OK, let’s talk email, specifically the Mail app that comes as standard with your iPhone.
Not exactly the most exciting app, but a really important one, and actually a pretty useful
one, once you know how to properly use it.
So, in this video, I’m going to share with you 10 tips to help you get the most out of
your Mail app on your iPhone.
I’m using the latest version of iOS15 as I make this video, so do please ensure that
you’re also using the latest version, to ensure that you can do everything that we
cover in this video.
Oh, and very quickly, I’m creating lots of these tips and tutorial videos at the moment,
covering lots of different areas of iPhone, iPad and Mac usage, so if that’s something
that would be of interest to you, make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss any of them.
OK, let’s get into it.
### Tip1 - Create a VIP List
One of the biggest issues with email is the sheer volume of them, it can be really hard
to distinguish important emails from unimportant ones, and that’s not even taking spam emails
into consideration.
Your Mail app will do it’s best by default, but there’s a function that you can use
which will make it much easier and more effective, and that’s the creation of a VIP list.
To add a sender to your VIP list, open an email that they’ve sent you, tap on their
name as the sender to take you to a contact page for them, then choose Add to VIP.
A couple of things will happen now.
The first is that, if you’ve got the relevant notification setup, VIP emails will come through
as a notification on your phone, rather than simply disappearing quietly into your inbox,
so if you’re waiting on an important document from a VIP for example, that can be super
helpful.
We bought a house last year for example, and we didn’t want to be constantly checking
the email app for messages from our mortgage broker or our solicitor, so adding everyone
to the VIP list for that period of time really helped.
It also means that all emails from VIPs will come together in a special VIP inbox, which
you can access from the main Mail screen.
And VIP emails can come from multiple inboxes, and they’ll all show together here in the
VIP inbox.
So let’s say for example that you’ve got a personal email account and a work email
account.
You can have different VIPs across both of those inboxes, but they would all show together
in the VIP inbox.
To remove a VIP status, simply reverse the process that you used to make them a VIP,
find them in an email, tap on their name, then choose Remove from VIP.
The easiest way to do this is of course to head into the VIP list, so it’s useful to
have a clearout of it every now and then.
### Tip 2 - Smart Mailboxes
If you get a lot of email, prioritising and managing your email can be tricky, but Mail
can make this easy for you to do.
On the main Mail screen, if you tap Edit up in the top right corner, this is where you
can organise the order of your different mailboxes.
Bonus tip by the way, if you tap to the left of a mailbox to deselect that mailbox, you’re
not going to delete the mailbox, you’re just going to remove the shortcut to it up
here at the top, you can still access the full mailbox down at the bottom, and mail
will still show in All Inboxes.
This can be useful if you’ve got a mailbox where you get a lot of junk mail, you might
not want it taking up space up here.
But beyond that, when you press Edit, you can also add in Smart Mailboxes.
So for example, you might want a Smart Mailbox that shows you only emails received today,
or only Unread emails, or only emails with Attachments.
You can see that you’ve got a few different options to choose from.
Now we’re calling these Smart Mailboxes, really they’re filters, you’re just applying
a quick filter to help you locate things that might be of interest to you, but they can
still be super helpful, particularly if you’re not just juggling lots of email, but perhaps
lots of email across a number of different mailboxes.
To remove a Smart Mailbox, just reverse the process, tap the Edit button, uncheck the
Smart Mailbox that you no longer want.
Again, it’s not going to delete the emails or anything like that, it’s just going to
stop the Smart Mailbox from being visible to you.
### Tip 3 - Block People
If you get unwanted calls from people, you can block their number, and if you don’t
know how to do that, here’s a bonus tip, just go to the Phone app, tap on the i next
to the number, then choose Block This Caller down at the bottom.
But the same works for email, so if you’ve tried unsubscribing, and someone is still
bombarding you with emails, you can block them.
Let me show you how.
In the email app, tap on the sender of an email so that you can see their email address,
like we did before with VIP.
Underneath Add to VIP, you have the option to block them.
Now, one additional thing we need to cover with this, if we go to Settings, and then
Mail, and then scroll down to the Threading section, you’ve got Blocked Sender options,
because you can choose what you’d like the Mail app to do with blocked emails.
Now, call me old fashioned, I kind of always thought that a block would mean you literally
didn’t want to be bothered by emails from that address, and so I’d personally want
blocked emails to disappear into the bin.
But, you can choose to have them show in your inbox and simply be marked as blocked if you
wish.
The one reason for that I can think of is if you’re building a legal case against
someone sending you unwanted emails, this would allow you to flag them and keep a record
of them.
Heading back a page in Settings, you can see a list of blocked individuals.
A minor frustration here, I wish Apple would separate this out into emails and phone numbers,
as they bunch them together for some reason, and if I wanted to remove someone from the
block list, it would be much easier if you could group them, and perhaps even search
within this list.
### Tip 4 - Swipe for actions
You can swipe on an email to carry out a number of different functions without having to go
into the email itself.
By default, if you swipe from left to right, you have the Mark Unread option.
If you swipe from right to left, you have the delete or archive option, the Flag or
Remove Flag option, and then this ellipsis button which gives you access to a much wider
menu of options, including various reply options.
But if those swipe options aren’t really in line with the way that you use your mail
app, you can configure them.
The way that you do that is you head to Settings, then Mail, and then Swipe Options, and you
can see that you can change what you can do for both the swipe left and the swipe right.
So if I go into Swipe Left for example, you can see that I can change it from Flag to
either None, or Move Message.
If I go into Swipe Right, I can change it from Mark as Read to None, Flag, Move Message
or Archive.
So, consider this a kind of quick action that you can really configure for the way that
you want to work.
Oh, and Flagging Messages, just in case you weren’t aware is actually really helpful.
You can flag a message in any one of a number of colours, and then so long as you have the
Flagged inbox showing, you can choose to view only the Flagged messages.
I use this as an action flag, in other words, if something is flagged, it means that I’ve
got an action to complete in relation to that email.
### Tip 5 - Creating and Managing Drafts
So, let’s just make sure that you know all the tools at your disposal when working on
an email.
You almost certainly know that pressing the New Email button is going to create a new
email for you, but did you know that if you flick down on the email as you’re writing
it, it will drop the email to the bottom of your screen, allowing you full access to your
email inbox at the same time.
So, for example, if you need to check something in an email you’ve been sent, or if you
need to copy some text or information in another email, this is how you could do just that.
Then, when you’re ready to go back to your email, just tap on it down at the bottom,
and it will spring back up to the top.
Now, let’s say that part way through this, you realise that you need to go and do something
else entirely, and you want to stop writing your email, but you don’t want to lose your
progress.
Hit Cancel, then choose Save Draft.
Now, there’s a few ways for you to get back to it.
If you’ve got the Drafts mailbox showing on your device, you can access it that way.
Or, you can tap and hold on the New Email button, which will take you to your Drafts
window, showing any unfinished draft emails you currently have saved.
You can also swipe from right to left on any drafts here and delete them if you wish.
### Tip 6 - Swipe down to select multiple emails
So, this tip is actually not exclusive to mail, it will work all across iOS, but I still
meet people all the time who didn’t realise that this was a thing.
Let’s say that I want to quickly bulk select a load of emails here on this screen, perhaps
because I want to delete them.
You can tap Edit, then just swipe your finger down the toggle buttons on the left of the
screen, until you’ve selected all of the emails that you want to include.
Just like that, they’re all selected.
Easy!
### Tip 7 - Hide your Email Address
If you have an iCloud Plus subscription, which you can either pay for separately, or you
can get as part of a wider Apple plan such as the Apple One subscription, a feature that
you gain access to Hide My Email.
This is handy if you wish to sign up to services or subscriptions and you want to keep everything
separate from your main account.
The emails sent here will automatically forward to your main email address, you can reference
and manage the email address in iCloud Settings, including deleting it if you need to.
You can do this manually by going to Settings, Apple ID, iCloud and Hide My Email.
Here you can see all of the email addresses you’ve already created.
Most of the ones I’ve got here have been created automatically be Apple when I’ve
used Sign in With Apple, but you can create a new one from scratch by tapping the button
up at the top.
iCloud will create one at random, and you can change it if you wish.
You can’t specify what you want here by the way, you’re just going to be bouncing
through auto generated addresses until you find one that you’re happy with.
You can label the address and add a note on the next screen, and then the address is created.
Head into the address when it’s created, and press and hold on the email address to
copy it, allowing you to paste it into an email field if you need to.
### Tip 8 - Protect your Mail Activity
A very legitimate tool used by marketers is the ability to track you once you open an
email.
Now by track, what I mean is check to see if you’ve opened the email, check to see
if you’ve clicked on a link, and potentially even determine things like other online activity
that you’ve carried out or your location.
Understandably, you may not want this to happen, and Apple give you the ability to stop this
by setting Mail Privacy.
To do this, head to Settings, then Mail, then Privacy Protection, and ensure that Protect
Mail Privacy is switched on.
### Tip 9 - Signing a PDF, sending it back
You’ve probably heard that you can sign PDFs on your phone, but do you know how to
do it?
Let me show you.
I’ve sent myself a blank PDF form, which you can see here in my inbox.
So, what I’m going to do is press and hold on the form, to bring up some options.
You can see that the second option is Markup and Reply, I’ll tap that.
This then takes me to the Markup screen.
I’m going to use two fingers to move around the PDF, and zoom in and out like you would
on a photo.
Then here in this field for example, I might want to add some information, my name in this
case.
So I’m going to tap the Plus button, and choose text.
The text box is there, and if I tap on it again and choose Edit, I can then use the
on-screen keyboard to input my name.
As you can see, it’s a bit big, so once I’ve tapped out of it, I’ll tap on it
again to select it, then press this little text button in the left of the screen.
I’ll make it a bit smaller, and I might even change the font to a more handwriting
type of font.
This here is a checkbox, so what I’ll do here is zoom in a bit, then choose the pen
icon, ensure that I’ve got black ink selected, and then just use my finger to do a little
tick.
It’s a shame Apple haven’t included checks and crosses as default options, you can choose
things like arrows and squares already, perhaps that could come in a later update.
I’m not quite happy with the positioning of the check, so if I use this little icon
next to the ruler, that’s the select function, I can circle the tick and then select it and
move it.
Then finally, I can add my signature.
We press the Plus button, then Add signature.
If you’ve not already got one, you can sign your name using your finger in the space at
the bottom of the screen.
Resize it once you’ve added it, and then position it as you need to.
And that’s it.
When you’re finished, choose Done, and you can either save it to Files, Reply All which
is great if you need to fire this back to the person who sent it to you, or create a
whole new message with it.
The file will be sent as a completed PDF in an attachment.
### Tip 10 - Shortcuts and Siri Integration
At it’s most basic level, you can ask Siri to send an email, and Siri will guide you
through the process of sending one, all using your voice.
But, if you head into the Shortcuts app, then choose Gallery, and then search for Mail,
there are a number of curated shortcuts in here that involve the Mail app.
For example, emailing the last image in your photo library.
When you select this, you can choose who you would want to send it to, and then you can
see the command up here at the top, saying that once you’ve created this shortcut will
then carry out that action.
There’s a bunch here, from sending the attendees of an upcoming event an email to let them
know that you’re running late, to sending yourself an email with your commitments for
the day.
And as it’s shortcuts, you can really tweak and calibrate these to work exactly as you
want them to.
### End
So there you go, 10 tips to help you get more out of the Mail app on your iPhone.
What about you?
What mail tips are you using that I’ve not mentioned?
Or, if you really don’t like the Mail app, what app are you using instead?
Drop me a comment and let’s talk about it.
And as ever, if you found this video useful, do please consider leaving me a like, and
subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future.
See you on the next video.