Love it or hate it the Mail "Categories" feature is now part of macOS Sequoia 15.4

[Rod]

The new update; macOS Sequoia 15.4 introduces the Mail Categories feature that had already been included in the recent iOS update.
Obviously some people are going to love it and some will hate it.
Personally I love it and have used the equivalent "Smart" sorting feature on Spark email for years. It's one of the things I like best about it but it can be easily turned off in Mail;

View attachment 40189

It' such a deal maker for me that given Spam Seive does not yet work with Spark I might just consider swapping back to Apple Mail.

What do users think, love it or hate it?
I might add, unlike iOS Mail, once Categories is disabled in macOS Mail it stays that way.

 

[Jimmysb]

Not my thing, old fashioned, and use to managing and organising my email, file data folders etc, and will continue to do so manually. That way I will know where everything is

 

[IWT]

I hate it. Well, of course, that is an exaggeration. It just doesn’t suit me at all. This is because, since I retired, almost all my emails are from friends, family, Journals, News sources and day-to-day things.

So I have no need for categories as all emails are dealt with more or less immediately. And even with it switched off, it still looks too fussy, if you get my meaning.

Ian

 

[ferrarr]

I'm letting it control my email use on my Mac, but not on my iPhone. I only access my email on the phone, when I'm out, and are waiting for something important to come in. I've been trying to adjust my use of my Mac. I guess I'm not as old fashioned.

 

[Rod]

even with it switched off, it still looks too fussy, if you get my meaning.

Ian, what did you mean fussy I'm a bit of a rank amateur with Apple Mail. I've used everything but for years. This is first time I've looked at Mail as a prospective option for very long time.

 

[pm-r]

What do users think, love it or hate it?

As I mentioned in the other thread:
Updates to macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS.

It seems, at least on my 2020 27" iMac, most if not all, of the new additional Mail.app features can be hidden or disabled according to the user's Mail display preferences.

It's a nice relief that the Apple developers provided the choice for the user.

But it would sure be nice if they would bring back the flagging messages and have at work like it used to in previous Masil/app versions in Mac OS versions. Having a show and columns when using listview was ideal for my use, it is now completely useless and hard to sort on if not impossible.

If anyone knows a method to enable it to operate and display properly, I would appreciate knowing how.



- Patrick
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[IWT]

Ian, what did you mean fussy I'm a bit of a rank amateur with Apple Mail. I've used everything but for years. This is first time I've looked at Mail as a prospective option for very long time.

By “fussy” I simply meant that it was different from what had gone before and the little “badges” adjacent to each email just seemed unnecessary.

Ian

 

[ferrarr]

little “badges” adjacent to each email just seemed unnecessary.

It depends how you have mail set to display.

 

[Rod]

But it would sure be nice if they would bring back the flagging messages and have at work like it used to

Just remember I havent used Apple Mail in years so I'm a complete novice with this app but how did it used to work?
I mean I can flag emails;

And Flag categories (colours) appear in the sidebar;


How does this differ from before?

 

[pm-r]

Just remember I havent used Apple Mail in years so I'm a complete novice with this app but how did it used to work?

Using Mail's List View that I prefer, the old Mail.app version had an optional column available for including various flag colours depending on your settings, so it was very easy to scan up or down the list with that column selected to show any flagged messages or to keep them grouped.

It's just another example of Apple dropping or changing a feature to a non-workable state that users like me used fairly extensively.



- Patrick
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[Rod]

Using Mail's List View that I prefer, the old Mail.app version had an optional column available for including various flag colours depending on your settings, so it was very easy to scan up or down the list with that column selected to show any flagged messages or to keep them grouped.

It's just another example of Apple dropping or changing a feature to a non-workable state that users like me used fairly extensively.



- Patrick
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I see. I guess that is different. For me the way it works now is actually an improvement on how Spark displays flagged emails. In spark there is only one colour and all flagged mail is displayed as one list. So, for me, despite its shortfall for you, it's an improvement. I'm seriously considering swapping back to Mail at the moment. I might just make it my default for a while an see if I can find any faults I can't accept.