How to Disable Mail Sender Icons on iPhone in iOS 18.2

Apple recently introduced a completely new redesign for Mail app on iPhone including a Mail Categories feature that many users have strong opinions about, and along with that design change are new large prominent sender profile icons, which sit next to every item in the inbox. These large prominent mail sender icons squeeze the Mail interface on iPhone making it more difficult to read who an email is from, along with obscuring much of the mail subject, and hiding most much of a mail message preview, making the Mail app on iPhone more difficult to read, scan, and use for many iPhone users. Mail sender icons will show the contact photo of a sender if that’s available, but since that’s usually not the case with most emails, you end up with large random thumbnail icons that just obscure the Mail interface.

Fortunately, much like you can disable the annoying Mail Categories feature that was introduced to iPhone, you can also disable the obnoxious large prominent Mail sender icons and contact photos as well, making your Mail inbox easier to read again, restoring Mail to the classic appearance that had been mostly the same since the beginning of iPhone.

How to Disable Contact Photos / Sender Icons in Mail for iPhone

1. Open the “Settings” app on iPhone
2. Go to “Apps” and then choose “Mail”
3. Locate the setting for “Show Contact Photos” and toggle that to the OFF position



4. Return to Mail app on iPhone to find the Mail interface back to normal again

This will restore the appearance of Mail app to be closer to the original iPhone Mail app interface.

Here’s what the Mail app should look like now, even in iOS 18.2 with the maligned Mail app redesign:

Contrast that to the new iOS 18.2 Mail redesigned interface default, which shows large contact photos instead of useful email preview information:

You’ll note in these screenshots that the new Mail redesign Mail Categorization feature is also disabled.

If you haven’t done so yet, and you hate the new Mail app redesign as many users do, you’ll probably want to disable the Mail Categories feature on iPhone as well. Since inconsistency with settings is unfortunately becoming consistent with these sort of things, you’ll find the settings toggle for that particular feature within the Mail app itself, not in the Settings app.

The Mail Contact Photos being stuffed alongside mail senders kind of makes the Mail app look like some social media messenger app, and while that may make sense if you’re interacting with a lot of people you know well enough to want to see their faces or sender icons, that’s rarely the case with many people’s emails. Additionally, very few people use the Mail app as a social media messenger, so to mimic that appearance while squeezing the entire Mail interface and reducing legibility and preview of email messages is an interesting design decision on Apple’s behalf. The Mail sender contact photo icons are particularly obnoxious if you use text size for Mail that is larger than anything microscopic, since the giant icons squeeze down any available space for senders name, subject, and the message preview.

What do you think of the Mail app redesign and showing the mail sender contact photo icons with every email? Do you like the feature or hate it? Share your thoughts and opinions in the comments.