Hi this is Gary with MacMost Now.
On today's episode let me show you how to filter iCloud email before it gets to your
iPhone.
If you use iCloud email and you are getting the email on your Mac using the Mail app you
can use Rules to set all sorts of filters.
You can filter out email into different folders, have it color it to different things, and
it is all great if you are using the Mac.
But if you are using an iOS device, an iPhone or an iPad, you don't have the ability to
set rules up.
So you get all of your email into your inbox and it doesn't get filtered like you might
be used to on your Mac.
There is no way to fix this on the iOS device because the Mail app just doesn't have rules.
But you can kind of fix this by going into iCloud.com where you can set rules.
So here I have simply gone to iCloud.com and signed on with my Apple ID that's for my iCloud
account.
Now in here I can go into Mail and I can view mail.
This is all done on the Safari web browser on my Mac and it looks really like the Mail
app but it is not.
It is on the web browser.
Now in here I've got a Settings button.
I'm going to hit that and I can go to Rules.
This looks a lot like the Rules inside of the Mail app on your Mac except that these
rules will be applied on the server before the mail ever gets to you.
So if you set a rule here it will apply if you get the email on your Mac but also will
apply if you are getting the email on your iPhone or iPad.
For instance I can add a rule and you can see it is more limited than using the Mail
app on your Mac but you can still do some things.
You can do "is from", "is addressed to", "has subject containing", so I can have subject
containing and then do something like project alpha.
Anything that has something with project alpha in it I will move to a folder and I'll create
a folder called project alpha.
It creates that rule and I hit Done and you can see I've created that folder as well.
So any email I get in now will automatically go into this folder and not remain in the
inbox.
Now I can also set up rules that do other things.
Like for instance instead of move to folder I can move it directly to the trash or forward
it.
I can choose a folder and I can choose Junk as one of the folders.
So if you are getting a lot of spam email from a particular address or something or
just something I don't want to see on my iPhone or iPad I can set up a rule to move it to
trash.
If it is spam I can move it to junk or I can move it to some other folder if I want to
even including the Archive folder so basically just archiving it directly.
Now if you never thought about this before you might be wondering about what the big
deal is.
Well, the big deal is that you don't have any filtering on the Mail app on the iPhone
or iPad.
So the ability to do filtering before it gets to your iPhone or iPad on the server, on the
iCloud server, is a big deal because you can set up these rules and use them like you might
be used to on your Mac.
There is not as many rule sets available and not as many options but you definitely can
do some things to make your life a little easier using email on iOS devices.
Now if you are not using iCloud email you can still do this with a lot of other systems.
For instance, for gmail even if you always get your gmail email on your iPhone if you
just one time login to the gmail web interface you can go in there and there is all sorts
of filters that you can set up.
Those will all happen on the server before they get to your iPhone just like these iCloud
rules as well.
Other email services may offer similar things that filters email on the server before you
actually view it in your email client.
I hope you found this useful.
Until next time this is Gary with
MacMost Now.