How to remove Category icons in iOS 18.2 Mail?

1. Open the Settingsapp.
2. Scroll to the bottom and select Apps
3. Choose Mail.
4. Under “Message List,” turn off Show Contact Photos.

Who thinks of this stuff? Does Apple ever run Beta testing with actual people? I think not. The only vaguely positive concept with the new email categories is the choice between Primary and All Mail. But then I have to try to ignore the shopping cart, promotions and the like. I will just go back to the pre ios 18.2 view.

This bites. I like having the icons of people / businesses I know and have in my contacts. Now I have to get rid of those just because Apple made these dumb categories? Categories should be an option IF you want the annoying thing. Don’t screw with my mailbox where I’m going to miss emails because THEY think this is a great and useful idea. Hardly the case.

Yeah me too.

"Can the icons be removed from list view so that I can just see a normal/clean email inbox?"

I have my own categorising system which works better so the icons in list view are just wasting space on my iPhone screen.

I think the Category view is a good thing for some people but for _leefy and me any new display feature like this needs to have an "off" button.

Yay- Thank you!. Surprised at Apple- those icons were annoying and made no sense. So happy to return to simpler list view!

While at it, can you completely revert to the old system? I hate having the 3 dots on the outside where you used to hit “select” to mass delete emails by selecting a bunch at once. Now I’m constantly hitting the dumb “categories” option. Who on God’s green earth is their UI/UX designer at Apple anyway?

Thank you very much for that info. I was pretty put off by the look, colors, and pointlessness of the icons in the new mail app (along with many other users, apparently) but couldn't get any useful info from Siri on how to either change their color or get rid of them altogether. I assumed that the "show contact photos" button had something to do with the photos of folks in your contacts list being visible when you get emails from them. I never would have guessed that was the way to get rid of those annoying icons! Thanks again👍

Thank you SO much. I found those icons quite annoying. I appreciate you taking the time to share such a positive result with everyone.

That removes the icon from the list view, but the icons are still showing when looking at an individual email. How can we turn that off as to all aspects of mail?

Thank you for showing how to remove those annoying categories in my mail box! You made my day and whoever thought that was a good idea to add needs another day job.

Hello, _leefy!

With 18.2 introduction of category inboxes in apple mail, even when selecting list view (top three dots in mail app) to return it to the old format, you still have the annoying new icons representing the categories in front of each email. I'm selecting 'list view' because I don't want to use 'categories' at all. Can the icons be removed from list view so that I can just see a normal/clean email inbox?

If you are referring to categories, you can turn them off by going to the Inbox view in Mail, then tapping the button on the top right of the screen:

Then, choose List View.

Reference: Use categories in Mail on iPhone - Apple Support

If you are referring to the contact photos, you can do what rosefromulster said and go to Settings > Apps > Mail and go to Message List, then switch Show Contact Photos off.

I hope this helps!

Why do Apple have to mess about and introduce these things without telling us how to revert to previous settings. DOH!!!

Thanks a lot. Quite illogical switch to turn off…

Remove Top Category:- Three More Button > List View.

Remove icons next to Each Email:- Settings app > Apps > Mail > Disable "Show Contact List"

I found the solution online from this source.

Indeed. And no off button is simply bad UI and UX…most of iOS update sucks and takes so long to reload and reminded it’s just painfully bloated crap with zingy icons from TikTok. Meh.