Web-Based iCloud Mail Redesign, Hide My Email, and Custom Domain Features Now Live

[TheDudeAbe]

So, for the web interface, the following were all trivial to do last week, but now cannot be done:

• They moved all of the buttons around (new email is on the opposite side of the page)
• No mouseover for the buttons to know what they do now that they have different icons
• One button so it looks like it's half off the page with no clue as to what it's for
• Can no longer drag emails from one folder to another
• Can no longer "pop out" an email to a separate window
• No longer an easy way to add a rule for the current message
• It no longer knows anyone that I correspond with on a daily basis
• When you're in an email, you can't even easily send an email to someone from that email, and can't even get a copy of their full email contact (SMTP address plus friendly name, as is in the properly-formatted To: field)
• Speaking of the To: field, as was mentioned earlier, without the pop-out option, you now have no way to view email headers at all
• Can no longer choose whether to paste a picture into the content of an email or to attach it to the email

Yay for improvements?

 

[McNutty]

So, for the web interface, the following were all trivial to do last week, but now cannot be done:

• They moved all of the buttons around (new email is on the opposite side of the page)
• No mouseover for the buttons to know what they do now that they have different icons
• One button so it looks like it's half off the page with no clue as to what it's for
• Can no longer drag emails from one folder to another
• Can no longer "pop out" an email to a separate window
• No longer an easy way to add a rule for the current message
• It no longer knows anyone that I correspond with on a daily basis
• When you're in an email, you can't even easily send an email to someone from that email, and can't even get a copy of their full email contact (SMTP address plus friendly name, as is in the properly-formatted To: field)
• Speaking of the To: field, as was mentioned earlier, without the pop-out option, you now have no way to view email headers at all
• Can no longer choose whether to paste a picture into the content of an email or to attach it to the email

Yay for improvements?

Yes all of the above! This is horrendous - had to do some email admin yesterday and it was painful/impossible. My inbox is a total mess.
I mean it is setting back the functionalities now available in email apps by years.

I suppose the question is: is there anything we can do about it?

 

[B.Bain]

I signed up using my podcast domain and it'll save me a bit of extra $ each month compared to either gmail or Rackspace. On my Mac Mini and MacBook Air I've created a rule that all emails to that domain goes to its on folder.
We'll see how much I like it after a month of usage.

 

[Piplodocus]

The web interface for iCloud has always been rather poor relative to competitors like MS/Google. But since we can't install our own software on work PCs for security reasons, and my phone screen is small, it's still the go-to way I read a lot of my personal emails at work, or read/add important things to my personal calendars.

I hoped this would change at some point and finally get some love. But ironically they've f**ked it instead.

I noticed it changed colour a bit an mail looked slightly different a few days ago. Oooh, has it improved? No, now I can no longer ctrl-click to multi-select emails to delete. I can't quickly drag and drop emails into the adjacent folders to organise them anymore. What? Why make my life harder on purpose Apple, why? 'King morons. 🤦‍♂️

How can they seem to be improving certain stuff well where you think they're getting better and fixing some minor annoyances, while simultaneously making other stuff genuinely worse through sheer negligence or design?

 

[Piplodocus]

drag and drop emails is a bad idea. If I can tel you horror support stories from end user grunts to executives loosing emails in Outlook on PC / Mac using drag and drop va MOVE. That mouse button let’s go a moment too soon and emails for follow up ends up in yearly reviews or moms cooking folders lol. You get the idea. See if there is a select multiple and move button to select intended folder. Much cleaner less accident prone. Doesn’t matter how many years you’ve done this sooner or later juman error will occur on the mouse/trackpad.

By this definition of "bad idea", if they're idiots letting them have any access to even a basic file system is a bad idea (the old "where did you save it or copy it to" problem) and damn, these people should never be let loose on the internet or allowed access to emails which might include phishing scams in the first place, cuz that's FAR too dangerous! It's not hard for someone here at work to drag and drop an entire £100k+ shared job folder in Windows File Explorer into a different subfolder if they're being careless, but people seldom do. These days you have a pretty good search function to find it very quickly.

The world shouldn't be brought down to the lowest common denominator of intelligence at the expense of everyone with any sense's productivity going down the drain. Give them a fisher-price toy laptop, a pat on the head and tell them to go sit in the playtime corner if they can't use drag and drop as is present in pretty much every email client I'm used to.

At worst give me an annoying "are you sure?" button after drag, where at least if I could multi-select emails again, I could make the new question annoyance worth the amount of stuff I'm moving in one go. But drag and drop or not, I can't even multi-select emails anymore then use the newly-enforced "move to folder" button, I have to do them individually. 😣

 

[JasCloud]

So, for the web interface, the following were all trivial to do last week, but now cannot be done:

• They moved all of the buttons around (new email is on the opposite side of the page)
• No mouseover for the buttons to know what they do now that they have different icons
• One button so it looks like it's half off the page with no clue as to what it's for
• Can no longer drag emails from one folder to another
• Can no longer "pop out" an email to a separate window
• No longer an easy way to add a rule for the current message
• It no longer knows anyone that I correspond with on a daily basis
• When you're in an email, you can't even easily send an email to someone from that email, and can't even get a copy of their full email contact (SMTP address plus friendly name, as is in the properly-formatted To: field)
• Speaking of the To: field, as was mentioned earlier, without the pop-out option, you now have no way to view email headers at all
• Can no longer choose whether to paste a picture into the content of an email or to attach it to the email

Yay for improvements?

Its absolutely horrible, everything you have noted I have noticed, its literally terrible. I have sent about 10,000 emails to my main contact and it no longer auto-prompts the email address.

 

[Piplodocus]

I've also just noticed, how do I flag as junk too! 🤦‍♂️

 

[JasCloud]

This is a terrible update - most issues already detailed.

I have over 30 email addresses starting with "info@....." and no auto-suggestions

 

[Piplodocus]

I don't often complain, but since I'm stuck using the web interface all day at work, I had to... https://www.apple.com/feedback/icloud.html

Another new annoyance - I also used to often ctrl-click calendar or mail in the dropdown to open in a new tab, so I could just flip between calendar and mail in different browser tabs. It now insists on opening in the same tab unless I open a new blank tab and re-navigate to iCloud. It's almost like they genuinely thought how can we make it still actually function, but make everything as hard and awkward to use as possible.

 

[Oilpatchgypsy]

hmm, still don't like the moving of Trash/Delte and the Refresh Buttons.
I also dont like how I cannot drag and drop emails to a folder (I could do this to single and groups if emails prior).

I thought by the time this was out of BETA they'd have fixed a few things but it seems to have gotten slightly prettier but a touch less useful.

I TOTALLY AGREE! Why in the world we can't just drag an email to the proper folder is crazy. They have added so many more steps to do this and it's a time waster. Also....how do we print an email? The "gear" icon I used to click to print the email is gone. I hate this "upgrade"

 

[BJMRamage]

I don't often complain, but since I'm stuck using the web interface all day at work, I had to... https://www.apple.com/feedback/icloud.html

Another new annoyance - I also used to often ctrl-click calendar or mail in the dropdown to open in a new tab, so I could just flip between calendar and mail in different browser tabs. It now insists on opening in the same tab unless I open a new blank tab and re-navigate to iCloud. It's almost like they genuinely thought how can we make it still actually function, but make everything as hard and awkward to use as possible.

I too mostly use the Web interface while at work (I can use my phone but easy to have it open) on another screen.

But, now things are a bit harder. I also liked before where I could open an email in another window (almost as if to save that email to the side while I sort through the others - I sometimes search for an older email) and it was nice to use that way. but now if I want to do any other sorting/reading I lose that email and will need to search for it again, rather than just have that extra Window open I could easily refer back.

 

[timeislove]

Apple should revamp the icloud.com for the new iOS 15 features.

there is a serious bug that those tagged note items are not shown in the notes on @icloud.com, simply disappear!

please fix it.

 

[Piplodocus]

YES!!!!! Multi-select (ctrl-click) has come back in mail. Still can't drag and drop, but at least I can multi-select and then move/delete a few things at once.

 

[B2k1977]

They have also taken away the ability to print messages from the web interface which is total BS.

 

[impaler]

They have also taken away the ability to print messages from the web interface which is total BS.

It's there using that "Reply" button.