Mail not working on iPhone after iOS 18 Update

I added / (forward slash) in the IMAP Path Prefix field in IMAP account ( settings > Apps > Mail ) as suggested here in step 5 : 8 Steps to Fix Mail App Issues After Updating to iOS 18 and the issue is now resolved.

None of this advice is relevant to this issue. As I replied to someone else above, the very same mail account can send mail using iOS mail app - which means the phone can authenticate the account AND TLS works. The issue is the the iOS and iPadOS mail app fails to get new mail from imap servers. This is a bug. . It’s very disappointing to see Apple make a mistake in such a primary function.

[Edited by Moderator]

AGAIN! Maybe the software people should go back to testing their software before making so many people’s computers useless, until they’re ready to fix it. No customer service here.

Same problem. After upgrade to iOS 18, both iPad and iPhone cannot download e-mails from one of my business e-mail accounts. When I delete the account and re-add it, everything seems fine. In the last step of adding it, all input is acknowledged with a green check bar. Yet, the download of mail messages is not possible. Sending is no problem. Sometimes I am asked for a password; entering it makes no difference. I am hundred percent sure, that the password is correct. All other mail accounts (including other imap accounts) work just fine.

It is a business account that requires a domain name as part of the user name. Is it possible that this is the problem?

By the way, with my Macs on Sequoia all e-mail accounts work like a charm as well.

A fix is urgently needed. Otherwise, both iPhone and iPad are pretty much useless for me.

Thanks.

It’s iOS fault, this issue has occurred to many users after update to iOS 18. Unfortunately Apple doesn’t display the version of supported TLS or any information about the error. In my case is TLS 1.2 and I have the same issue.

I have this issue also only on iOS devices that I upgraded to 18. BUT I can send new mail with that same account. So it CAN communicate and authenticate with the server.

something is wrong with the iOS and iPadOS mail app and it chokes with IMAP fetch new mail.

i have not upgraded my Macs yet but people that have say that macOS mail app has no troubles with imap accounts.

this is an iOS bug.

[Edited by Moderator]

Apple should issue a new "upgrade" from IOS 18 to IOS 17.7

Hi All,

After much frustration, this problem was resolved for me by adding a / (forward slash) in the IMAP Path Prefix field.

The Path Prefix field can be found under Settings>Apps>Mail>Mail Accounts>[your IMAP account]>Account Settings>Advanced ... then in the Incoming Settings section you will find IMAP Path Prefix (it may have a slightly grey / after it. Type / and the / will turn white. Then back out of that menu and press Done. Close settings and your mail app. Open your mail app and see if it now works.

Note: some people add INBOX to the path prefix, but at least in my case this prevented the other folders from syncing as they are in the root of the IMPA server.

Hope it works for others - this was SO frustrating!

Cheers!

Apple Support has informed me that they are aware of the problems with the iOS Mail apps under OS 18. The problems are NOT confined to just external IMAP email accounts but affect Apple email accounts (eg _____@icloud.com) as well. Deleting the Mail app and reinstalling is NOT expected to fix the problems, and doing that is at this point in time NOT recommended by Apple as a possible fix. The problems seem to also extend to issues with mail accounts not being able to properly sync between devices as well. Deleting individual email accounts and re-entering them etc. may OR MAY NOT result in a “permanent” or even temporary fix. So it looks like we’ll have to wait until Apple sorts it all out and issues one or more updates. FYI it looks like mail is working reasonably well on my iPad running iPad OS 18 but mail on my iPhone running iPhone OS 18 is a bit of a disaster. D*mn, I KNEW I should’ve waited at least until 18.1 came out lol!

Hi,

omg; thank you so much!!!!!

I have been going crazy for days as I kept on getting a message saying that my password is out of the bloom not correct. I changed it 3 times and checked and rechecked and no joy.

Strange, it worked fine for about 24h after an update and then my Hotmail password would not be recognised.

i did what you said and it worked beautifully.

thank you sooooooo much!!!!

I was able to fix my issue.

When you delete the mail account, make sure to restart your iPhone. After restart, add mail account and enter info and once it asked me to trust the security certificate, it worked. (previously I didn't restart after deleting and trusting the security certificate didn't do anything).

I’m using iPhone SE 2 and I am facing issue with Apple Mail app not getting updated with the latest emails (Gmail).

I also have the same problem on my iPAD with iOS 18.

My iPhone on 17.7 is going well.

The weirdest part is that I have 3 different account on the same mail server (just different username/password). 2 of them refuse to works (server is not responding) while the tird one works.

I tried to delete all the account from the mail app and recreate them ... same problem.

I just tried downloading profile and installing it and still having issues. Was working fine until update.

Searching a number of other Apple forums, this is an iOS bug and it has appeared in versions prior, but been fixed prior to it being released generally.

for myself, I went to my mail server, repacked all the certs it uses, validated using several online tests and yet iOS and iPadOS 18 still fail to fetch imap mail and the server log reveals that it’s an issue with those clients.

it a bit irritating that such a thing, after you see it’s been a known bug in the stack for the past two years - would get out in the general release.

it’s more irritating when you see what is planned for the mail client in the upcoming Apple intelligence release. There is no workaround for this bug if you want to use the features of the $1500 iPhone pro 16 and latest $2000 iPad pros.