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Proton Mail Finally Sorts Your Emails Automatically—Without Reading Them
Proton is rolling out a new feature in Proton Mail that is reminiscent of what has existed in Gmail for ages: organizing emails by categories. As a result, your emails are displayed across 6 different views, with messages sorted automatically. But be careful: privacy first, the sorting is done without reading your emails.
Six categories, including two hidden by default
Proton has finally added a long-awaited feature, and I would even say, one that has been planned for a long time. In fact, it was already listed in the roadmaps published in fall 2025 and then in spring 2026. I am referring here to email organization by category.
Each new message received is automatically placed into one of the six categories offered by default by Proton:
- Main: personal and work messages, important notifications. Always enabled, it cannot be hidden or disabled.
- Réseaux sociaux: notifications from social networks.
- Promotions: commercial offers, discounts, and sales.
- Newsletters: editorial content and non-promotional information.
- Transactions: reservations, invoices, and orders.
- Updates: automated confirmations and alerts.
As shown in the image below from my Proton account, there are two categories hidden by default: Transactions and Updates.
The classification performed by Proton is not fixed: a misfiled message can be moved. As for your email history, note that your existing emails will not be retroactively reclassified; they are assigned to the Main category. In any case, this category view is optional: you can enable or disable it at any time.
Sorting based on metadata, not content
When talking about Proton, privacy and respect for user data are obviously part of the conversation. So how can Proton classify emails that it claims it cannot read? In reality, Proton says it categorizes messages without reading their content and relies on metadata. Proton also takes this opportunity to remind users that its encryption model remains unchanged.
However, Proton does not specify which metadata is used. One can imagine that Proton looks at the sender's domain, mailing list headers (List-Unsubscribe, List-ID), or automated sending markers such as Precedence: bulk. These are signals that can be used without ever reading the message content, but these are only my assumptions.
As usual, Proton did not miss the chance to take a swipe at Gmail and Outlook, pointing out that Google displays ads in the Promotions and Social tabs. Finally, note that all ProtonMail accounts can benefit from this new feature, both on the web and on mobile.
And you, will you enable categories in Proton Mail?
