One feature iPhone (and iPad) owners have been asking Apple to implement in iOS for a while now is the possibility to create “rules” for the Mail application, just like on the desktop. On Mac OS X, users can assign rules to incoming messages on Apple Mail so that certain pre-defined actions will be applied to messages that meet specified criteria. Rules allow users to quickly process emails and mark messages from frequent sources as important, for example. The customization offered by rules on the Mac made many users wish the feature would find its way to iOS. It never happened.

Luckily for us, Cydia developers have (once again) fixed what Apple didn’t want to. Or maybe is just waiting to implement in iOS 5. Whatever the reason is, Mail Rules is a package sold at $1.99 in the Cydia Store that allows you to play around with a pretty decent list of rules to assign to your incoming mail messages, organized by account. This tweak doesn’t come with the plethora or criteria and actions found in Apple Mail for the Mac, but it provides a good amount of options that should be enough on the iPhone and iPad. The Rules options can be accessed directly from the iPhone Settings app, and they support the following criteria: Sender, Recipient, Account, Headers, Subject. Actions you can apply to messages include: Delete Messages, Mark as read and unread, Copy or Move to folder. Setting up a new rule takes seconds.

Mail Rules works fine on the iPhone and iPad and, most of all, rules really go through. I’ve been running the tweak for over a week now, and the few rules I created allowed me to keep a cleaner inbox, when possible, thanks to actions that automatically delete or mark certain messages as read. At $1.99 in the Cydia Store, it should be a no-brainer if you’ve always wanted to have Rules on iOS.