Mail is an unruly little app. With this week's tips, we'll teach you how to grab it by the reigns and tame the default Mail app on your iOS device. Read on to find out how to keep image attachments from automatically downloading to your phone, read email more effectively with your two hands (yes, both!), and manage links sent to you in an email. We'll even show you how to handle email attachments.
If you're not on an unlimited data plan, then it's important that you pay attention to how much data your phone is chugging through. You can set the Mail app in iOS to ignore remote images by launching the Settings app, tapping Mail > Contacts > Calendars and toggling the Load Remote Images switch it off. Afterward, Mail will then refrain from downloading remote images.
If you decide you want to see an image, tap the transparent placeholder and it will be downloaded.
Compatibility: iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
Sometimes, we only have two fingers available to cycle through content. Fortunately for you, a two finger double tap zooms in on a part of an email message, so you don't have to sit there and strain your eyes. Double tapping again zooms out.
To zoom in and out on an iPad (and iPhone and iPod touch), you'll have to pinch your way to freedom from squinty eyes.
Also, double tapping on a text column on any iOS device will resize it to fit the screen.
Compatibility: iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
If you're not sure where a particularly email takes you, tap and hold onto the link to see the URL. You'll also be presented with a dialog box that asks you to open or copy the link.
If you want to return to reading email you have two options: 1) push the Home button and then relaunch Mail or 2) push the Home button twice and locate the Mail app and tap its icon in the task manager if you are running iOS 4 or later.
Compatibility: iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
Email attachments don't automatically download. To do so, simply tap the attachment link and it will be downloaded to your iOS device. If the file type isn't support by an app on your device you will see its name, but you won't be able to do anything with it.
If you know you have multiple apps installed that support the same document type here is a nifty little trick worth remembering: touch and hold the attachment's icon on an iPad and you will see a pop-up that says "Open In...". Select the app you want to use.
The iPhone and iPod touch are slightly different. You'll get a pop-up that has these options: Quick Look, Open in "xxx" (in our case xxx was DocsToGo), and "Open In..." select the first one to view a supported document, the second to open the document in the most recently used app to display that file type or the last one to select another app to view it with.
The Open In... option allows you to select the app you want to use to open an attachment.
Compatibility: iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
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Jeffrey Hyde
February 25, 2011 at 10:22am
Dude - get a dictionary. Kings "reign", horses have "reins." Kind of embarrassing when your headline has a misused word!
