You Can Turn Off Apple’s New AI Features in Mail for Mac
With macOS Sequoia 15.4, Apple has fully implemented all of its new Apple Intelligence features in the Mail app. So, when you open Mail after updating to the latest OS version, the app will look completely different. You’ll see new Mail Categories, a Priority Messages field, and Email Summaries, the last two of which are powered by AI. It’s not something many people have asked for, and you might be missing the Mail app you’re used to. But the good news is that if you don’t like these features, you can easily disable them or customize them to suit your needs.
How to disable mail categories on Mac
Apple first added mail categories to the iPhone back in iOS 18.2 . After several updates, it is now in the spotlight on Mac as well. This feature automatically sorts all your emails into four neat bins: General, Transactions, Updates, and Promotions.
Apple’s positioning of this feature is a bit strange. While Apple uses on-device processing to sort these emails, it’s not actually a feature of Apple Intelligence. So disabling Apple Intelligence on a Mac won’t immediately get rid of the feature either.
The idea is that Apple does all the heavy lifting to determine which emails are most important and useful and presents them to you in the Essentials box. This mostly works, but is not always accurate.
If you want to see all of your emails at any given time, swipe right on your trackpad or Magic Mouse while hovering over the Categories tab to switch to the All Mail tab. This tab presents your messages in chronological order, as you are used to.
But this may not be enough. If you want to turn off the Categories view altogether, click the three-dot Menu button at the top of your mail list, then uncheck Show Mail Categories . After this, the mail list will return to its previous state.
How to change email category
If you like this feature and want to keep it, here’s a tip in case something goes wrong. If the Mail app isn’t classifying an email correctly, you can do a little manual manipulation and point the app in the right direction.
Right-click the email in your mail list, then select Categorize Sender . Here, select the category in which you want to place the letter.
How to turn off priority messages
When you receive an urgent email or something that Apple deems important (such as an email from your company or a family member), it will appear in the new Priority field at the top of your mail list.
If you don’t like this feature, there is a quick way to disable it. Click the three-dot menu button at the top of the Mail window, then uncheck Show priority messages .
How to disable AI summary preview
Apple now provides a short description of each email instead of the first few lines. This is also hit or miss. Like notification summaries on the iPhone, these mail summaries can sometimes work completely wrong , as the app completely changes the meaning of the message.
If you don’t like this feature, here’s what to do: Go to Mail > Preferences ( Command + Comma ) in the menu bar and switch to the View tab. Here, uncheck “Summarize message previews” to get rid of mail summaries.
How to disable all Mail AI features
Finally, there is the nuclear option. To turn off all AI features in Mail, you can simply turn off Apple Intelligence on your Mac . In one fell swoop, you can get rid of the Priority inbox, AI summaries, and the Summary button in emails, as well as hidden features like Apple Intelligence Write Tools and smart replies options.
To do this, open System Settings , go to Apple Intelligence & Siri , and turn off the Apple Intelligence switch. In the pop-up window, click “Disable Apple Intelligence” to confirm.
Of course, when you do this, you’ll also miss out on Siri’s new design, writing tools, Gemmoji, image playground, and more. But if you’re still not interested in these AI features, it’s best to just turn them off completely.