The new Mail app in iOS 18.2 is nice but I disabled one of its main features

With iOS 18.2, Apple all new Mail app. It introduced mail sorting, a fresh coat of paint, contact photos/business logos for conversations, a new system for grouping emails, and more. This all sounded good when it was first introduced at WWDC, but now that I’ve spent some time using it I have some doubts.

Mail Categorization

One of the biggest features of the new Mail app is classification, which separates your emails into various categories such as Primary, Transactions, Updates, and Promotions.

This all sounds good in concept, as it will declutter your inbox and the Primary tab will contain everything that’s important. But in practice, a lot of things were categorized incorrectly, and I often found myself scrolling to the “All Mail” tab so I could see everything without having to deal with the wrong sorting.

And yes, you can choose to reclassify senders if you don’t like the way Apple sorts them. However, I think this is a bit boring compared to turning off categorization entirely.

How to disable

Apple thought about the fact that not everyone might like categorization and offered a simple way to disable it.

Click on the three dots in the upper right corner of the inbox and you can switch from Categories to List View. This provides an “All Mail” experience while preserving the new Mail app’s profile images and other design elements.

This setting is also based on inboxes; so if you want categorization on all inboxes but a list view for others you can do that.

Priority notifications

Luckily for me, Apple’s Mail app already has Priority Notifications; this does a much better job of quickly highlighting what’s important without feeling like I’m potentially missing emails due to less-than-ideal sorting. This feature has definitely saved me a few times. Obviously, this feature requires an Apple Intelligence-enabled device (iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro, iPad mini 7, and M1 and later Macs/iPads) – but it’s my preferred way to see what’s important.

Apple will also soon expand Priority Notifications to all Apple Intelligence-enabled devices in a future version of iOS 18, allowing you to keep track of what’s most important across all your various apps, not just mail. But it’s not quite here yet.

What do you think of the new Mail app in iOS 18.2? Let us know in the comments below.

Follow Michael: X/Twitter, blue sky, instagram