Your Mail app can sort your emails into different categories, but you don’t have to use them if you don’t want to.
Zachary McAuliffe Staff writer
Zach began writing for CNET in November, 2021 after writing for a broadcast news station in his hometown, Cincinnati, for five years. You can usually find him reading and drinking coffee or watching a TV series with his wife and their dog.
Expertise Web hosting | Operating systems | Applications | Software Credentials
- Apple software beta tester, “Helps make our computers and phones work!” – Zach’s grandparents
Apple released iOS 18.3 in January, and that update brought some bug fixes to your iPhone. But when Apple released iOS 18.2 in December, it brought a handful of Apple Intelligence features, like Genmoji and Image Playground, to people with the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max or a device from the iPhone 16 lineup. The update also introduces a new feature in your Mail app that sorts your incoming emails into different categories for you, called Categories.
“The Mail app automatically sorts your email messages into categories to help you find and manage messages quicker,” Apple wrote online. But if you don’t like how Categories work in Mail, no worries, you can revert your app to look the way it did before the update.
Read more: Everything You Need to Know About iOS 18
Here’s what you need to know about Mail Categories and how to turn the feature off so your app looks like it did before the update.
What are Mail Categories?
Categories in Mail are similar to categories you would find in Gmail. The app filters your emails into one of four categories: Primary, Transactions, Updates and Promotions.
Emails with receipts, as well as order and delivery information fill the Transactions category, and news, social and other subscription emails go to Updates. Emails with special offers and deals go to Promotions, as you might imagine.
The Primary category is a little more difficult to pin down. Apple writes in the app that Primary is for “Messages that matter most.” I’ve used the redesigned app since it launched in beta, and in that time my Primary category was filled with emails from my wife, customer service and even refund information. It’s a little bit of a catch-all category.
Can I change an email’s category?
You can for most messages but not all. Here’s how.
1. Tap Mail.
2. Tap either Transactions, Updates or Promotions tabs across the top of Mail, but not Primary, and tap a message.
3. Tap the three dots (…) in the top right corner.
4. Tap Categorization.
Then you can manually categorize messages from a given sender to another category. Unfortunately, all messages from a sender will go to the new category, which could be irksome.
Once, I ordered tickets for a show at a local theater, and the email was filtered to Promotions. I moved the email with those tickets to Primary, but now all emails from this theater — including deals and sales — go to my Primary category. Not being able to change that categorization back is annoying.
It’s important to note that you can recategorize an email from Promotions to Deals and then back to Promotions without issue. The only emails that can’t be recategorized are those in Primary.
How do I turn off categories in Mail?
If you don’t like Mail Categories, you can remove them so Mail looks like it did before the update. Here’s how.
1. Tap Mail.
2. Tap the three dots (…) in the top right corner of the app.
3. Tap List View.
Now your emails will populate in Mail from top to bottom as they arrive in your inbox.
For more on iOS 18, here’s what you need to know about iOS 18.3 and iOS 18.2. You can also check out our iOS 18 cheat sheet.
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