Source: https://my.remarkbox.com/2fc4f7e2-4208-11e9-9d31-040140774501 Snapshot: 2026-04-27T03:23:40Z Generator: Remarkbox 97a1fff This is a subthread snapshot. The living document lives at the source URI above — it may have been edited, extended, or replied-to since.

This is a very weird bug. Seems like it just doesn't want to work inside the
System Events tell. If you do the following it works. It's kinda ugly but I
think it's because if you do a tell inside another tell then the second
goes through the first. So in the original you're telling System Events to
tell Mail to activate.

set appName to "Mail"
set startIt to false
tell application "System Events"
  if not (exists process appName) then
    set startIt to true
  else if frontmost of process appName then
    set visible of process appName to false
  else
    set frontmost of process appName to true
  end if
end tell
if startIt then
  tell application appName to activate
end if

But what's even more weird is that this works,

set appName to "Mail"
set startIt to false
tell application "System Events"
    if not (exists process appName) then
        tell application "Mail" to activate
    else if frontmost of process appName then
        set visible of process appName to false
    else
        set frontmost of process appName to true
    end if
end tell
if startIt then
    tell application appName to activate
end if

but this does not work as you probably already know,

set appName to "Mail"

tell application "System Events"
  if not (exists process appName) then
    tell application appName to activate
  else if frontmost of process appName then
    set visible of process appName to false
  else
    set frontmost of process appName to true
  end if
end tell

Also you can use exists instead of name of every
process ...

Source: https://my.remarkbox.com/2fc4f7e2-4208-11e9-9d31-040140774501
Snapshot: 2026-04-27T03:23:40Z
Generator: Remarkbox 97a1fff