TECHNOLOGY
Apple Mail Adds Long Needed Features Just Before Everyone Stops Using Email
Better late than never, I guess
When I gave up Gmail for Apple Mail, it certainly wasn’t because Apple has better mail features. They did not, and do not. However, as of IOS 16, several long wished for features have been added.
I do think it is a bit ironic that Apple has finally begrudged some engineering hours to the Mail app after so many of us have largely moved away from using email.
Well, most of us probably still get a lot of email. I certainly do, but I send very little. Almost all personal communication that I do now is accomplished by text, and most of the rest is on websites or in apps like Discord or Slack. The email is almost exclusively from or to businesses or is junk.
That suggests that I and people like me may not make extensive use of the IOS 16 features. For everyone else and the morbidly curious, here they are:
Undo Send
I didn’t notice this one and had to google it to find out how it works. First, in Settings->Mail you set how long you get to change your mind: 10, 20 or 30 seconds.
When you send a message after setting this, nothing obvious happens. But if you are more observant than I am, you might notice this at the bottom of the screen:
Should you click that, you will be returned to editing the last sent message. In my testing, if I sent two messages in quick succession, I could only recall the last one. That’s only slightly disappointing.
Alas, there are other opportunities to miss the opportunity to pull back your hasty missive. If, after sending it out, you immediately move to reading your next message, you won’t see that “Undo Send” because it is only displayed on message list screens. Silly, I think: why not move these to an Outbox until it’s time for each to go and have the Undo Send click take you there?
Only 30 seconds maximum?
Allowing no more than a 30-second delay seems odd to me. Why not several minutes? Well, because I might be doing mail that needs to go out now (this is just a sending delay, not a pullback of your message). So how about adding to the Send options presently triggered by long pressing on the Send arrow? The “Send Now” could and should override the Undo Send delay, but it doesn’t presently in the betas.
Smart Search Corrections
Oh, I so wish that they had left off the “Corrections” word. Searching in Apple Mail has always annoyed me, especially when compared to the ease of finding messages in Gmail. IOS is okay, but lacks the power of Gmail. MacOS mail search is very poor — I hope it will improve with Ventura but so far the betas have not been any better in this area.
Missing Recipients and attachments
That’s a nice warning feature, but it can also be annoying. I shut it off in Settings. Then I turned it on again. I don’t know what I want.
Follow up
This assumes that if I send you a new email, you should respond to me. Um, maybe, but most of my emails are just informational; links or other such things I want to send to someone who doesn’t like texts. I do not need a response.
Remind me
This is one I certainly used often in Gmail. It lets you archive a message but set a time to resurrect it to the top of your inbox. I rarely need it now, but it is nice to know that I can.
Rich Links
This makes links in Mail work as they do in Messages by showing a preview of where the link will go. Nice! About time, but nice.
BIMI Support
This isn’t quite right in the betas as yet, but it will help avoid spoofed emails by providing a link you can follow to verify that the mail really came from whence it claims. Nowadays, more protection is very welcome.
And is this new?
Maybe this has been here before, but I just noticed that if I press my return address, Hide My Email is one of the choices.
That is something I will use at times.
Turns out it was in IOS 15.
So that’s all I know so far. Do you use mail (any mail, not just Apple mail) as often as you used to?
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