What a BIMI logo looks like in iOS 16


This is all subject to change, of course. Currently, we're only as far as the first version of the iOS 16 Public Beta, and much could be different by the time we get to the actual final (non-beta) release version of iOS, which is said to launch late in 2022. But already, BIMI logo support is indeed in there, as you can see from screenshots of this email from Zillow, as viewed on my trusty iPhone SE (2020). Never have I been so happy so see a squiggly Z before today.

In my testing, I found that the logo shows only for mail sent to iCloud accounts; I tested this with Gmail as well (both in the iOS Mail application) and logos didn't work for any non-Apple domain recipients. Will that change? I hope so; it'd be nice if this were recipient-domain agnostic, like how Apple MPP is. Also, logos don't show when viewing the message list in your inbox -- they'd have to modify the mobile inbox layout to facilitate that, and those logos would be awfully small. For now, at least, you have to open up a message and then see if the BIMI logo displays or not, on a per-message basis. And note that when you click on the sender's name to bring up more information, the second screen talks about "Digitally Certified Email" (that's BIMI+VMC in action), the logo actually does not show on the second page -- there's a blank circle with the sender's initials, like you would see in pre-BIMI versions of this "more info" screen. Is that lack of a logo here a bug? Could be. And clicking on the "Learn More" link leads me to the Apple Support site, but seemingly not to any specific page. (I think it's safe to say that Apple will fix that link before the final release.)

A friend had mentioned that they had noted BIMI support being removed from certain iOS 16 beta releases. I'm referring to the first (and latest) public beta release here, and I suspect that they were referring to previous developer-only beta versions. So while my results don't match theirs, I have no reason to think they might have been wrong.

If you'd like to learn more about which ISPs and mailbox providers support BIMI, click here.
Post a Comment

Comments