The new iOS and macOS update incudes a new Mail feature - that classifies your email into separate categories. I left it on to see how it works and it is hilariously bad. NYT news emails go into one category, WSJ and LAT news emails another. I am curious to see if anyone has a better experience.
David
I turned it off.
Better experience.
Guess I’m just an octogenarian who doesn’t like change!
David
I turned it off immediately, felt like it was too cluttered. And I think it needs to be turned on/off by mailbox vs globally.
Diane
I almost always turn these automatic categorization features off with any software or platform that offers them. Usually, it seems like just another opportunity for an algorithm to mischaracterize something important.
To be fair, the current version of Outlook for iOS divides the inbox into “Focused” and “Other” categories without being too annoying about it. I’d turn it off if I could, but its underlying logic appears fairly logical and consistent.
I found Google’s Categories a disaster, with potentially serious consequences because it treats bills as “Promotions,” which can lead to unpaid bills if you don’t check it.
I tried this out when it came out with iOS 18.1. I love the idea, but not the execution. Unlike with Gmail’s similar categorization, there doesn’t seem to be a way to set a rule to say all mail that meets a particular criterion or set of criteria should be directed to a particular category. It remains the same with macOS mail. Just as a “for example”, all of the mail I get from tidbits talk gets categorized it either primary or updates, seemingly randomly. I’d love it to be one or the other, but I think because the sender is the person who composed the message, rather than an address at talk.tidbits.com, there’s no way to send them all to one place or the other.
That said: I still have the categories on, but if you right-scroll past all of the categories, there’s a handy “all mail” category.
Since Eudora died and I converted to Apple Mail, I have used a Smart Mailbox that combines all unprocessed (unread and grey-flagged) email from my various accounts as my entry point into reading email. Since I rarely access an inbox, categorization on a computer that applies only to inboxes is irrelevant to me.
I have a set of rules that:
This process avoids accidentally processing an email when it is only touched (for example, by disposing of the preceding email in a list). I must explicitly clear the grey flag to get an email from my unprocessed mailbox. Unfortunately, because user-defined Smart Mailboxes do not exist anywhere except on macOS and because the mail rules must apply across all incoming email on any account, I can only efficiently deal with email on a Mac.
I turned it off right away on iOS. Couldn’t figure out why it was better to hide messages that I would need to see in favor of stuff that it “thought” I would like to see.
It needs:
It probably made much more sense to marketers trying to figure out something that can be rolled out under the label of “Apple Intelligence.” Unfair? Maybe, and maybe it gets better. But I have zero time or energy to devote to it now.
As a former mail administrator, this is really annoying me. The messages are coming FROM tidbits-talk@talk.tidbits.com (with a display name based on the user commenting). You can write a rule for a condition: “From” “contains” “tidbits-talk@talk.tidbits.com”, but you cannot set the categorization from a rule.
It really annoys me that the categorization seems to only apply to the display name (or, possibly, to the entire address including the display name). There absolutely should be a way to set the categorization for an addr-spec address, as well as for a domain name. This seems like another failure from the AI camp - they seem to want to reduce options while emphasizing AI.
While I agree, probably for most cases using the name that displays in the “From” is a pretty good way to determine how important that contact is to you. Personally I don’t feel like putting everyone on tidbits talk in my contacts - I think if I did, they might all come in as priority.
I look at this as a 1.0 feature - let’s hope it gets better. Meanwhile leaving the feature on while living in the “All Mail” tab lets me check with each release if its is getting better.
I turned it off right away when it came out on iOS as soon as I realized there was no way for me to teach it something when it guessed wrong.
Does the update have anything to do with the “puzzle piece” icon I see in Mac Mail? I don’t recall seeing it before, but I may have just not been paying attention.
After seeing hilarious results with the Reminders categorization of shopping lists I wasn’t hopeful about Mail. I turned it off as soon as the iOS update was completed.
You can right-click and Categorize Sender on incorrectly filed email and it will move them all to the correct category.
I turned it off but am still stuck with “pre school” icons beside each message.
Another feature no one asked for.
Update.
Apparently no one tested this 'improvement" under Windows and it can’t be reversed.
Time to sell the MacBook Pro, iPad, iPhone and watch and find a home elsewhere for 600,000 emails.
Yes, but it’s not powerful enough; that doesn’t help with tidbits talk emails, for one. The senders are listed as us, not as tidbits.
Gmail allows you to create criteria using filters (so, if the subject line has “[Tidbits Talk]” included) and move the messages that meet the filter to go to a category of your choice.
I don’t use Mail on macOS, but on iOS, you can go to Settings → Apps → Mail and disable the “Show Contact Photos” option.
Does the Mac version have a similar option?
Turned it off straight away. I prefer to sort items correctly myself.
To turn them off on macOS, View menu / Show Contact Photos. They remained off on my machine before the 18.4 update. I don’t mind them; again, it is a feature that Gmail has used for a long time, so I was used to it from when I used Gmail on the web for years.