Among the less-publicized features introduced late last year in iOS 18.2 is a massive change to the Mail app. The same experience was added to the iPad in iPadOS 18.4 and the Mac in macOS 15.4. For longtime users of the Mail app, it was a shock to the system and definitely takes some getting used to. But if that hasn’t happened, there’s good news—you can change it back to the old way.
The new Mail app breaks the Inbox into several categories: Primary, Transactions, Updates, and Promotions. The categories are fairly self-explanatory:
- Primary: Personal and other time-sensitive messages.
- Transactions: Purchases, receipts, and shipping messages.
- Updates: Newsletters, mailing lists, and social updates.
- Promotions: Coupons, sales announcements, and spam that doesn’t land in junk.
Once you start using iOS 18.2 (or iPadOS 18.4 / macOS 15.4), the new Mail will be on by default and messages will automatically begin routing to their respective categories. Any folders will remain, of course, but your Mail experience is definitely different.
For one, your Mail badge will only show the count for messages in the Primary category, which means dozens of messages could go unread for hours or even days. And since everything is done automatically, some important messages might get routed to the wrong category. However, all time-sensitive messages will appear in the Primary view even if they’ve been routed to other categories.
When you first enable the app, you might see a box asking if you want to use the categories feature or not. It looks like this (Mac on the left, iPhone/iPad right):
Foundry
If you don’t trust this new category view or just plain don’t like it, you can change it back to the old way with very little trouble. On an iPhone or iPad, here’s what you do:
- In your inbox, tap the three-dot menu at the top-right.
- You’ll see an option for List View. Select it.
- Now you’ll return to the old way of doing things with a chronological inbox.
Foundry
On your Mac with macOS 15.4 or later, getting rid of the new mail categories is a little different:
- Look in the View menu up in the Menu bar.
- Uncheck “Show Mail Categories.”
Foundry
Whether on iPhone, iPad, or Mac, these same menus also contain an option to toggle the AI-powered Priority Messages feature. So if you don’t like the little box at the top of your email showing what Apple Intelligence thinks are your most important emails, with a summary of them, you can easily turn that feature off in the same place.