How to Disable Mail Categories on iPhone in iOS 18.2 & Return to Old Inbox Style
If you have recently opened the Mail app after updating to iOS 18.2 or iPadOS 18.2, you likely discovered that Mail now defaults to a Mail “Categories” view, showing distinct mail category inboxes; “Primary”, “Transactions”, “Updates”, and “Promotions”. Presumably Apple chose to redesign everyones inbox and enable Mail Categories by default on iPhone and iPad because they thought users would like their email app to be redesigned and having to take additional steps to see all of their emails, but the Mail category feature is already causing frustration with many users who do not want to fumble through a new complicated user interface that hides many emails from immediate view, let alone see their emails sorted into categories and often erroneously so.
There are many complaints about the Mail categories feature, from making the Mail interface worse or more confusing, emails no longer being listed in chronological order with the newest emails on top, emails can be incorrectly labeled or categorized improperly, some users lament it’s harder to find their emails, some say the new Mail Categories interface is cumbersome and annoying to switch between multiple categories to see all of your emails, and many users simply prefer the standard default Mail interface that has existed forever on iPhone and iPad with all emails shown in a single inbox that they manage on their own.
If you want to turn off the annoying Mail categorization feature in iOS 18.2 on iPhone, read along to learn how to do that, and to get the much loved easy to use old Mail app inbox style back again.
How to Turn Off Mail Categories on iPhone in iOS 18.2 and Newer
Want to return to the default Mail view of a single inbox that you manage on your own? Here’s how:
- Open the Mail app on iPhone or iPad
- From the primary screen, tap on the new (…) button in the upper right corner of the inbox
- Choose “List View” from the menu that pops up on screen
- The Mail inbox will instantly be restored to the classic Mail style, with no categories
This change instantly turns off all the categories and prevents your emails from being mislabeled or miscategorized, and returns you to the default interface that has been easy to use in Mail app since the very beginning of iPhone.
Like so many features in modern iOS and iPadOS, this setting is buried and hidden, and if you went digging around in the Settings app to find it, you would not locate such a settings toggle. For such a major change, this can be frustrating, since nobody likes it when someone moves their cheese… alas Apple frequently does for no obvious reason, but they are the masters of our devices and they know best. Of course it’s not just Apple that does this sort of thing, over a decade ago, Google decided to introduce a similarly annoying Gmail inbox filtering system that can also be disabled, fortunately.
The new Mail inbox sorting and categories feature on iPhone and iPad Mail app isn’t the only frustrating change though, and you’ll likely notice there are now large prominent sender profile icons next to items in the mail inbox list now too, which makes it even harder to read who an email is coming from, what the subject is, or what the message preview is. It also looks like something tackily borrowed from a social media messenger, and is unwanted by many Mail app users too, but fortunately that can be turned off too. Since inconsistency with settings and interfaces is consistent with a lot of Apple software, that particular setting is found in the Settings app for Mail, and not in some new peculiar “…” button that most users would overlook anyway.
What do you think of the Mail Categories feature that has been thrust upon Mail users on iPhone and iPad as the new default? Do you like having Apple sort your emails into categories? Do you prefer to see all of your mail inbox items in one place like was the default settings for years? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
This is how to get rid of sorting. How do you get rid of the image. I don’t care about and want it gone.
I despise the ‘updates’ Apple keeps coming up with.
Keep It Simple
The silly little children’s games Apple continues to foist upon us is good reason to switch to another phone and operating system.
AI, which does not work, is a great example of how Apple has brought this stupidity upon us. Let children sign up for BETA testing if they desire but leave working people alone.
Mail categories are only on iPhone, not on iPad.
This is nothing more then Apple copying the Outlook app’s Focus and other mail sorting feature. One that I also did not think was useful.
I want two things in a Mail app. First off a list of mail from most recent. Second a decent junk mail filter that actually works. I actually liked IOS Mail for those two reasons and do not want a more complex application. The other annoyance is the format itself which displays everything bigger and that does not work well on a iPhone. My next smartphone won’t be a iPhone I can definately say that.
Here in Germany this feature seems not to be activated with IOS 18.2, but I’d absolute hate Apple to tinker with the order of my mail! I use lots of rules to dispatch incoming eMails and like it when it is the same on my Mac, iPad, and iPhone!
Thank you for the update to revert the idiotic mail features.
Thank you.
I saw the new layout yesterday and thought – why ?
Same as photos a while back, why ?
If they keep messing with things and they’ll see their customers disappear…
New people get hired and want to make their mark… and they usually do that by changing something that nobody wanted changed
The Mail redesign is awful and should not be default, pushing this out in a .2 update is insulting
How do we get rid of the categorisation icons?
-Open the Settings app
-Scroll to the bottom and select Apps
-Choose Mail
-Under “Message List,” turn off Show Contact Photos
“Disable” might not be the right term and best use for this feature, which allows everyone to seamlessly switch between the two selections and choose an option as they like and when they like it. Even the category view has an option “show all”. It will also learn your preferences in the beginning from manual recategorisation.
All I want from Mail.app is the ability to create rules within the app that will sync with my icloud mail. That’s it, I don’t need AI or help, just the ability to press and hold an email and select something like “create rule”.
I changed my email to the traditional style but now how do I get rid of the large icons beside each email which appear to indicate their categories. These icons take up far too much space resulting in reducing the preview text displayed! I don’t need or want the icons.
Thanks for this! I stumbled on List View for my own iPhone but couldn’t remember how when my Mom needed to see an important email. Just fixed hers. :)
The icons taking all the room on the left side were so aggravating. They’re turned off now. What a relief!
I presume this change is only applicable when using “All Inboxes”? I don’t use that and don’t see any of this. (I like reading each account’s messages separately).
I mistakenly thought that I had updated to 18.2. I noticed that today and after the update was applied that new feature appeared on my iPhone. Thanks for the direction on how to get back to the list format.
You say: “It also looks like something tackily borrowed from a social media messenger, and is unwanted by many Mail app users too, but fortunately that can be turned off too.”
Maybe I missed it, but I don’t know how or where to turn off those big icons. Can you enlighten me? I would be most grateful. Thank you.
I haven’ switched up to the latest yet, I might not after reading this BS from apple. It seems to be as annoying as that blue icon that follows your cursor when you go into Caps Lock. Still driving me mad. We all love our Apple devises but jeez Apple is a pain in the ass sometimes
Apple seem to be messing up clean user interfaces more and more. I keep thinking, “this would never happened if Steve jobs were still here.” Some changes leave me thinking that Apple never ran them past a user panel!
The problem with some new features is that by using a part of the screen which used to be harmless, obscure modes can be switched on, which require a major effort to investigate and overcome – the last thing I want when I am in a panic. i know I can’t just ignore update, which are sometimes needed for security, but in future I will need to update only when I have a free day to make sure |i can sort out the issues.
Before introducing new features which complicate life, I would ask that Apple focus on making some of the existing features work accurately and smoothly.
I absolutely hate the new Mail Categorization feature. When the Mail badge count doesn’t match the number of emails the user sees in the app, that’s a problem. But by far, the most frustrating part is not being able to find or readily see your new emails. Apple should focus on fixing things that are actually broken rather than trying to be fancy and different just because. There are certainly enough of those types of problems that should keep them busy for a while.
THANK YOU! I stopped checking email on my phone because it was such a pain in the neck! I can decide what category my email goes into better than our Masters in Cupertino. Lots of things to like about iOS 18.2, but this was NOT one of them!
Perhaps even more disturbing than Apple deciding on the message category is that many of the previously marked junk emails are sneaking back into my inbox. I don’t need Apple to tell me what my priorities are. And I don’t need their icons either. Change only what DOES NOT work. Ask!
The categorization feature in the new mail app seems immature to me, for five reasons:
1) it’s not trainable. I should be able to train it to categorize emails as I wish, and place them in the categories I name
2) it’s only on my iPhone 16, and not on my m1 Mac email app.
3) it’s function overlaps with the “Junk” email and “blocked sender” functions on the MacOS email function (which never has a comparable function under iOS
4) an obvious application of AI would be to warn against spam and phishing attacks, using learning from all users. No such luck, at least, not yet.
5) e-mails deleted on my iphone 16 persist on my M1 Mac mail app, so everything has to be deleted twice. This has always been true, but why not fix it now, Apple?
I’m turning it off for now, and will try it again when it’s more mature.
@Rob, if deleting emails on the phone doesn’t delete them on the Mac sounds like the account is set to POP on one device and IMAP on the other.