How to Turn Off Categories in Mail

By PaulMartz, 12 December, 2024

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

If you upgraded to iOS 18.2 and want to turn off categories in the Mail app, open the More menu near the top of your inbox and double-tap List View.

Options

Comments

By Brian on Saturday, December 14, 2024 - 23:55

Also a quick note about Mail, in iOS 18.2, the edit button has been replaced with a select button, although it appears to have the same functionality.

By Howard Goldstein on Saturday, December 14, 2024 - 23:55

Thanks for this information. There's a minor bug though: VoiceOver doesn't indicate which of the two buttons, Categories or List View, is selected. I have just reported this to Apple.

By PaulMartz on Saturday, December 14, 2024 - 23:55

They seem to be non-standard. VoiceOver reads them like they're static text, not buttons or other selectable controls. That's why I thought I'd post this topic.

In iOS 18.2 with categories on, there are ten controls to swipe past before I reach the first message. Selecting List View reduces that to six, but I still yearn for the good ol days of iOS 1 in which we only had a mailboxes back button, the Inbox heading, and an edit button to swipe past.

By Justin Harris on Saturday, December 14, 2024 - 23:55

Yes, this drove me crazy when I first updated. Found the solution yesterday.
As for all the swiping, you can fix that with a little bit of muscle memory, and rather than swiping through all of those controls, you can get to the message list a bit faster by just placing your finger a bit further down from the back button. A little bit of explore by touch helps here, and then once you know more or less where the message list starts, you can avoid all or most of those controls.

By Kerry Fielding on Saturday, December 14, 2024 - 23:55

I really like this feature, it was one of the features of Google mail that I really liked. However, I'm struggling with how to access each email in one group. For example, I have five emails from Amazon in transactions. I want to get rid of those I don't need, and keep those that I need to make sure The orders arrive. I can't work out how to move to each individual message in the group and how to delete the messages I don't want. Any help greatly appreciated

By Tarja on Saturday, December 14, 2024 - 23:55

You need to expand the group of mail and then you will see the individual messages. To delete a mail make sure that your rotor is set to actions. Then on a Mail that you want to delete swipe up and down with one finger until you hear delete, then double tap on it. I have noticed that in some categories the delete button is under more option. So sometimes you may need to activate the more option to delete an email.

By Faerie on Saturday, December 14, 2024 - 23:55

Since the update, I've consistently had my iPhone tell me I have less unreads than I do. I think this is because it's flagging certain emails as unimportant and not listing them. But I actually really like knowing how many actual unreads I have, rather than what Apple thinks are important. Does anyone have a way to fix this and get the badge to truly represent the true amount? I already have things in list format as I hate the categories view/any auto-sorting of my email.

By Tarja on Saturday, December 14, 2024 - 23:55

Yes, there is an easy fix for that. Go to Settings > Mail > Notifications > Customize Notifications. Under Badge Count heading choose All Unread Messages.

By Crazyappuser on Saturday, December 14, 2024 - 23:55

I am so glad I’ve put my mail back into list view which is what I have always preferred it. Thank you very much and happy holidays.

By Faerie on Saturday, December 14, 2024 - 23:55

For some reason I checked absolutely everywhere except there. Thank you so very much!

By gailisaiah on Friday, February 14, 2025 - 23:55

I know I have unread messages but phone always says "No unread emails" even if there are unread messages.

By Brian on Friday, February 14, 2025 - 23:55

Go to:
Settings, notifications, mail, customize notifications, and make sure – All Unread – is selected.

By gailisaiah on Friday, February 21, 2025 - 23:55

Thank you, Brian!