Get started
- Make sure your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch has the latest version of iOS or iPadOS.
- Set up your email account on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
- By default, your email account has a few different mailboxes. Learn how to move between your mailboxes and even different email accounts.
View group emails
An email thread combines all the responses from multiple recipients in a group email.
Tap to see a preview of the responses to the thread in your Inbox. Tap a response to open the email thread.
You can sort responses in your thread by most recent and keep the thread of email messages together, even if they’re in different mailboxes. Go to Settings > Mail, and tap Threading. Then choose how you want to organize your threads:
- Organize by Thread: See all responses to an email combined in one thread. Turn off to see responses as individual email messages.
- Collapse Read Messages: Collapse the email messages that you’ve already read in a thread.
- Most Recent Message on Top: See the most recent response to an email at the top of the message thread.
- Complete Threads: See all your conversations in a thread together, including email messages that are in different mailboxes and sent email messages.
Get notifications and mute responses to an email or thread
Waiting for a response to an important email? You can receive a notification when someone responds to an email or thread. Here are a few ways you can set up a notification for an email:
- As you read an email, tap the Reply button
, then tap the Notify Me button
.
- If you have an iPhone with 3D Touch*, press and hold on an email in your Inbox, then swipe up and tap Notify Me.
To change your notification settings for Mail, go to Settings > Notifications > Mail. Then make sure you have Allow Notifications enabled under VIP and Thread Notifications.
To mute an email thread, tap the Reply button , then tap Mute
.
*3D Touch is available on iPhone 6s and later (excluding iPhone SE).
Set up filters to find emails
Use filters to help you find emails that you want to read and hide the rest. You can filter email messages by unread, flagged, email addressed to you, messages from VIPs, and more. Here's how:
- Open Mail.
- Go to the mailbox you want to filter, and tap
in the lower-left corner of your Inbox.
- Tap Filtered by: Unread, then choose what you want to see in your Inbox.
- Tap Done.
To turn off the filter, tap .
Search for an email
Use search to quickly find an email. You can use Suggested Searches to quickly narrow your results. Or you can search by timeframe — for example, enter February, then tap February under the Dates category to see email from February.
To search for an email:
- Open Mail and scroll to the top of the Inbox to find the search field.
- Tap the search field, then enter what you're looking for. To search multiple accounts, tap All Mailboxes.
- If you don’t see the email that you’re looking for in the list of suggestions, tap the magnifying glass under the Search field.
To return to your Inbox, tap Cancel.
Do more with Mail
- Set up your email account on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
- Use mailboxes to organize your email on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
- Use Markup to add drawings, text, and your signature, to photos and PDFs.
- Get help if you can't send or receive email in the Mail app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.