Apple Seeds Fourth Beta of macOS Sequoia 15.4 With Mail Categorization

[MacRumors]

Apple today provided developers with the fourth beta of an upcoming macOS Sequoia 15.4 update for testing purposes. The new beta is available a week after Apple released the third beta.

Registered developers can opt-in to the macOS Sequoia beta through the Software Update section of the System Settings app. An Apple ID associated with an Apple Developer account is required to get the beta.

macOS Sequoia 15.4 brings Mail Categorization to the Mac for the first time, reorganizing the Mail app into dedicated categories like transactions, updates, promotions, and primary, a category that surfaces the most important emails first. The update brings a range of new emoji characters to the Mac.

For Apple News+ subscribers, there is a dedicated News+ Food section with recipes, articles about restaurants, and other related content. There's a new Sketch style in Image Playground, the option to create Memory Movies in the Photos app, and Apple Intelligence is expanding to new languages.

Apple plans to release macOS Sequoia 15.4 in early April.

Article Link: Apple Seeds Fourth Beta of macOS Sequoia 15.4 With Mail Categorization

 

[smithrh]

I was on a Sequoia beta (don't remember which one, sorry) where this categorization was turned on.

It immediately told me I had to take urgent action on... spam.

Hopefully that's been addressed, but until I can feel confident in it, I'm not upgrading to it or turning it on.

 

[tywebb13]

build number is 24E5238a

builds of the other betas released today:

iOS 18.4 beta 4 (22E5232a)
iPadOS 18.4 beta 4 (22E5232a)
tvOS 18.4 beta 4 (22L5250a)
audioOS 18.4 beta 4 (22L5250a)
visionOS 2.4 beta 4 (22O5231a)
watchOS 11.4 beta 4 (22T5244a)
macOS Sonoma 14.7.5 RC 4 (23H525)

- mostly according to website https://developer.apple.com/news/releases/ but the audioos, sonoma and ventura ones don't go there though

seems like there is no ventura 13.7.5 rc 4 yet.

EDIT: the macos ventura 13.7.5 rc 4 is available now, 1 day later. it has build 22H525

 

[MacAddict1978]

Mail categorization has been an epic fail thus far. Hopefully they managed to get a feature Gmail has had for a decade working better this time around.

 

[nCode]

Pretty sure either Beta 2/3 had categorization enabled in Mail app.

 

[Bungaree.Chubbins]

Mail categorization has been an epic fail thus far. Hopefully they managed to get a feature Gmail has had for a decade working better this time around.

I hope they get it working better than Gmail, because I hate it there too. It’s a good idea, but it doesn’t work

 

[ignatius345]

Maybe I'm the minority, but after a bit of training, I've found the new iOS Mail categorization has helped me quite a bit. Out of the box it was a bit off base, but as I've taken time to manually categorize incoming mail, it's started to do a lot better.

 

[smithrh]

It really really really needs to have the spam filter take action before it categorizes anything.

That was a massive miss. And while I'm at it, Apple can also do a much better job in spam detection and deletion even before it gets to my devices. If it's obvious spam, kill it before you even send it to me.

 

[Astuces iOS]

Does it has Siri improvements?

 

[Veinticinco]

Mail categorisation yet another reason on the list of why I'm sticking to Sonoma.

 

[galad]

Mail categorisation yet another reason on the list of why I'm sticking to Sonoma.

Because clicking the "Disable" button the first time you open Mail is too hard?

 

[Veinticinco]

Because clicking the "Disable" button the first time you open Mail is too hard?

Multiple email accounts, both work and personal. So yes, it's a pain and like other new so-called new "features", it shouldn't be a default setting.

 

[galad]

It takes one click to disable, it might be a meh feature, but it's not really something that will be forced on you.

 

[Veinticinco]

It takes one click to disable, it might be a meh feature, but it's not really something that will be forced on you.

One click per mail account, which I've already had to do independently on my iPhone and iPad.

 

[Ad47uk]

Mail categorisation yet another reason on the list of why I'm sticking to Sonoma.

i should have done that, to be honest, thinking of going back to it.

 

[Ad47uk]

It takes one click to disable, it might be a meh feature, but it's not really something that will be forced on you.

Unlike Apple Ai, well, it is not forced as such, but after every update it seems like we will have to disable it.
Come on apple, if it is disabled, does that not tell you something?
Yeah, I know Apple don't read this site, but then, you never know.

 

[DICK_CHENEY]

Can anyone confirm whether or not this completely breaks networking/vpns again like every other beta seems to nowadays?

 

[usmanity]

Every few years, I try to use Apple Mail and somehow just can't get myself to like it...anyone else have any other recommendations?

 

[Student of Life]

Does anyone mail count actually show the correct number? On my iPhone I get an accurate number, on iPad and Macs certain email like aol etc just don’t show up on the number count.

 

[Mike_Trivisonno]

I will bet $5,000 dollars that the OS will still be too stupid to remember where I place my Stickies and Finder windows.

So many dumb and useless "enhancements" but they can't even figure out how to store and recall window positions and sizes. It's 2025, Apple. 2025.

 

[AxiomaticRubric]

I really like Mail Categorization, but in practice it has been annoying in iOS. The messages per source are ordered from old to new. A lot of scrolling is required to see the latest email.

 

[TechTexan]

It really really really needs to have the spam filter take action before it categorizes anything.

That was a massive miss. And while I'm at it, Apple can also do a much better job in spam detection and deletion even before it gets to my devices. If it's obvious spam, kill it before you even send it to me.

That’s never going to happen. Thinking of all the times something important got labeled as spam that wasn’t. You would never get it.

 

[mxrider88]

Does it has Siri improvements?

Yep, it says “sorry I didn’t get that” without any lag

 

[nottorp]

Can this mail categorizations be customized, or it only categorizes into what Apple deems important to its users?

Also, is that done on device or the email contents are sent to Apple?

It really really really needs to have the spam filter take action before it categorizes anything.

That was a massive miss. And while I'm at it, Apple can also do a much better job in spam detection and deletion even before it gets to my devices. If it's obvious spam, kill it before you even send it to me.

No. We have this customer we cannot directly email with manually written work related emails, because Microsoft just drops ours. I suppose our status reports and their work orders are obvious spam to some "AI".

 

[Bungaree.Chubbins]

One click per mail account, which I've already had to do independently on my iPhone and iPad.

I just double checked mine, because that’s now how I remember it. For me it is set once to affect all 4 email accounts on my iPhone 14 on iOS 18.3.2. Maybe they changed it in the latest betas.

Every few years, I try to use Apple Mail and somehow just can't get myself to like it...anyone else have any other recommendations?

I used to use Airmail and it was fine. I switched ages ago, back before Catalina, I think, just for something new. Then they started spamming “subscribe to Pro now for features you won’t use” screens over the top every time I opened it, so I went back to Apple Mail. I never found anything I liked better.