How can I remove icons from my iPhone mail list?

Lucy, I, too, am a photographer and found the unsolicited introduction of icons and categories on my iPhone, consuming substantial real estate, a major irritant. Sometimes, analysts and programmers get carried away with what can be done in code they overlook the effects of what they are doing. I’m glad I was able to help.

I'm with you - ridiculous icons! I am so fed up with getting force-fed updates and 'upgrades' if Apple wants to offer me a new feature then they should explain its benefits and give me the option to accept or REFUSE. The tyranny of rubbish!

Thanks to the folks who provided guidance on removing these ridiculous babylike icons. Also, can’t think of any reason why I would want Apple to automatically categorise my mail for me. As many people stated below, we are not children.

jonfandango wrote:

Thanks to the folks who provided guidance on removing these ridiculous babylike icons. Also, can’t think of any reason why I would want Apple to automatically categorise my mail for me. As many people stated below, we are not children.

It never ceases to amaze my how people assume that their wants and needs are shared by everyone else. I've been using Spark as my email client for years specifically because it categorized my email. Why should I have to do menial filing tasks? Isn't that why we invented computers in the first place?

And I'm most definitely not a child.

So I got this since my iPhone updated to ios 18.3, and I checked the solution above - interesting enough, this settings menu item does not appear with my phone set up for Italian language. This sounds bizarre, one would assume the menu items for generic settings are the same for every location. Any help appreciated.

That doesn't remove the icons from mail messages when you open them.

And (for me) the icons are incorrect as often as not. e.g., the Financial Times is a newspaper, not a bank.

Fine if Apple wants to let me do my own categorisation, but their ham-fisted approach is anti-helpful.

Also, if we want to have photos on our contacts, it's annoying that we have to get rid of that, something that we might find useful, in order to get rid of this annoying and not-ready-for-prime-time feature.

Reply to Jendev5

Does this work only with iPhone 16 Pro ? I turned off "show contact photos " and I'm using list view on my iPhone 14 and it's still showing the icons . They're a light blue background with a white image ~ looks like buildings , three different senders with the same icon .

iPhone 14 v 18.3.1

Not only are the icons a wasted feature, so, too, is the solution - to remove contact photos - which neglects the word ‘icons’ in the selection. Apparently forgotten is the adage of making things simple.

To Apple:

Team: you should not add needless features like cartoon icons in mail.

Very distracting, and puts the burden on users to even describe the intrusive issue, much less

figure out how to take it down.

Remember Steve Jobs and the design minimalism that's a core value at Apple.

FIREWIRE100 wrote:

To Apple:

Team: you should not add needless features like cartoon icons in mail.

Very distracting, and puts the burden on users to even describe the intrusive issue, much less

figure out how to take it down.

Apple doesn't read here in this user-to-user forum for feedback or suggestions. You can, however, let them know your thoughts here:

Product Feedback - Apple

FIREWIRE100 wrote:

To Apple:

Team: you should not add needless features like cartoon icons in mail.

Very distracting, and puts the burden on users to even describe the intrusive issue, much less

figure out how to take it down.

Remember Steve Jobs and the design minimalism that's a core value at Apple.

The answer is in the top rated post at the top of this page, that you apparently skipped over.

Thank you! It worked perfectly.

Thanks. What a ridiculous feature.

Thanks for that helpful hint. I'm not a child, I don't need cartoon like icons to show me what type of email I'm getting. How ridiculous. Glad to see you gone thanks again.