I’ve been using Apple Mail all wrong (or “my wife was right all along”)

I’m Chris and this is METAGAME: a personal blog/newsletter about hobbies. Are you new here? — get free emails to your inbox.

Apple Mail doesn’t like us, inbox-zero people. And I have realized that only just now.

You see, until recently, my personal email management followed what I did at work. Basically, keeping the inbox clear by:

• filing messages to various folders (like “Travel”, “Newsletters”, and “Paper Trail”) — some manually, some using email rules
• archiving messages that I no longer need quick access to
• deleting one-time codes, magic links, and other one-time-use messages

But with iOS 18.2, Apple rolled out automated email categories in iPhone’s¹ Mail app — and I was like Wait a minute…

The email categorization only works in the Inbox. Messages don’t carry their categories/labels with them if you move them elsewhere, be it a folder or Archive. It’s not account-wide, it just applies to one single folder and that folder is the Inbox.

…am I supposed to be keeping all my emails in the Inbox?

Signs have been there before — default smart folders like “today”, “unread”, or “attachments” also only work on emails that are in your inbox folder. Archive it or move it anywhere else — they won’t get picked up anymore. Huh…

Links to messages (like when you drag an email from Mail to Notes) also sometimes² stop working if you move emails between folders.

And now we have those “AI” email categories. Limited to Inbox once again.

Okay Apple, I’ll give it a go. I’ll keep my emails in the Inbox. (This is going very much against my GTD habit of regularly reviewing my inboxes and clearing them out — but I’m willing to experiment with a new workflow!) Will this automated categorization work better than a curated list of folders and email rules? Color me skeptical — especially after seeing what other parts of Apple Intelligence had to offer.

Oh, and I think I owe you all an explanation of what is up with this hero image! It’s a cake I had custom made to celebrate my wife’s email inbox reaching 50K unread emails. Turns out she had it all figured out long ago!

Fast forward two weeks

Yeah, this post has been sitting in drafts for a while… But it’s a good thing! I can now report on the results of this experiment.

Long story short: I will probably disable it. Why?

The categories don’t fit my needs

This is how Apple describes these four automated categories:

• Primary: Find personal messages and time-sensitive information.
• Transactions: Keep track of your confirmations, receipts, and shipping notices.
• Updates: Catch up on news, newsletters, and social updates.
• Promotions: Browse your coupon and sales emails.

That doesn’t work for me. It’s too broad and not mutually exclusive.

Too broad, because a category like Transactions holds travel bookings, invoices, shipping notifications, and updates from my bank.

Not mutually exclusive, because there is significant overlap between categories. This makes me unsure where to look for a specific email — making finding emails easier, not more difficult, was the whole point of this feature!

For instance, my bank sends me a range of messages: login notifications, transaction notices (are these updates? transactions?), promotional emails (updates or promotions?), and occasional financial literacy newsletters (updates or promotions?) — Apple Intelligence has trouble sorting this out.

Is restaurant booking confirmation and update or a transaction?

Same with annoying online shops, where they will send you a purchase confirmation and immediately follow up with a latest issue of their newsletter (and is that a transaction, update, or promotion? — Apple Mail is not sure)

This all make the categories unreliable for me.

It’s still buggy

Sometimes, notification labels at the top will retain their little notification dot even though there are no new or unread emails there.

But it’s a beta, of course there are bugs!

It’s not a beta if you’re rolling it out to all users on a public release.

The rollout is annoying

It’s been weeks and the feature remains iPhone-exclusive. Does Apple think that rushing it out, before it’s ready on all platforms, will increase adoption?

In my case, if I can’t have one, consistent system across all my devices/email clients, then it’s not going to work for me.

It’s poorly explained

I’ve seen people confused about what this new yellow button means. Is it mute or block sender? Crossed-out person icon would suggest something like that.

But no, it’s just means “hide from primary category” and applies to non-primary emails, that Apple thought were time-sensitive and deserve being ”promoted” to primary. But isn’t it what Priority Messages was for? Sigh.

Full inbox is not for me

And lastly, just a personal preference, but I really do like my inboxes being empty rather than full.

I think this entire Apple Intelligence rollout has cured me from a feature-FOMO. I don’t have to be using the newest thing Apple came up with, just because it’s new and shiny and has an “AI” label. I’m fine with my own workflow, thank you very much. Additional benefit — less pressure to upgrade my devices.

Ultimately, what I want is not for AI to make decisions for me. I want features that help me make better decisions — easier, faster, and with better hit rate.

All that is to say that I’d prefer more powerful and accessible tools for setting up iCloud email rules, because this is bullshit.

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1. Why not also on iPad and Mac? This whole 2024-early 2025 Apple OS update has been weird and totally sidetracked by rushing to show “hey, we have AI too!” ↩︎
2. I can’t always replicate this error but I have definitely lost some Notes↔️Mail connections over time. Maybe it’s just generally buggy? Who knows! ↩︎