There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and technology platforms implementing design changes that are widely disliked. The latest example of this phenomenon is the Apple Mail app, which has undergone a significant redesign in iOS 18, with the update also being rolled out on iPads and MacBooks.

The revamped Apple Mail design categorizes emails into groups such as Primary, Transactions, Updates, and Promotions. Additionally, it assigns contact photos to each sender, aligning with the company’s new branding features for businesses across the iOS ecosystem.

Some users find the redesign aesthetically unappealing and difficult to navigate, while others have reported missing important messages, which is understandably not ideal.

On social media, frustrated iOS users have described the update as “completely unreliable,” “indecipherable,” and “so ugly.” Some have even gone so far as to express a rather… colorful sentiment towards the app’s UX designers, wishing they would “poop hedgehogs.”

Fortunately, there is a way to reverse these updates without invoking any, ahem, unpleasantness upon the world.

• First, open the Mail app on your iOS 18 device.
• Locate the three-dot menu in the upper right corner of your screen.
• From there, select “List View” instead of “Categories” as your display option.

While this will restore your inbox to its previous setup, there is still a significant amount of visual clutter due to the presence of contact photos. Although these photos can be convenient when texting via Messages, they are less useful in the Mail app, particularly when the same icon is used for multiple types of businesses, such as tech blogs, newsletters, and retailers like H&M or Anthropologie.

To remove the contact photos from your iOS Mail app, follow these steps.

• Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
• Scroll to the bottom of the screen and find the Apps section.
• In the Apps menu, scroll until you find the Mail app (or simply type “Mail” into the search bar to save time).
• Under the Message List section, toggle off the option that reads “Show Contact Photos”.

Finally, your Mail app is clutter-free – except, of course, for those promotional emails from H&M and Anthropologie that you rarely open. Perhaps it’s time to unsubscribe from a few mailing lists? That’s a task for you to tackle on your own.