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The initial iPadOS 18.4 and macOS Sequoia 15.4 betas that Apple provided to developers today expand the revamped Mail app to the iPad and the Mac.

General-macOS-Mail-Feature.jpg

The new Mail app features built-in categorization that organizes incoming emails into different sections. Important emails are displayed in the Primary category, with other emails organized into sections highlighting product orders, newsletters, deals, and social notifications.

A "Transactions" section aggregates receipts, orders, and deliveries to make it easy to find orders that you've placed and shipping information for those orders.

In an "Updates" section, you'll find newsletters, alerts for doctor's appointments and correspondence, and subscription emails. A "Promotions" category includes emails with offers and deals.

Categories is the default view after updating to the new software, but in the upper right corner of the Mail app, you can swap back to a list view that shows all emails in chronological order, without separation into categories. Devices that have Apple Intelligence support will show priority emails in the Primary inbox, so you can see what's most important first. Emails in the Transactions, Updates, or Promotions section that have time-sensitive information will also be shown in the Primary section.

Apple already brought Mail categorization to the iPhone with the iOS 18.2 update, but now it has expanded to the Mac and iPad as well.

Article Link: Revamped Mail App With Built-In Categorization Comes to Mac and iPad
 
This all seems like a good idea in theory, but in reality it just turns one inbox into four that must be checked anytime you're expecting an email... because the thing just isn't very good at categorizing stuff based on the context.
Yeah, I turned it off quickly when I found some important emails were misclassified. I know you can manually recategorize messages based on the sender, but I haven't tried that yet to see if it improves things.
 
Seems like I'm in the minority here, but the categorization totally changed the way I use Mail on my iPhone and I could never go back. It feels like I'm using some kind of ancient webmail app now every time I go back to my Mac or iPad.

Glad it's an option, though. If it didn't work as well for me as it did, I'd definitely want to turn it off.
 
I wonder if they are ever going to bring back the setting to automatically delete sent messages? It was there before and disappeared I believe after High Sierra.
 
Seems like I'm in the minority here, but the categorization totally changed the way I use Mail on my iPhone and I could never go back. It feels like I'm using some kind of ancient webmail app now every time I go back to my Mac or iPad.

Glad it's an option, though. If it didn't work as well for me as it did, I'd definitely want to turn it off.
I'm completely open to the possibility that I'm using it wrong somehow, but it feels like it categorizes half my emails at random. I have no confidence that emails from my doctor won't end up in "Promotions." Concert tickets end up in "Updates" rather than "Transactions." And I don't think it's because Apple is stupid... Everyone sucks at this because email is just a total mess of a medium that defies strict categorization. And the moment that someone cracks the code, spammers will crack it right back and fake paypal invoices will suddenly be marked important in my Primary category.
 
Only question is "Are they going to fix the huge bug where the Today mailbox shows there are unread messages that are all actually already read?" AND why aren't my routed Junk mails not shown in the main Junk folder?
 
This all seems like a good idea in theory, but in reality it just turns one inbox into four that must be checked anytime you're expecting an email... because the thing just isn't very good at categorizing stuff based on the context.
I have it enabled but am constantly in the hidden 5th tile that shows all mails regardless of categorization. I only use the 4 categories as quick filters for when I know something must be a transaction / was classified as transaction.
 
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when are they going to add live updating to the unread filter, once I read a message it should be removed from the filter.
 
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