ios 18 IMAP support - mail says 'connecting' forever on IMAP accounts

I have two email accounts that use IMAP, and both of them failed on ios 18 and ipadOS 18. In some other threads on the discussions, many people are trying things -- some have temporary luck, and some report that deleting accounts and adding them back doesn't fix it. A few have reported that turning off SSL in the advanced settings for the mail account works, but most IMAP servers are set to accept only secure connections -- mine are this way, so this doesn't work for me.

I have an ipad still on 17 and it has no problems with either account -- the devices I upgraded to ios 18, stopped fetching new mail when they were updated and none of them have been able to get new mail at all. Only that one ipad on ipados 17 and my macs can get mail. I'm convinced it is definitely a bug in the ios mail app and for me there is no workaround and I've tried all the ones suggested in the numerous threads, blog posts, and tweets about this issue.

best thing to do, and @KiltedTim was good to suggest this in another thread is to go to apple.com/feedback and report the bug.

I am experiencing this issue too when in low power mode where my email just says “connecting” no matter how long I wait for it (and I’ve never had this issue until this update). I’m hoping to find a workaround as well!

Hi all,

I encountered a similiar problem with iOS 18, the Mail app told me "SERVERBUG", other Mailclients and all iOS versions before didnt had any problem.

After the problem didnt seemed to be solved in iOS 18.1, i digged deeper into dovecots server log files. I realized that there was an IMAP folder always shown in the log, contained an "ß" (German s-z). I renamed the folder, so i didnt contain any special chars anymore - and et voila, it worked. I now can access all mails via IMAP, move them, send mails - maybe this helps.

Cheers,

M

I just sent in a ticket to /feedback.

For me, this turns out to be a “yellow battery” on 18.x thing. If you are on “Low power” mode, you will see Connecting… for IMAP servers like dovecot.

The moment you switch back to full power mode it works fine. This is also confirmed new for 18.x. Many more of us hang out on low power mode it would be nice to fix.

My other work around was to switch to /TRASH or another folder before reading /INBOX. That also worked and also suboptimal.

Hope this helps!

DrCuff wrote:

My other work around was to switch to /TRASH or another folder before reading /INBOX. That also worked and also suboptimal.

This is an interesting tidbit – when I switch to different folders, the new mail DOES download in those other folders, but no new mail is ever downloaded in /INBOX or /TRASH after the first sync. It's just Apple Mail on iOS for me and the other email users with this server.

I use Dovecot and iOS 18 Mail isn't working. iOS 17 is working fine.

After deleting and adding the Mail account, iOS 18 downloads the complete mail for the user (tried with multiple users), but then never receives newer emails.

Open Mail and it quickly changes from "Connecting" to "Checking for Mail..." which persists indefinitely.

• I do not have any special folder names.
• I tried changing the "/" field as other users mentioned.
• Dovecot server shows a status log on disconnect: (IDLE running for 0.001 + waiting input for 1.038 secs, 2 B in + 10 B out, state=wait-input)

I enabled imap-hibernate but no difference.

No problem with latest iPadOS and MacOS.

Server only allows SSL.

Ooh. You might well be right there. The “connect” went away after switching. It might well have not downloaded anything either. This explains the odd phantom in the roundcube webmail. Did the “yellow low power” thing fix it for you? It’s clear there’s a regression in imap for iOS Mail app. Hope we get closure, I’ll keep a closer eye on it, it does appear to be a thing, certainly on yellow battery mode for sure.

I’ve had no problems at all. Who is your email provider?

Have you already tried removing and re-adding the account?

have the same ‘connecting…’ issue while on low power mode. it’s almost december and it hasn’t been fixed yet :/