Late last year, Apple rolled out iOS 18, a feature-packed update that made waves across the iPhone ecosystem. One of the most consequential changes for ecommerce brands? Updates to the Apple Mail app, which now includes AI-driven inbox filtering, on-device email categorization, and personalization settings that reorganize how users see (or don’t see) your emails.
These updates are great for helping users cut through inbox clutter—but they’ve introduced unexpected challenges for ecommerce brands that rely heavily on email marketing to drive sales, retention, and customer loyalty.
To get a clearer picture of what’s happening—and how brands should respond—I connected with Steven Geist from Fuel Made, who works with brands like Figs, Tuft + Paw, and Beardbrand on adapting email strategies in the wake of iOS 18.
What’s Going On With iOS 18’s On-Device Email Filtering?
1. Email Content Gets Pushed Below the Fold
One of the most disruptive changes is that Apple Mail now displays sender metadata (like name and address) across nearly 70% of the mobile screen when an email is opened. This layout pushes your actual email content mostly below the fold, meaning users have to scroll or tap “See More” just to start reading your message.
This UX change significantly lowers initial visibility for your content, making it harder for customers to engage quickly, especially with time-sensitive promotions or product drops. As a result, brands are seeing decreased readership and engagement, and in many cases, fewer clicks on CTAs placed mid or lower in the email.
2. Emails From the Same Sender Are Grouped Together
Apple now automatically clusters multiple emails from the same sender into a single thread, similar to Gmail’s conversation view. While this might streamline things for users, it means that your newest campaigns may be buried beneath older messages. This bundling makes it harder for subscribers to spot your latest promotion, and can lead to confusion when older emails display outdated information or expired offers.
3. Sometimes iOS Opens an Older Email First
Even more frustrating: iOS doesn’t always open your most recent message. Instead, Apple Mail may highlight an older email from the thread—sometimes one that’s weeks or even months old—leaving the user to scroll down to find your new content. This behavior puts time-sensitive or transactional emails at risk of being missed entirely, which can negatively impact everything from flash sale conversions to password reset flows.
4. Plain Text Emails Are Showing Incorrect Preview Text
Steven and his team at Fuel Made have spotted what appears to be a bug in how preview text is rendered in plain-text emails. Instead of showing the first line of the current email, iOS sometimes pulls the subject line from a previous message, reducing clarity and often confusing recipients. Ultimately, when preview text doesn’t match the message, open rates and trust can take a hit.
5. Images Are Not Always Loading
iOS 18 gives users greater control over how content loads—including the option to disable auto-loading of images. While this hasn’t become a widespread issue for most of Fuel Made’s clients yet, some recipients are reporting that images aren’t loading by default at all.
For brands that rely heavily on image-based emails with graphical CTAs or product visuals, this could cause significant drops in performance—especially if key messaging is embedded in images rather than live text.
How to Adapt Your Email Strategy for iOS 18
Steven shared five tactical ways ecommerce marketers can adjust their email strategies to maintain performance in this new landscape:
1. Use Live Text Over Image-Based Messaging
Apple’s AI-generated previews and image load toggles make it risky to embed important text in graphics. By using live HTML text, you ensure your core messaging appears even when images don’t—and it’s also more readable for screen readers and AI summaries. This boosts both accessibility and deliverability in Apple Mail. Plus, it protects your message when preview snippets or truncation limit what’s visible above the fold.
2. Place CTAs and Key Messaging at the Top
With iOS 18 pushing content lower on the screen and sometimes truncating messages altogether, it’s more important than ever to position your primary call-to-action (CTA) and value prop early in the email. Placing CTAs above hero images or just beneath the header ensures your audience sees critical parts of the message like time-sensitive offers and product launches without scrolling.
3. Write Subject Lines That Can Stand Alone
Because preview text is sometimes displaying incorrectly (especially with plain text emails), your subject lines need to carry the full weight of your message. Focus on clarity, urgency, and standalone value. Imagine your subject line is the only part the subscriber will see, and test them accordingly.
4. Test Emails Across Devices and iOS Versions
With rendering bugs, preview inconsistencies, and image loading issues varying across iPhones and iOS versions, cross-device testing is essential. Test emails to identify issues Apple’s native Mail app may introduce and adjust layouts or fallback text to improve consistency.
5. Adjust Segmentation to Monitor Apple Mail Users
While platforms like Klaviyo don’t yet offer filters specific to iOS 18 users, you can still segment users by Apple Mail or iOS in general. Tracking open rates, click behavior, and conversion performance among that segment will help you spot trends and quickly test adjustments to your creative or timing strategies.
Subscribe to the Shoplift newsletter
Get insights like these emailed to you bi-weekly!
{{hubspot-form}}
iOS 18 Is Changing Email—Smart Brands Are Adapting Fast
Some of these issues—like preview bugs and older email prioritization—may be fixed in future iOS updates. But ecommerce brands that wait for Apple to solve the problem risk losing engagement, sales, and customer trust in the meantime.
Instead, use this as a moment to elevate your email marketing playbook. By embracing live text, repositioning CTAs, strengthening subject lines, and testing aggressively across devices, you can stay ahead of the curve—and in the inbox.
Want to know exactly how your emails should be performing?
Fuel Made is offering a free audit to analyze your top email marketing opportunities. Their Klaviyo experts will provide clear, actionable recommendations to help your automated flows generate more revenue.
