Apple Mail with categories: Redesign comes to Germany as Beta

Interested users can now test the larger innovations of iOS 18.4 & Co: Apple has a first public beta version of iOS 18.4, Ipados 18.4 and MacOS 15.4 Sequoia in the night of Tuesday. released for download. Part of these updates is Apple Intelligence, which works for the first time in these operating system versions, including in German. In addition, the AI ​​system is generally available in the EU. The other great innovation is the redesign of Apple Mail, which the manufacturer also brings to Germany and for the first time on all three device categories.

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New Apple Mail sorted by categories

The central innovation are categories in which emails are automatically sorted. These include “transactions”, “news” and “advertising”. The inbox should only show “important” and thereby ensure a faster overview. However, “important” emails from the other categories also appear as time -critically classified. Since iOS 18.2, the new Apple Mail has already been used on the iPhone if the operating system or the app is set in English, but sorting with e-mails in languages ​​other than English works.

The test run for an extended language support, including German, also begins with the new betas. The emails incorrectly sorted by the Apple automatic can be assigned manually by the user to another category.

Apple Mail sometimes had problems in the first beta of iOS 18.4 to distinguish properly between “news” and “advertising”, as testers report. Subscribed newsletters can therefore find themselves in “Advertising” – a mistake that Gmail still likes to make, although such categories have been around for many years.

Apple Intelligence uses the new mail app to contribute the e-mail summary and is intended to sort important emails with priority.

“Branded Mails” with company logos

The categories are active by default and are likely to scare some users who are used to Apple Mail, which has been largely constant for years. At least Apple seems aware: there is not only its own category that simply shows “all e-mails”, but it can be switched back to the old, familiar list display at any time.

Within the categories, Apple Mail bundles all emails of a sender. In addition, icons play a more prominent role: even more company logos should join the contact photos of individual senders. Apple calls the logos for such “branded mails” from its own servers. This should function in a data protection -friendly manner through the use of the cryptographic technology “private information retrieval” in conjunction with homomorphic encryption – Apple does not experience which company logos are called up. The technology apparently replaces the previous system based on Bimi.