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Freedom251 › Blog › Apple Mail

How to Add a Contact to Your VIP List in iPhone Mail

By Freedom251 Team · · 2 min read

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You add someone to your VIP list in the Mail app on iPhone by opening one of their messages and choosing Add to VIP from their contact card. Their future emails then carry a VIP flag and collect in the VIP mailbox.

Add a sender to VIP, step by step

The VIP setting belongs to a sender, not to a contact record, so you start from one of their messages rather than from the Contacts app.

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  1. Open the Mail app and open a message from the person you want to add.
  2. Tap the sender’s name or email address in the message header.
  3. Tap View Contact Card.
  4. Tap Add to VIP.

Apple’s Mail guide for iPhone describes this result: mail from a VIP is marked with a VIP flag and appears in the VIP mailbox. Apple’s guide states the purpose in one sentence: “Add important people to your VIP list, so their email messages appear with a VIP flag and in the VIP mailbox.” Once a sender is on the list, you do not need to do anything else for their new messages to be treated as VIP mail.

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What “adding a contact” does and does not mean

If you searched for “adding a contact,” you may be looking for a different action. The contact card offers two contact-management options: creating a new contact, or adding the sender’s email address to a contact that already exists. Both manage the person’s entry in Contacts. Neither one places the sender on the VIP list. VIP status is set only through Add to VIP, so you can use either option, both, or neither, and the sender will still be a VIP only after you tap Add to VIP.

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Find the VIP mailbox

If you cannot see a VIP mailbox, it may be hidden from the mailbox list. To show it:

  1. Open Mail and go to the Mailboxes list, the screen that lists your accounts’ folders.
  2. Tap Edit.
  3. Select VIP.

The VIP mailbox then appears in the list, and mail from your VIP senders is collected there.

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Change VIP alerts

You can control how you are notified about VIP mail separately from other messages. Open Mail, tap the info button beside VIP, tap VIP Alerts, and choose the alerts you want.

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Scope and limits

  • These steps apply to Apple’s Mail app on iPhone. The guidance is about that app’s built-in VIP feature.
  • iPhone supports mail from several account providers, but Apple’s account setup guidance does not establish that every provider behaves identically with VIP. If a VIP sender’s mail does not appear as expected, check the account’s settings in the Mail app before assuming the VIP setting failed.
  • Menu labels and screen order can change in future iOS updates. If a label differs, look for the same sender-to-contact-card path and the VIP controls in the Mailboxes list.

Based on Apple’s current iPhone Mail documentation, the sequence above is the complete way to designate a sender as a VIP on iPhone.

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