It’s honestly impressive how much a small change can derail our routine, especially when we’re used to muscle memory taking the wheel for those million and one itty bitty tasks each day no one has time to think about.
Like, say, replying to an email. It’s important, sure, but practically second nature at this point. So, perhaps to keep us all on our toes, make sure its users haven’t been zombified by the glare of their phones yet, Apple decided it’d be a good idea to switch things up with the iPhone email app’s design with this latest OS. Now I’m no designer, but I would think that putting the trash button anywhere near where people are already used to clicking would be one of the first things they teach you not to do.
Then again, we are talking about Apple; a company that prides itself on innovation and bucking conventional wisdom. So maybe we sheeple are simply missing how game-changing this UI update really is.
In the meantime, though, it’s causing a hell of a lot of frustration. Since iOS 13 rolled out last month, the iPhone’s email app now has both the trash and reply buttons housed in the screen’s bottom right corner where only the latter was before. So when people go to send a quick reply to an email, many are accidentally deleting it instead. While it’s not exactly a critical issue—users will undoubtedly burn this new muscle memory into their synapses eventually—it seems like such an obvious problem to crop up that you can’t help but wonder how this got the OK from Apple’s design team.
NBC News first reported on the story Thursday and shared some of the complaints users have posted to Twitter, including one from Fox News’ chief White House correspondent John Roberts who asked, “Who @Apple thought this was the best positioning for the trash icon in emails??”
WHY did @Apple think it was a good idea to put the trash icon in the mail app where the reply button was in the old iOS? I have been deleting all my important emails.
— Jenna Rosenstein (@JennaRosenstein) October 1, 2019
Thank you @Apple for putting the trash icon exactly where the reply button used to be in iOS 13 Mail. Wow that’s silly.
— Stretch Armstrong (@StretchArmy) October 10, 2019
Thanks @Apple for the new email app redesign— for putting the Trash can icon where the Reply icon used to be.
I’ve only archived roughly every email since. ????#musclememory
— Brittany Ward (@BrittanyWard) October 10, 2019
@Apple please rethink the placement of the trash icon…. I’ve deleted so many emails in the last few weeks lol. #Apple #MoveTrashIcon pic.twitter.com/ffYpyaSxSb
— Marcus Smith (@MarcusSmithKTLA) October 19, 2019
Word’s out on whether Apple simply didn’t catch this or was trying to streamline the app’s toolbar—I suppose it does look a bit cleaner?—or improve it in some other way. The company did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.
Let’s be real: This is definitely a first-world problem. As NBC News points out in its coverage, users can avoid this entire mix-up by enabling the app’s “ask before deleting” feature in settings. There are much, much more pressing issues going on in the world in the year of our lord 2019.
But man is it annoying.