The iOS 18.3 update was chock full of surprises, not all good, and from the chatter I'm seeing online, I'm not alone in that opinion. It was a frustrating experience to say the least. Most notably for many, the mail changes were the worst part of it. Mail in iOS 18.3 now automatically categorizes your inbox for you and only shows you what Apple has deemed important in your inbox by default. You can change it back, kinda sorta, but life is hard enough without Apple making half of your inbox appear to disappear overnight. A change like this needs to be optional, not automatic, but it wasn't, so here's a brief summation of the changes you'll see, and some suggestions to regain order.
First things first though, a new update for iOS and iPadOS, 18.3.1, is already out, and you should install it immediately. It addresses both performance and security issues introduced by 18.3. According to Forbes, it's an emergency patch that fixes a security issue that’s already being exploited, and “an Apple Intelligence bug that may have been introduced.” the iOS 18.3.1 update fixes a flaw in Accessibility where a physical attack can disable USB Restricted Mode on a locked device. “Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals.” What this means in a nutshell from a security standpoint is that anyone could plug a device or cable into your USB or Lightning port and copy your data, even if your iPhone or iPad is locked. Yikes, this needs to be addressed as quickly as possible.
The 18.3.1 update also fixes recent performance issues introduced with 18.3. So far it seems quick and stable, but the jury's still out. Fingers crossed.
Okay, now let's get to the email "enhancements" that they've introduced. It reminds me of their threads change, Apple seems bound and determined to reimagine email, not sure why, but they are. I’m a straight up chronological inbox guy, anything else tips over my brain. If you're the same, here's what to do.
In the top right corner of your inbox(es), you should see an ellipsis (...), tap on that and change the setting to List View from Category View. This will repopulate your inbox(es) with all of your email messages. If you have more than one email account, you'll need to do this for all of your inboxes.
You can also get rid of those inbox category icons as well by turning off contact photos in Settings/Apps/Mail. They still show up in the emails themselves, but this gets rid of them in the list view. I don't need or want to see stars, moons and clovers anywhere other than in my bowl of Lucky Charms. Note, actual contact photos will still show up in your emails, as do their little category icons, this fix just removes them from your inbox for a cleaner view.
Next, emails that Apple deems "needs responding too" appear at the top of your inbox now. This is a similar fix to getting rid of the contact icons, go to Settings/Apps/Mail, then turn off “follow up suggestions” and they'll go away. Basically, turn everything on that page off except "notify before delete", unless you like living dangerously lol.
There's also a new feature, or bug, in Calendar. After entering a new event, Apple Intelligence picks up on any text messaging or email regarding the event and prompts you with calendar inbox messages. Ideally this is a good thing, but when I enter an event like "Lunch at 12:30 with John Doe", I don't need a message that says "Text from John Doe says lunch at 12:30" in my calendar inbox after I've created the event. It used to prompt me with the text details while I was creating the event, telling me after the fact is just superfluous and annoying. Perhaps the next update will return this feature's usefulness, we'll see.
Lastly, these updates will toggle on Apple Intelligence by default, even if you previously had it switched off. If you'd like to keep it off, go to Settings/Apple Intelligence and Siri, and toggle it off. It's still in beta, so I keep it off. I did turn it on briefly when I test drove one of the new intelligent features, Image Playground. Kinda cool, it generated a pretty funny profile sketch for me that's mostly right. Mostly. Lord knows how intelligent it actually is, and what info it reports out (see bug notice above), so I turned it back off. I'll be sticking with my own lack of intelligence for now.
It shouldn't be this hard, Apple. Offer me things, don't force me to recover from them.
That is all.
