How to Turn Off Email Threading on iPhone

If your iPhone Mail inbox stacks every reply into one conversation and you would rather see each message on its own line, the fix is a single switch. Go to Settings > Apps > Mail and turn off Organize by Thread. Your inbox then lists every email separately, newest first, and nothing is deleted. These steps are for the built-in Mail app on current versions of iOS; Gmail and Outlook have their own settings, covered further down.

Turn off Organize by Thread

Apple documents this switch on its Mail guide for iPhone.

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Scroll down and tap Apps. You will see an alphabetical list of the apps on your iPhone.
3. Tap Mail. If the list is long, type “Mail” into the search field at the top of the Apps screen.
4. Scroll down to the Threading section and turn off Organize by Thread. The switch turns gray when it is off.

5. Open the Mail app and pull down on the inbox to refresh it. Replies that used to sit under one subject line now appear as separate rows.

On older versions of iOS, Mail is listed directly in Settings rather than under Apps. The path there is Settings > Mail, and the Threading section and its switches sit in the same place on that screen.

What changes in your inbox

With threading off, Mail sorts every message by the time it arrived. A conversation with six replies becomes six rows, and each row shows its own sender and preview text. Your sent replies stay in the Sent mailbox instead of appearing inside the conversation.

A few things do not change:

• No mail is deleted or moved. The switch only changes how the Mail app displays messages. Turn it back on and the conversations regroup.
• Your other devices keep their own view. The setting lives on this iPhone. An iPad, a Mac or a webmail page signed in to the same account keeps whatever view it already uses.
• It applies to every account in Mail. The switch sits in the main Mail settings, not inside one account, so iCloud, Gmail, Outlook.com and work accounts added to the Mail app all follow it.

To bring conversations back later, return to the same screen and turn Organize by Thread on again.

The other Threading switches

The Threading section holds more than one switch. Some of them only matter while Organize by Thread is on, so it is worth knowing what each one does before you decide to turn grouping off completely. Labels can differ slightly between iOS versions.

Setting	What it does	When it helps
Organize by Thread	Groups replies with the same subject into one conversation	Long back-and-forth exchanges with one person or group
Collapse Read Messages	Shrinks messages you have already read inside an open thread so the unread ones stand out	Busy threads where you only care about the newest replies
Most Recent Message on Top	Puts the newest reply at the top of an open thread instead of the bottom	When scrolling to the end of a thread is the main annoyance
Complete Threads	Shows related messages from other mailboxes, such as Sent or an archive folder, inside the thread	Seeing your own replies in context without opening Sent

Depending on your iOS version, the same part of Mail settings may also show options for what happens to muted threads and to mail from blocked senders. Those only affect conversations you have muted or people you have blocked.

Keep threads but make them easier to read

Many people turn threading off because a thread opens at the oldest message and they have to scroll to find the latest reply. If that is the only problem, you can keep conversations grouped and change how they open instead.

• Newest reply first: turn on Most Recent Message on Top. Every thread then opens on the latest message.
• Less clutter inside a thread: turn on Collapse Read Messages so earlier messages shrink to a single line.
• Fewer stray replies: turn off Complete Threads if you do not want your sent messages mixed into the conversation.

Here is how to choose. A parent who gets a dozen replies on one school email chain each evening usually does best with threads on and Most Recent Message on Top turned on. Someone who files each message into a folder, or forwards single emails to a task list, usually prefers threads off, because every message then has its own row to swipe, flag or move.

Opening and muting a single conversation

While threading is on, tap a grouped conversation in the inbox to open it, then tap any message in it to read it in full.

If one busy thread is the real problem, muting it may be enough. Swipe left on the conversation in the inbox, tap More, and look for a Mute option. A muted thread stops sending notifications for new replies but stays in your inbox. The exact wording of these buttons can differ by iOS version.

Mail categories are a different feature

Recent versions of iOS can also sort your inbox into categories such as Primary, Transactions, Updates and Promotions. Apple covers this on a separate page about automatically categorizing incoming email. Categories decide which tab a message lands in, while Organize by Thread decides whether replies are grouped. Categories and threading are separate features, so turning off Organize by Thread does not change which category tab a message appears in.

Gmail and Outlook apps group mail on their own

The Organize by Thread switch only affects Apple’s Mail app. If you read your email in another app, that app uses its own setting.

• Gmail app: Gmail calls grouped replies Conversation View. The steps for the iPhone app, Android and a computer are in turning off Conversation View in Gmail. Google’s help page on Gmail conversation view explains the computer setting.
• Outlook app: Outlook for iPhone groups messages by conversation with its own switch. In the Outlook app, open Settings, tap Mail, tap Email Organization, then turn off Group emails by conversation, as Microsoft explains in turning off conversation mode in Outlook mobile. If you are adding an Outlook account to your phone for the first time, setting up Outlook email on an iPhone covers both the Mail app and the Outlook app.

A Gmail or Outlook account added to Apple’s Mail app follows the Mail setting, not the Gmail or Outlook one.

If messages are still grouped

• The inbox has not refreshed: pull down on the message list, or close Mail completely by swiping it up from the App Switcher and open it again.
• The switch did not stick: go back to Settings > Apps > Mail and confirm Organize by Thread is gray. If it turned itself back on, restart the iPhone and set it again.
• You are in a different app: check the Gmail or Outlook section above.
• There is no Threading section: make sure you opened Mail settings, not an account’s settings under Mail Accounts. On older iOS versions, open Settings > Mail instead of Settings > Apps.
• New mail is not arriving at all: that is a separate problem. See fixing iPhone Mail notifications for push, fetch and alert settings.

Mail threading questions

Can I turn off threading for only one email account?

Apple’s Mail app shows Organize by Thread only in the main Mail settings, not inside each account, so it applies to every account in the app. If you want one account grouped and another not, reading one of them in its own app (such as Gmail) is the practical workaround.

Will my Mac or iPad stop grouping too?

No. Each device has its own Mail settings. Change the setting on each device where you want separate messages.

Why does a thread include emails I already moved to another folder?

That is what Complete Threads does: it pulls related messages from other mailboxes into the conversation. Turn it off if you want a thread to show only what is in the current mailbox.

Once your inbox looks the way you want, you may also want to tidy how messages are shown and handled. You can hide the preview lines and show only subjects, stop Mail asking before it deletes a message, or learn how to edit an email on iPhone, including drafts and signatures.