Apple Mail app not updating from unread to read emails on iPhone

Depending on how long ago and exactly how your Yahoo account was added to the devices can make a big difference on how smoothly those accounts work. For example, in the account on the iPhone could be using an old protocol like POP3 instead of IMAP. The methods used for authentication can also change over time and the server addresses that a provider wants you to use can also change over time. And lastly, it is always possible that the database that actually stores the email content has some corruption.

For all of these various reasons, deleting an account from a device, rebooting the device, and then adding the account back is the tried and true method (regardless of the device or OS) that ensures that an account has a freshly created mailbox database, is using the currently recommended server settings, and is using the most modern authentication (and 2FA). You may want to also consider doing the same procedure on any device that is misbehaving so that all of them are similarly using modern settings.

I recently had this issue on an iphone with 18.3.1 and noticed that the built-in VPN in settings was turned on.

I simply turned it off an now I receive all emails. If it is an option for you go to Settings>General>VPN & Device Management>VPN>.

Disconnect tour VPN from then click the info icon and un-flag “Connect on Demand”

Hopes this helps!

If you are having this many issues with all of your mail accounts and on multiple devices, it's time to consider if your network is the cause of your mail slowness and not Mail at all. I would suggest the following troubleshooting steps to determine potential causes:

• Properly uninstall all antivirus and security applications from all of your Apple devices (these are unnecessary and problematic)
• Uninstall any "security" or "privacy" products that your ISP provides to you
• If you are using 3rd party DNS servers on your devices or network, temporarily disable them
• If you are using a VPN on your devices or network, disable or remove it
• Reboot the devices
• Do testing on your home network over Wi-Fi, and also on another trusted Wi-Fi network
• Do testing while only connected to cellular data in a great coverage area
• If you still can't get Mail on your iOS devices to work, try a network reset (Settings > General > Transfer or Reset [Device] > Reset > Reset Network Settings)

What you are experiencing is of course not normal behavior. For example, throughout the day I use and iPhone 13, an M2 MacBook Air, and an M4 Mac Mini. All are fully updated to the latest Apple updates. I just tested emails to and from email accounts hosted on iCloud, Microsoft, Google, and all of the emails sent immediately and showed up in Mail within about 15 seconds on all of the other devices.

One additional suggesstion when testing send and receive. Use webmail to do the sending at first to ensure that you remove sending from the equation. Using webmail while you test also give you an immediate view of what is occuring on the server, unrelated to your local Mail issues.

Nearly all Mail send/receive issues can be solved by:

1. Back up iPhone - Apple Support
2. Update iOS on iPhone - Apple Support
3. If the email account is iCloud: If iCloud Mail isn't working - Apple Support
4. If the email account is any other account provider (e.g. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc.) then continue below:
5. Remove the email account: Add and remove email accounts on iPhone - Apple Support
6. Restart your iPhone - Apple Support
7. Add the email account back: Add and remove email accounts on iPhone - Apple Support

I suggest removing your email accounts from Apple Mail and downloading the provider apps directly. No more crazy Apple routing and mail should mirror what's on your other devices. The only difference not having everything in one list. I just made an Email folder on my home screen for mail apps, and it's just as easy.

This started happening to me with version 18.5. I was already using List View. What seemed to work is to choose the three dots in the upper right corner, change to Categories, then turn off categories, and switch back to List View.

18.3.1 email - What worked for me is rebooting the phone and actually signing back in with password. Voila!

Changing to "List View" fixed my issues

I had a similar problem for both my Yahoo and Gmail accounts in the main Apple Mail app. My Yahoo account showed no emails since 2/24 and nothing in Gmail since 2/21. With Gmail, like you, I realized they'd been routed to different categories (Promo, etc.), which was out of sync with how it's configured and shows on my Mac. I just got off the phone with Apple support, and the first thing they said was to make sure you've accepted the terms for the software update on the main Settings screen (I hadn't). After doing so, I deleted and reinstalled the accounts, and it's now perfect. I know you already tried that, but here's here's the exact path that worked for me: Settings/Apps/Mail/Mail Accounts. Good luck!

click the 3 dots at top right and select "List View". This did it for me.

I currently use both the Mail app (with 4 account providers), as well as the Microsoft Outlook app (with a Microsoft 365 account) on my iPhone running iOS 18.4. Both Mail and Outlook apps work flawlessly for all of my email/calendar/contact accounts. Therefore, I'm not sure what the cause of your slowness may be but it's certainly not a widespread issue nor bug in iOS, Mail, or Outlook that many others are experiencing.

I understand that you are however experiencing a problem with your mail scenario, so providing the following details may allow someone in the community to suggest the cause of your mail and calendar performance issue and help you resolve it:

• Have you upgraded to iOS 18.4? If not, try this first.
• Which email app are you using on your iPhone -- Apple's Mail app or the Microsoft Outlook app?
• What provider is your email with (@icloud.com, @google.com, @microsoft.com, @outlook.com, @yahoo.com, etc)?
• What type of Internet connectivity are you using (WiFi, Cellular data)?
• What are your download and upload speeds for that connection (https://speed.cloudflare.com/)?
• Have you tried removing the mail account, restarting the iPhone, and then adding back the account?

You go to All Inboxes or individual email, on the upper right corner you will see 3 horizontal dots … Click on it and choose List View

Have you done a side-by-side comparison of the mail setup of your iPad (which works) and your phone (which doesn't). That's mail account settings, mail server settings, privacy settings - every setting there is. I can't think of any reason that one device wouldn't work when others do and I'm sure you've not changed anything, so it's a long shot, but it's worth a check. It's what I'd do if I found myself in your situation.

Thank you FishingAddict for all your suggestions. I have done everything you suggested but this hasn't made any difference. I don't suspect a problem with my wifi anyway as it's pretty fast using my Mac.

I also did your 'blocked sender' suggestions, changing the settings and adding an additional blocked sender. This hasn't helped either.

Then I did the following:

• on my iPad I opened Safari and logged into my Outlook account
• on my Mac I opened the Mail app and sent a test email from my iCloud account to my Outlook account
• the email arrived in the Inbox on the Mac (Mail app) AND in the Outlook account on my iPad (in Safari) within seconds, so it arrived on the Outlook server very quickly
• the email didn't arrive in the iPad Mail app until several minutes later.

I can live with a few minutes delay if there's only 1 new email. But if there are several new emails then the little wheel can go round for 15 minutes before they load. So infuriating.

Exactly the same problem with the iPhone, and it's only since updating to iOS 18.

I’m having similar issues. After updating to iOS 18.3, my sent folder was not storing my sent emails. I did as Apple said, to delete my Gmail account on the phone then re downloaded it. It was a HUGE hassle! I had to jump through many hoops just to get it back on my phone. It was a Nightmare!! to say the least.

Since doing that all of my emails I previously had blocked, have flooded my email inbox, and now the Blocked feature isn’t working! Apple Continued, to try to blame the issues on the email servers. However, these issues only came about after they introduced the bugs into the system with iOS 18 and they won’t fix them.

I have no way to block these email addresses anymore! If you ask me that a security issue.