The Mail app in iOS on the iPhone has useful swipe functions that enables you to quickly deal with email in your inbox. Configure the swipe options to work the way that suits you best.

When you view the inbox email list in the Mail app, swipe left or right over a message to display to quickly perform an action or to display one or more buttons that enable you to perform several common actions. Swipe right and a single button appears on the left, but swipe left and three different buttons appear. These buttons can be changed to alternative actions if they are not ones you need very often.

Swipe left over a message and these are the buttons that appear on my iPhone, but yours may be different because the buttons can be configured. A full swipe right to left applies the last item, Delete in this case. However, if you swipe half way across the screen then three options are displayed. There is always a More button and this displays a menu at the bottom of the screen with several common actions. Dealing with an email is sometimes a swipe and sometimes a swipe a tap. Either way it is quick and easy.

Swipe options

To configure these buttons, go to Settings on the home screen and select Mail. Tap Swipe Options and you can see two diagrams – Swipe Left and Swipe Right. Notice that there is a blue button in each case. Unfortunately, only the blue buttons are configurable, one on the left and one on the right. You get to choose one left swipe action and one right swipe action.

Choose Mail swipe actions

Tap Swipe Right and you can choose what the single configurable button does. The same button cannot be on both the left and the right at the same time. The default is to have Mark as Read on swipe right and Flag on swipe left, but they can be changed if it suits you.

To change the options it is easiest to set both to None first. Then you can choose any function for swipe right. Finally, go to Swipe Left and choose a different action.

Careful how you swipe

At first sight, you might not think there is much difference between swiping left and right, but there is a big difference in the accuracy you need to select a function. Swipe right has just one function and you can swipe, let go and the action is performed. It is useful to set this as Archive. You can then whizz through your mailbox archiving everything that is not important with a fast, lazy swipe with no need to be accurate.

With three buttons on swipe left, you have to take care, positioning the message part of the way across the screen so that you can then see tap the button you want. A long swipe left will apply the last item, Delete.

Confusing actions

If you play around with these customisable swipes, you may find them confusing. The problem is that the buttons can change all by themselves. Look at the bottom of the last screenshot:

"Accounts that include Archive as a default action for swiping left will offer Delete for swiping right."

This means that sometimes swiping right will archive an email and sometimes it will delete it. You won't know until you try it!

• iCloud: Swipe right to archive, swipe left to delete
• Gmail: Swipe right to Delete, swipe left to archive

Without changing Mail swipe settings, opposite actions are performed with different email accounts. This is weird and confusing, so take care. It is easy to forget which email account you are looking at and delete when you meant to archive, and archive when you want to delete. You won't lose any emails, but it means you have to go to your inboxes and open the Trash or Archive, then find the email and move it back to the inbox. It's a pain.