Paul Morris·

iOS 13 Users Are Accidentally Deleting Emails Because Of This Design Change

It is extremely fair to say that if there were a TripAdvisor-esque rating system for iOS 13, Apple wouldn’t be racking up 5-stars anytime soon. Thus far, those who have upgraded, are really not feeling it for a number of reasons, with one of those bug-bears being Apple’s decision to move the Trash icon in the native Mail app to the same location where the Reply button used to be.

Yes, that’s right, what used to be Reply is now Delete, with more and more users taking to social media to confirm that they are regularly deleting all of their important emails rather than replying to the sender. If you take a step back and considering this logically, it would be extremely easy to not have any sympathy for those people. After all, the new delete function is clearly marked with a trash icon and those users are still opting to tap it. So, it’s there own fault, right?

Well, technically, yes! But we still need to have some sympathy. Humans form habits when they do something repetitively, such as replying to emails via a button which has always been located in one place. Once those habits are formed, they override intentional human behavior, meaning that it becomes pure instinct to tap that button when the brain has decided that a reply in order. Now, unfortunately, that button doesn’t do what it used to do, meaning that users are simply allowing habits to delete their emails.

Habitual behavior and the psychology behind it is nothing new, so it’s very easy to call this an absolutely terrible design decision on Apple’s part. More and more users are likely to find this frustrating as they upgrade to iOS 13 and they will very likely use social media as a means of sounding off and letting Apple know that they aren’t exactly happy with this decision.

Let’s hope that Apple does one of two things: either stick with this design change and allow users to get over the initial frustration and form new habits, or change the button back extremely quickly before people have a chance to amend those habits and get used to the new location.

How are you finding iOS 13? Have you been deleting emails willy-nilly without meaning to?

You may also like to check out:

You can follow us on Twitter, or Instagram, and even like our Facebook page to keep yourself updated on all the latest from Microsoft, Google, Apple, and the Web.