Mail not working on iPhone after iOS 18 Update

Was having the same issue. I deleted my Hotmail, tried re-adding multiple times. Restarted the phone several times and still didn’t work.

Finally got it working again by adding the account through “outlook.com” tab…. No longer “other” as I always did before. Can still name it “Hotmail” as the description.

Hope this helps others!

Here is how I eliminated the iOS mail problem. Not sure if it was coincidence or a remote fix by Apple, but I still see people posting issues on this forum, so I presume the problem persists. Here is what I did:

 - Go to your phone …

 - Go to Settings … scroll all the way down to Apps …

 - Go specifically to: Settings>Apps>Mail>Mail Accounts>Select your mail account>Account Settings>Advanced

 - In the group “INCOMING SETTINGS,” the second line should read: "IMAP Path Prefix /“

 - You may notice the forward slash “/“ is grayed out and not the same contrast as the three words prior.

 - Type a forward backslash “/“ next to the grayed out /

 - Now delete the grayed out forward backslash “/“ - Just tap to the left of the new backslash you typed and backspace to delete the grayed out backslash.

 - Finally, perform a hard reboot of your phone in the following order: 1. Press and release the left outside volume up button. 2. Press and release the left outside volume down button. 3. Press and HOLD the right outside power button UNTIL the phone shuts down, restarts AND you see the Apple. DO NOT slide the power down “slide button” during the shutdown. Keep your finger on the power button UNTIL you see the Apple upon restart.

After doing all this, the mail on my phone is now working properly.

Seems not, at least not for me…my issue is with 2 yahoo email accounts and I have the same issue as before. None of them automatically download emails. I sometimes get the badge next to the mail app but I still need to open the app and wait for it to refresh and download emails. Weird thing is that for 2 other exchange accounts it works as intended with fetch set at 15 minutes…really hoped the update would fix it but…

Do not get your hopes up...

Did everything you described in your message and on top upgraded ios to the next version (will just say it is not public yet in order not to get moderated and edited again) . The issue is still there.

Afterwards I rolled back to ios 18 as I found some more things that I did not like.

But who knows, maybe in the public release they will have this solved but I already gave up on hoping....

Just wanted to remind everyone that for ME the only solution that seems to so far have resulted in a “permanent” fix (🤞) - while keeping iOS 18 and not bothering (yet) to update to 18.0.1 (which I am a bit suspicious of) - was for me to contact BY TELEPHONE both Apple customer support AND my non-Apple email service provider (Comcast Xfinity) - without *my* having had to do ANYTHING else the problem for ME was *permanently* fixed “behind the scenes” within 24 hours.

Zimbra has a trivially-exploited security vulnerability, and (unpatched) Zimbra servers might not be stable:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/10/attackers-exploit-critical-vulnerability-recently-patched-in-zimbra-servers/

This problem turns my nice new iPhone 16 with iOS 18.0.1 into a little (expensive) boat anchor. MacOS Mail continues to work fine , but the iOS Mail has screwed my email and deleted all mail before the update was applied, including from the ISP server. This is VERY DANGEROUS.

This thread does not make encouraging reading and is filling up my inbox with far too many emails. I'll just stick with Outlook for my Yahoo and Gmail accounts, and unsubscribe from the thread.

Bye, everyone!

I have discovered something that is by far not a fix, but maybe it points to the root of the issue (at least for me). Seems that when on Wi-Fi connection and while charging, the e-mails are being fetched properly (for yahoo accounts) as per the fetch interval (15 minutes). I checked if I have some kind of restrictions for background app refresh for the native email app, but there are none (as there were none on ios 17. Moreover the Maill app is not even present in the list of apps that can be forced not to sync in the background and on top of that I have all enabled in that list) so I guess that is the issue that needs fixed (for me at least). The app thinks it has some kind of limitation like low power mode or something and it only fetches at 15 minutes intervals while charging and on Wi-Fi....hope this gets fixed...

This is how I fixed my issue. My addy was ...@gmail.com

Go to Settings … scroll all the way down to Apps …

 - Go specifically to: Settings>Apps>Mail>Mail Accounts>Select your mail account>Account Settings>Advanced

 - In the group “INCOMING SETTINGS,” the second line should read: "IMAP Path Prefix /“

 - You may notice the forward slash “/“ is grayed out and not the same contrast as the three words prior.

 - Type a forward backslash “/“ next to the grayed out /

 - Now delete the grayed out forward backslash “/." Just tap to the left of the new backslash you typed and backspace to delete the grayed out backslash.

 - Finally, perform a hard reboot of your phone in the following order: 1. Press and release the left outside volume up button. 2. Press and release the left outside volume down button. 3. Press and HOLD the right outside power button UNTIL the phone shuts down, restarts AND you see the Apple. 

This fixed it for me.

Initially, I replaced the "grayed" out / with one I typed over it. That made it bold/normal in color. But, it did not solve my issue. So I went back, and typed an additional / next to the / I had previously replaced the grayed out / with. So at Settings>Apps>Mail>Mail Accounts>"My Account">Account Settings>Advanced> Under "INCOMING SETTINGS" I had: IMAP Path Prefix // with the second / to the right being the one I added. I then clicked in between the two // and backspaced out the one to the left or the one that I replaced the original gray one with. After that I did a hard reboot of my phone and the mail worked.

I did contact my non-Apple mail provider. This is also something Apple asks you to do. As I have already written, I have two e-mail accounts with the same provider. But the second one (which has the same configuration, apart of course the name and the password) has no problem! This is the most weird part of the issue.

It is for sure a problem of the app. In the « advanced settings » of the incoming server: at the top you have the possibility to set the folders of the mails. Well, with my problematic account I do not have the possibility to choose the folder of the sent emails. The only possible choice is… my Phone!!!

There is another very strange thing. We can all send e-mails from these problematic accounts; but where are these sent emails stored??? I cannot find them! They are nowhere.

Anyway. Now I have both Outlook and Spark installed and of course not the ‘Insecurity Mail’ as I cannot carry my laptop in the forest.

Next update: next Tuesday (Unless I have something to report before)

nikap63 wrote:

I did contact my non-Apple mail provider. This is also something Apple asks you to do. As I have already written, I have two e-mail accounts with the same provider. But the second one (which has the same configuration, apart of course the name and the password) has no problem! This is the most weird part of the issue.

It is for sure a problem of the app. In the « advanced settings » of the incoming server: at the top you have the possibility to set the folders of the mails. Well, with my problematic account I do not have the possibility to choose the folder of the sent emails. The only possible choice is… my Phone!!!

I have a hunch - does the working account have far fewer messages in it?

It has occurred to me that (while it should not make a difference) this may be the reason why some people have this problem and others don't. One thing I have noticed is that I only have this problem in my very full inbox. If I delete a bunch of items from a subfolder (using mail on my mac) that folder updates instantly on my phone, even while it is struggling to receive mail into my inbox.

Thanks! My Inbox is not that full, rather empty. These are my private mail accounts and I clean them systematically and transfer many items to a pst folder. (I am always afraid that even the best server can break down and hoping that one of my backups will survive)

Do you have it installed on your device? I’m asking because I had a previous version and the mail was still not working properly so I downgraded to the official one back. If so, which version do you have?