How to Change Mail App Badge Counts to All Unread

by Rian

With the introduction of Mail app categorizations in the iOS 18, Apple is now walking the same path other email services have been on for decades and equally created a gimmick — auto email categorizations. With or without AI, I’ve never seen email categorizations work properly in any context, let alone professional one. Had any tech giants have the technology to create an email butler, we would have seen it first changing the tide of losing fight that is the spam emails.

In any case, email categorization is now a “thing” on both iOS, as of 18.4, and macOS, 15.4. One problem I noticed with the new update was that even if you disable categorization, * the badge count doesn’t return to non-category. I suspect there could be some use cases where this is handy, but for users who wanted to return to the previous setup would want the badges to return as well.

*In case you are looking for an option to disable the category views, on both iOS and macOS, the option is in the Inbox view from the Mail app, click More (three dots).

On iOS, the settings for badge count is in Settings > Apps > Mail > Notifications > Customize Notifications, and select “All Unread Messages”. On macOS, in Mail app’s Settings > General, and change unread count to “Inbox Only”.

Again, I believe some may be able to put it into good use. Apple Intelligence has been a slog to put it mildly, and I can’t speak for what it will be in the future. But seeing as where it is now, and seeing as how no other services have been able to fix “category” features, I don’t have high hopes for Apple to rock the boat. If anything, I want the email service providers and apps to focus and advertise its superiority of spam filters than anything else.