The Mail app on the iPhone is a workhorse, but it rarely gets much love from Apple. With iOS 16 though, Apple is bringing many quality of life improvements to Mail, like email scheduling, recall, and reminders, to make the app more competitive with feature-rich email clients like Spark.
While there’s a lot of great stuff in the new Mail app in iOS 16, it’s currently only available as a public beta, and set to be released in the fall. If you do have the beta, here’s what you can expect:
Schedule your emails
Finally, the ability to schedule emails comes to iPhone and iPad. Gmail users who hate using the Gmail app on the iPhone can rejoice. Once you have composed an email, tap and hold the Send button. Below the “Send Now” button, you’ll see options to send the email at night, the next morning, or at a custom time of your choice.
Recall emails
Undo Send in Apple Mail works just like it does in other apps like Gmail. After sending an email, you have 10 seconds to reverse it. If you tap the “Undo Send” button from the bottom toolbar, Apple will cancel the message.
Get reminders about emails
There are times we don’t want to deal with an important email right at this exact moment—but you want to make sure you don’t forget about it entirely. The Mail app now lets you set reminders for any email (even if you haven’t opened them). Swipe left on the email, and tap the “Later” button. You can now choose to be reminded about this email in an hour, later in the day, the next day, or at a custom time.
Mail finally gets smarter search suggestions
One of the things that Mail has struggled with is Search (Gmail’s forte). Apple is making the search process in Mail a lot less frustrating. When you type, you’ll get intelligent search results that account for your typos, as well as synonyms. You’ll also find rich content for shared media and messages as soon as you start typing the search phrase.
Set boundaries with work using Focus
Using the new App Filters feature in Focus, you can choose a mail account to associate with a Focus. When the Focus is enabled, you’ll only get notifications from the selected account, and notifications from other accounts (like your personal account) will be muted. It’s a great feature, and one that could make more people start using Focus on their iPhone.
Go to Settings > Focus > Choose Focus > App Filters > Mail to set this up.
Other quality of life changes
The new Mail app is full of little quality of life changes, too, including:
Follow-up: This feature allows you to move sent email messages to the top of your inbox so you can quickly send a follow-up message.
Missing details notification: You’ll now get notified when a message is missing a recipient or attachment.
Rich link: You can add rich link previews to your email, adding more context at a glance.
Key sharing in Wallet: Keys from the Wallet app can be shared using the Mail app.