How to Reorder and Hide Mailboxes in Mail on iPhone

The iPhone Mail app opens to whatever mailbox was last on screen — and if you have never changed the list, that is usually a per-account inbox buried after All Inboxes, or All Inboxes when you mostly care about one focused folder. Knowing how to reorder mailboxes in Mail on iPhone fixes that in under a minute. Apple has made the list fully editable since iOS 7, but the Edit button that controls it only appears on one specific screen, and the option to surface built-in smart mailboxes like Unread or Attachments is easy to miss the first time you look.

This guide covers the full picture: how to add the smart mailboxes Apple hides by default, how to drag any mailbox to a new position so the first tap is always the right one, and how to suppress an account inbox you rarely open so it stops crowding the top of the list. The steps apply to iOS 17 and iOS 18. Where the two versions behave differently, the platform table in section four names which is which.

The short answer#

Everything starts with the Edit button — it sits in the top-right corner of the top-level Mailboxes screen, the one that shows All Inboxes and the full list of mailboxes underneath it. You cannot reach Edit from inside a thread or from inside a single mailbox. If Mail opened somewhere deeper, tap the back-arrow in the top-left corner until the full list is visible, then tap Edit.

Once you are in Edit mode, three things become available: drag handles on the right side of every active row that let you press, hold, and drag to any position; toggle circles on the left of inactive smart-mailbox rows that let you add Unread, Flagged, Today, Attachments, and others to the active list; and toggle circles on the left of each account inbox that let you show or hide it. Tap Done to confirm and the order persists across restarts.

Before you start#

The mailbox Edit screen exists on iOS 17 and iOS 18 with the same core mechanic. Apple revised the layout in iOS 16 and made smaller adjustments in iOS 18, so the position of some rows may differ slightly from what the steps describe, but the Edit button and the drag handles work identically across both versions.

Changes to the mailbox order are stored on-device. If you run Mail on an iPad, a Mac, or a second iPhone, you will need to repeat the procedure separately on each device. The order does not sync over iCloud. Account connections sync, but the display arrangement of mailboxes within the list is local.

How to reorder mailboxes in iPhone Mail#

Work through the steps in order. Save — by tapping Done — before switching apps, so changes are not lost mid-session.

1. 1

   Navigate to the Mailboxes screen

   Open Mail. If the app launches inside a thread or a single mailbox, tap the back-arrow in the top-left corner repeatedly until the top-level list appears. You will know you are in the right place when you see All Inboxes near the top, followed by individual account inboxes, Drafts, Sent, and any other active mailboxes.

2. 2

   Tap Edit

   Tap Edit in the top-right corner. The list shifts into edit mode: every active mailbox row shows a three-line drag handle on its right edge. Greyed-out rows for smart mailboxes that are not yet active appear below the current list, each with an empty toggle circle on the left.

3. 3

   Drag to reorder

   Press and hold the three-line drag handle on the right side of any row. Keep holding until the row lifts slightly off the list, then drag it up or down. Release when it reaches the position you want. Every other row shifts to make space. You can move any row — All Inboxes, a per-account inbox, Drafts, Sent, or any smart mailbox — to any position in the list.

4. 4

   Add a smart mailbox

   Scroll down past your active rows. Below them you will see greyed-out rows for the smart mailboxes Apple does not show by default: Unread, Flagged, Today, Attachments, All Sent, All Drafts, All Trash, All Archive, and a few others depending on your iOS version. Tap the empty circle on the left of any row to enable it. A filled blue circle confirms it is now active. The mailbox appears in the main list and can be dragged to any position.

5. 5

   Show or hide an account inbox

   Your connected account inboxes also appear in Edit mode with filled circles on the left. Tap a filled circle to toggle that account inbox off and remove it from the visible list. The account remains connected and continues receiving mail; it is only hidden from the Mailboxes screen. Tap the empty circle again at any time to restore it.

6. 6

   Tap Done

   Tap Done in the top-right corner. Mail saves the new order immediately and returns to the Mailboxes screen showing your changes. The layout persists until you open Edit again and change it.

Platform differences: iPhone, iPad, and Mac Mail#

The Edit-and-drag mechanic is native to iOS and iPadOS. On a Mac, the Mail sidebar is organized differently and some smart-mailbox options that live in the iPhone Edit screen have different names or live in different menus. The table below captures the main gaps so you are not searching for a button that does not exist on the platform you are on.

What to do when Edit is missing or changes don't stick#

The Edit button disappears or does nothing for a small set of reasons, and each has a direct fix. Find the symptom you are seeing and follow the fix column.

A faster way to manage a multi-account inbox#

Reordering the mailbox list solves the navigation problem, but you still tap into each account in sequence to find the handful of threads worth answering. The list is better organized; the triage work is unchanged.

AI Emaily connects Gmail, Outlook, and IMAP accounts into a single unified inbox that surfaces threads needing action first and buries the rest — across every connected account at once, without switching between them. If you open four account inboxes each morning to locate three replies worth writing, that navigation disappears. AI Emaily is available as a native iOS app on the App Store, on the web, and as a downloadable Mac desktop app, all sharing the same connected accounts and triage layer. We build AI Emaily, and it comes with a 7-day free trial.