How to Turn Off Mail Categories in iOS 18.2

Apple released iOS 18.2 today, which brings major changes to the Mail app with a new categories feature. Categories automatically divide your emails into four different sections: Main, Deals, Updates, and Promotions. However, while this organizational system is designed to help manage email overload, not everyone will like the new layout.

Message categories try to intelligently organize the emails you receive into different sections. Important emails appear in the Main category, while orders, newsletters, social notifications, and transactions are divided into the other three sections.

The Transactions section includes Receipts, Orders, and Deliveries, and is designed to make it easy to find orders you’ve placed and shipping information for those orders. Meanwhile, the Updates section includes newsletters, reminders like doctor appointments and letters, and other subscription emails. Finally, Apple’s “Promotions” category includes special offers and promotional emails.

Note that even if the email is typically a deal, update, or promotion, if it contains a time-sensitive message, it will appear in your main inbox. On devices that support Apple Intelligence, the system goes a step further and highlights priority emails that require action or have a due date.

Message Categories: Why You May Want to Restore

The new Categories view, while helpful to some, may not suit your email management style for several reasons:

• You like to view all your emails in chronological order.
• Some messages may be misclassified.
• You have your own organizational system.
• You may find that the extra parts distract you.
• You want faster access to all your email without having to switch between categories.

You can swipe a category left to switch to All Mail view, but what if you want to delete the category entirely?

iOS 18.2: How to return to list view in Apple Mail

After updating to new software, categories are the default view. Luckily, Apple makes it easy to switch back to traditional list view. Here’s how it works:

1. Open the Mail app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Click more button (three dots) in the upper right corner of your inbox.
3. choose List view From the pop-up menu.

Once you switch to list view, your inbox will return to showing all emails in chronological order, just like it did before iOS 18.2. Changes are effective immediately. While the classification isn’t perfect, Apple will likely improve it over time. If you want to try again later, you can always use the same menu to switch back to Categories view.

Note: If you have an iPhone that supports Apple Intelligence, you’ll see additional options for priority messaging in the More menu. This option will not appear in Devices that do not support Apple Intelligence. The More menu also has an About Categories section, where you can see how messages were categorized last week, but you can’t tell the Mail app the category if you think an email has been put into the wrong folder.