How to unsubscribe from mailing lists with 3D Touch

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unsubscribe with 3d touch
This method for canceling mail subscriptions doesn't even take one click.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Mail app on iOS has a built-in unsubscribe feature that works great. Just a couple of clicks and Mail will attempt to remove you from unwanted future correspondence. But even that method is slow compared to the no-click unsubscribe method that we’ll share with you today.

Unsubscribe from mailing lists with 3D Touch

Mail’s auto-unsubscribe feature detects emails sent from mailing lists and puts a button at the top of the screen offering to unsubscribe. In contrast, this method requires that you spot these mass mails, and automatic mails yourself. That’s so easy, though, that even an Android user could manage it — they’re the mails that Twitter sends with suggestions on who to follow, or promos from PR companies. You’ll also need to find an “unsubscribe” link in the mail (Mail’s auto-unsubscribe features manages without these links).

But once you manage all that, this really is just about the simplest thing ever. You just force-touch the unsubscribe link. That’s it. Really. You don’t even have to do that thing where you press harder to load the page in a regular view. Because the best practice for mass-mail services is to unsubscribe you immediately upon clicking a link, just the 3D-Touch press is enough to load the target link and strike you from the list. Technically, it’s not even one click. It’s just a casual caressing of the screen.

The one-click unsubscribe method

You have to hope, of course, that the mail came from a list that implements such a friendly subscription-canceling method. But even if you come across one that forces you to tap another link on the resulting page, then all you have to do is “pop” that page into a full Safari web view in order to click that link. It’s still a quick method.

And if you end up at one of those hostile sites which requires that you fill in your email address to unsubscribe? Screw ’em. I send them straight to my Sane Black Hole, which is a great service from SaneBox that adds senders to a blacklist, and destroys all future mail from them before you ever see it.

I’d like to point out one irony before we go. The idea for this tip was sent to me by our Dear Leader, Leander Kahney, who has the most out-of-control email inbox I have ever seen. If I catch sight of his iPhone out of the corner of my eye, then I swear it looks like a pile of unopened envelopes, and brightly-colored leaflets about pizza and garden furniture. There’s something really wrong there. I can feel it.

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