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For about 1-2 weeks now, I've noticed my iPhone 8 dropping battery level very fast. Today when I looked at my battery usage, it showed my Mail app was using the majority of my battery. I do not have any type of refresh turned on for my apps. I browsed the Apple Support for advice, and I have my phone set up all the ways they suggest. Any ideas on what may be the issue?
iPhone 8, 12
Let me contribute to this. The amount of energy used by the Mail app is proportional to the number and size of emails you receive, and whether you use Push, Fetch or Manual. Note that email does not use Background App Refresh, so it doesn't matter whether that is on or off. Whether you read the emails or not doesn't matter; it is the downloading that uses energy.
If your email is set to Push and your provider supports it (which means iCloud and MS Exchange) then your phone will be notified every time a new mail is available, and your phone will download it immediately. If you have killed the mail app it will be restarted, using energy just to restart it in addition to the energy used to download the messages.
If your email accounts are set to Fetch then periodically (you set the interval in the settings) the phone will ask your email provider if there are new messages and will download them. Again, If you have killed the mail app it will be restarted, using energy just to restart it in addition to the energy used to download the messages.
If you set your email accounts to Manual they will only be downloaded when you open the Mail app or when you restart your phone, but then all of the new messages will be downloaded using energy. And the same observation about killing the app applies.
In addition to all of this, if you kill the mail app when it restarts for any of the above reasons not only will it download new messages, but it also must do a matchup between what is on your phone and the mail server so it knows what mail is actually new. If you have a lot of mail on your phone or on the server this could mean doing thousands of fetches just to find out what to download. So while it is not a good idea to ever kill any app, killing mail can be especially expensive in terms of data use and battery use.
Let me contribute to this. The amount of energy used by the Mail app is proportional to the number and size of emails you receive, and whether you use Push, Fetch or Manual. Note that email does not use Background App Refresh, so it doesn't matter whether that is on or off. Whether you read the emails or not doesn't matter; it is the downloading that uses energy.
If your email is set to Push and your provider supports it (which means iCloud and MS Exchange) then your phone will be notified every time a new mail is available, and your phone will download it immediately. If you have killed the mail app it will be restarted, using energy just to restart it in addition to the energy used to download the messages.
If your email accounts are set to Fetch then periodically (you set the interval in the settings) the phone will ask your email provider if there are new messages and will download them. Again, If you have killed the mail app it will be restarted, using energy just to restart it in addition to the energy used to download the messages.
If you set your email accounts to Manual they will only be downloaded when you open the Mail app or when you restart your phone, but then all of the new messages will be downloaded using energy. And the same observation about killing the app applies.
In addition to all of this, if you kill the mail app when it restarts for any of the above reasons not only will it download new messages, but it also must do a matchup between what is on your phone and the mail server so it knows what mail is actually new. If you have a lot of mail on your phone or on the server this could mean doing thousands of fetches just to find out what to download. So while it is not a good idea to ever kill any app, killing mail can be especially expensive in terms of data use and battery use.
Hello, I appreciate your input. I do regularly ensure my apps are shut off after using. I actually haven’t had my mail app open at all during the past few weeks, yet it still claims 54% of my battery usage.
Delete your email accounts and add them back. Then, stop shutting down the app.
Regularly "shutting down" apps isn't good for your battery life. Turn off Background App Refresh instead. Settings>General>Background App Refresh.
As a followup to IdrisSeabright's post, I recently came across this-->https://solutionowl.com/ultimate-guide-iphone-battery-drain/. It's a bit out of date, but the information in it is still correct.
Look especially at Step 3.
I do already have that turned off, which was suggested by a previous forum. Is there something else I could be missing?
Did you follow the first suggestion I made in that post?
Delete your email accounts and add them back. Then, stop shutting down the app.
You should force quit the app once you are done with it. Double-click the home button and slide up the mail app. If that doesn't do it take it to Apple..
I do already have that turned off, which was suggested by a previous forum. Is there something else I could be missing?
Try to turn off Mail fetch for your accounts. It’s in Settings>Accounts & Passwords >Fetch new data( set them to manual)
Mail App Draining Battery Recently
