Run MailCatcher in the background, always, on OS X

README.md

Place me.mailcatcher.plist into ~/Library/LaunchAgents, then run launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/me.mailcatcher.plist.

If you use pow, echo 1080 > ~/.pow/mailcatcher and go to http://mailcatcher.dev, otherwise use http://localhost:1080.

Currently pow doesn't seem to pass websockets through correctly. Looking into this.

me.mailcatcher.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>Label</key>
	<string>me.mailcatcher</string>
	<key>ProgramArguments</key>
	<array>
		<string>sh</string>
		<string>-i</string>
		<string>-c</string>
		<string>$SHELL --login -c "mailcatcher --foreground"</string>
	</array>
	<key>KeepAlive</key>
	<true/>
	<key>RunAtLoad</key>
	<true/>
</dict>
</plist>

❤️

👍

thanks

THX!

If you use RVM you need to install Mailcatcher into a dedicated gemset (https://github.com/sj26/mailcatcher#rvm) and maybe use the full path to the mailcatcher executable inside the .plist ("~/.rvm/bin/mailcatcher").

Worked for me.
Thanks.

👍

Replace pow with mehserve. Websockets feature works using http://mailcatcher.dev/

Checkout https://www.npmjs.com/package/mehserve

Nice. Still works in 2017

Is there a reason why you are using the foreground flag? Will this still work without it?

@oldtimeguitarguy yes it needs to run in foreground or launchd will lose track of the process and assume it failed.

In case that helps anyone using chruby, here is what worked for me:

https://gist.github.com/yemartin/179369661ff880df5563a1d932329ed0

(Note: using chruby-exec did not work for some reason).

This is still working in 2020. Installed MailCatcha via Homebrew and worked straight out the box!

Guys 2021 and still up, but if for some reason some of you guys face the Load failed: 5: Input/output error (I did on Big Sur). Here is how to solve it (pretty simple actually)

1. Run launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/me.mailcatcher.plist
2. Run launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/me.mailcatcher.plist

It should get things going (at least it did for me)
Btw, I just put it here for the future Me and next generations, since this Tutorial is great it should be wasted by some random mac error.

PS: Hello there future me!