Follow Up in Mail (v16.0)

Somehow 2 outgoing mails I made have been tagged “FollowUp” and appear in my main inbox. While this is interesting and potentially useful, I wonder HOW they got tagged that way? Both have replies as part of the message body… and one was a forward to a message I already wrote.

iOS Mail has a settings “follow up suggestions” that, I guess, is intended to use Apple Intelligence to scan an email and suggest follow-up action. Maybe this is set “on” if AI is enabled? Mine is switched “off” as I find it intrusive.

1 Like

That’s not Apple Intelligence; it’s been available since iOS 17 I think, and it shows on my iPad Air 4 which is not able to use Apple Intelligence. But it was definitely something I turned off last year.

1 Like

Now I see and understand… when I read the description I get it. “Mail will remind you about messages that haven’t gotten a response.” I guess it is using some AI to know when a response is expected.

I don’t think the feature is using AI. It’s probably the app scanning recent mails periodically and using a coded-in rule like “if send date is greater than 2 days and no reply has been received then make a Notification”.

Don’t think so, the very first time I’ve seen this is when I got my M4 Mini and 15.2.

So I had 2 for follow up. One legit, the other not quite correct. I deleted the one that was in my In mailbox with my name on it. I could NOT find the actual email in my trash nor in my Sent folder. It’s like it disappeared. THAT is disturbing.

Follow-up was introduced with Ventura and iOS 15.

See What’s new in Mail on Mac? - Apple Support (CA) - change from Sequoia to Ventura to see

What’s new in Mail on Mac?

The Mail app in macOS Ventura offers new features for sending, organizing, and searching for email messages.

Undo send. After you send an email, you have a few seconds to unsend it to make corrections or other changes. See Recall email with Undo Send.

Schedule with Send Later. You now have the option to schedule a time to send an email. See Write and send emails.

Remind me. If you don’t have time to respond to an email right away, you can set a time and date to receive a reminder and have the email moved back to the top of your inbox. See Use Remind Me to come back to emails later.

Follow-up. You can receive a notification to follow up on emails you’ve sent that have yet to receive a response. See Reply to, forward, or follow up on emails.

If you want to keep using the feature, but want Mail to ignore the follow-up flag on a particular email, you can right click on the flagged email and choose “Ignore followup”.

1 Like