Tip: only check important emails with VIP contacts in Mail

During the day you can receive a lot of emails in your Mail app. But they are not always important. With VIP contacts in Mail, you only get worthwhile notifications. That is how it works.

VIP contacts provide an overview in Mail

Work emails, offers, date picks and more: endless emails flow into your inbox every day. To keep an overview, it can therefore be useful to use the VIP function of the Mail app.

This allows you to collect all emails of your own choosing very important persons in a separate folder, so you don’t have to search an overflowing inbox for which emails matter. If you not only want to improve the overview in Mail but also want fewer notifications, you can easily set up a separate notification for VIP emails. This way you can turn off the notifications for other emails, and you are less likely to be inundated with emails.

This is how you add and remove VIP contacts

To take advantage of VIP email notifications, you must first add VIP contacts. Please note that the contacts you want to set as VIPs contain an email address, otherwise they cannot be added.

1. Open the Mail app and go to ‘Mailboxes’;
2. If Vip is not yet in the list, first tap ‘Edit’ and tick ‘Vip’ and press Done;
3. Select ‘VIP’ in the list and select press ‘Add VIP’;
4. Select the person (s) you want to set as a VIP.

As soon as you have added all important contacts to the VIP list, emails from these people will now appear in this separate folder. Do you want to remove someone from your VIP list for some reason? You do this as follows.

1. Open the Mail app and go to ‘Mailboxes’;
2. Tap the i icon next to the VIP inbox;
3. Swipe the contact you want to delete to the left and press delete;
4. To delete multiple contacts at the same time, press ‘Edit’ and select the people. Then tap ‘Done’ again.

Set notifications for VIP contacts

Now that you’ve added all the important people to your VIP contacts, you can customize the notifications for your VIP emails. With VIP contacts you will receive a notification that you can personalize yourself, so that you are immediately informed and can respond quickly.

1. Open Settings and go to ‘Mail’;
2. Tap on ‘Notifications’ and select ‘VIP’;
3. Here you can adjust the way of notification, the notification sound and the preview.

To then no longer receive notifications from other emails, turn off the switch behind ‘Allow notification’ for all accounts such as ‘Gmail’. Your e-mails will come in as usual, but you will no longer receive a notification with every e-mail.

Also rests on your Apple Watch

If you own an Apple Watch, it can be nice to only receive notifications from VIP contacts here. This way you reduce the number of notifications on your smartwatch, but you also get what is worthwhile for you.

To do this, go to the Watch app on your iPhone and tap ‘Notifications’ in the ‘My Watch’ tab. There, select the menu for Mail and tap ‘Custom’ here. Then turn off notifications for all mailboxes by clicking on them and turning off the switch. Similarly, turn on notifications for VIPs.

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