New features of Apple Mail app: Categories, Summary, and Contact Photos

The Apple Mail app recently updated its iPhone, iPad and Mac versions, adding features like Gmail-like email classification, notifications and email summary, and contact photos in your inbox.

But not everyone likes these new changes. Fortunately, you can disable these new features and restore to a simpler way to use them. Here's how to do it:

Disable Apple Mail Classification

The email classification feature is designed to sort your inboxes to make it easier to process incoming messages. This feature is suitable for any device running iOS or iPadOS 18.2 and Mac computers with macOS 15.4 installed.

Categories include:

• Main: The emails that emails consider the most important, including emails from actual people.
• Transactions: Shopping, invoices, finances and other money-related emails.
• Update: Automated emails from companies, social media, projects, sports teams, and more.
• Promotions: Marketing messages, special offers and lots of spam.

Although it is useful in theory, the sorting of Apple emails is not perfect. I found that the emails for the project management app Airtable appear in the "Promotion" category, while many spam appear in the "Main" category. Fortunately, you can turn this feature off.

Turn off email classification on iPhone or iPad

On an Apple smartphone or tablet, click the ellipsis “…” icon at the top of the screen to toggle between Category” and List View. List View restores your inbox to its old display.

After you complete this change, you do not need to operate again. Remember that emails are always sorted in the background, so you can enable and disable this feature as you like without any delay.

Turn off email classification on Mac

For some reason, Apple also added a fifth category to Apple Mail for Mac. This is the All Mail category, which appears at the end of the options above your inbox. Click on it and you will see all the emails. This is a way to quickly view all messages while enabling classification.

Alternatively, you can turn off the classification function completely. Simply look for the ellipsis “…” button at the top of your inbox, click on it, and close "Show Mail Category". You can also find this option under the View menu.

Improve Apple email classification (optional)

If you want to keep this feature, you can reclassify your emails so that Apple Mail always places certain senders in a specific category. Over time, once you put in some work, you may find this feature more useful.

Reclassify Apple email senders on iPhone and iPad

On your iPhone, make sure the email category is enabled. Here, click the email thread in the Transaction, Update, or Promotion categories to bring up the sender view.

Now, click the ellipsis “…” button at the top of the screen and use “Category Sender” to select a new category.

Reclassify Apple Mail Senders on Mac

On Mac, this process is a little faster. You can right-click on any email thread and use the Classified Sender menu to select a more appropriate tag.

Disable email notification summary

Notification summary is an Apple smart feature. It is suitable for iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 16 models running iOS 18.1, as well as Mac computers with M1 or higher models running macOS 15.1.

While this feature attempts to sum up lengthy mail chains and detailed mail, sometimes it can produce funny or anxious results. You can turn off this feature of Apple Mail while retaining this feature of other apps.

Turn off email notification summary on iPhone or iPad

You can close the notification summary under Settings > Notifications > Summary Notifications. To completely remove this feature, just disable the Summary Notifications switch.

To be more selective, use the menu below to exclude specific apps from the summary (in this case, mail).

Turn off email notification summary on Mac

Disable notification summary on Mac the same thing. Go to System Settings > Notifications > Summary Notifications. Here you can choose to turn this feature off completely, or exclude messages from the summary (and any other apps).

Disable email preview summary

When you click on a message, the message preview summary appears above the message, below the subject line in the Inbox view (where the body preview is available). They are the same summary you see when you receive a summary of the email notification, except that they appear in the mail app instead of as popups. They have the same Apple smart requirements.

Turn off email preview summary on iPhone or iPad

Turn off summary in a message by going to Settings > Apps > Mail and turning off the Summary Mail Preview switch.

Turn off email preview summary on Mac

On a Mac, you can turn this off by turning on the mail and clicking on Mail > Settings at the top of the screen. Here, click the View tab and disable Summary Mail Preview.

Disable Priority Email

Priority emails appear in the "Main" category as well as at the top of your inbox. They include emails that Apple Mail considers important, usually based on criteria such as time sensitivity. Priority email is an Apple smart feature.

Turn off priority mail on iPhone or iPad

You can disable priority mail by opening the Mail app and clicking the ellipsis “…” icon at the top of your inbox. Here, uncheck Show Priority and these messages will be displayed in regular chronological order.

Turn off priority mail on Mac

On your Mac, you can hide your priority mail by opening the Mail app and clicking View > Show Priority mail.

Disable contact photos in Inbox view

Apple Mail now displays contact photos in emails by default, at least on iPhone and iPad. On my Mac, this feature is not enabled by default (but there is still a switch).

While this feature is designed to make your inbox clear at a glance and easier to use, most senders are not in my contacts, so I found this feature just takes up unnecessary space on the screen. Fortunately, you can disable it.

Turn off contact photos in email on iPhone and iPad

On your iPhone or iPad, disable this feature under the Settings > Apps > Mail menu by disabling the Show Contact Photos switch in the Message List section.

Turn off contact photos in email on Mac

On a Mac, this is even faster. Simply open the Mail app and click View > Show Contact Photos at the top of the screen to enable or disable this feature.

While these features are designed to simplify life, the truth is that it is much simpler before Apple makes any changes to Apple mail. By turning off all features, you can restore your favorite standard email experience.

Dissatisfied with Apple's AI initiatives? Turn off Apple Smart completely.

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