The priority sorting of emails in Apple Mail for iOS will come to the Mac in an update expected around April. Here’s what’s coming, and whether it’ll be useful.
One of the most successful elements of Apple Intelligence has been its use in Apple Mail, where alongside message summaries, it can now also categorize mail — on the iPhone. For some reason the same feature has not been released for the Mac, but this was always going to change, and now a new report says it will happen in April 2025.
According to Bloomberg, the same feature of using Apple Intelligence to sort messages into categories such as Primary or Updates, will be a part of macOS 15.4. The current version of macOS is 15.2, while macOS 15.3 is still in beta testing.
The promise of Apple Intelligence
There are more showy elements of Apple Intelligence, such as Image Playground, but it’s going to be in applications like mail where it will really make a difference. Arguably it already is doing so with categorization in Mail on iPhone, but there the benefit is in how quickly users can see what’s important.
For actually then replying to important emails, the Mac remains the better device with its larger screen and its full-size keyboard. At present, though, users can see an email is a Primary, or priority, one on the iPhone but there’s no indication of that on the Mac.
When it comes, Mac users will presumably see the same arrangement that iPhone Mail users now get. While the whole feature can be switched off, by default it is on and Mail’s inbox sorts messages into four categories:
- Primary
- Transactions
- Updates
- Promotions
Those are the only categories shown, but there is a fifth one. Clicking on the currently selected category switches that off, and instead an All Mail listing is shown.
Each category comes with an explanation that can be closed, as done here with the Primary one
That appears as a fifth button, and users can either click on that, or on one of the other four. Whichever the user does, this fifth All Mail button disappears and Mail is again left with just four such buttons.
In fairness to Apple Intelligence, this sorting is immediately well done. There doesn’t appear to be a process of learning what a user regards as what type of email.
It’s likely that this is because Apple has already learnt this. In the current versions of macOS and iOS Mail, choosing to move a message will usually result in the device suggesting where it should be moved.
That’s based on where similar messages have been moved before. So it’s probable that Mail will continue monitoring and learning, but right from the start it is good at sorting mail.
Opinions vary
There doesn’t appear to have been much, if any, criticism over how Mail categorizes like this. But there is the overall issue of whether such sorting is useful or not.
People who don’t get much email may find it tedious to have to click between buttons to see everything. Equally, though, people who get very few emails probably don’t spend a lot of time in the Mail app.
So this is really for the user who has problems keeping on top of their emails. In that case, something that correctly identifies which emails are really needed, has to be a boon.
Yet some other users are going to want to do this triaging of emails themselves, rather than trusting to Apple Intelligence. For some users, Transactions and Promotions might be more important than Apple Intelligence realises.
It also means that where a user might clear their inbox and be able to see that there is no more mail, now they generally have to check four sections to find out the same thing.
Inconsistent priorities
So as long as Apple Intelligence is doing this sorting well, the only question should be over whether or not to allow it. There will be an off switch the Mac version of Mail, just as there is on the iPhone.
It’s a little hidden on the iPhone, though. It’s not where you might expect in Settings, alongside other Apple Intelligence features such as the excellent Summarize Message Previews.
Instead, toward the top right of the inbox on iOS Apple Mail, there is an ellipses button. Choosing that gives an option for Categories or List View.
The option to turn off categoies is rather hidden on the iPhone
There’s also an About Categories, which describes what messages get sorted into which section.
Lastly, this settings section also has an option called Show Priority, which only appears when the Primary category is selected. What it’s meant to do is surface the most important emails, and specifically ones that have anything that is time-sensitive.
So rather than having users scroll through the Primary category, that inbox gets an extra heading that summarizes the most important unread emails where there is any kind of deadline
Unfortunately, for some reason this section has been inconsistent. It’s possible that Apple Intelligence is most often determining that a message isn’t vital enough to put into this prominent heading, so it also doesn’t show a heading.
But there doesn’t seem to be an obvious pattern to when it does or does not show the heading.
Other than that, however, mail sorting and categorization is consistently good and correct.
We’ve been here before
If the quality of the mail categorization is down to Apple Intelligence, it’s still not clear why Apple had to wait for AI to do this at all. Gmail has been sorting email in this way for years.
In fact, Gmail’s Smart Labels feature started off quite slowly with just three categories — but it started that with a beta release in 2011. By 2017, it was offering what it called the “priority inbox,” which did the same sorting as Apple Intelligence does now.
Yet if email sorting is old news, it’s also good news, and specifically very visual news. This is one of the key Apple Intelligence features that Mac users are going to see.
Maybe they’ll switch it off, but it’s an AI feature with clear benefits and clear uses. This is what’s going to sell Apple Intelligence more than Image Playground does, because this is what is immediately useful about the service.
