Mail app keeps opening last read email even though I move back to the Inbox and then close app

I just fixed mine that was updated yesterday and ended up emptying all my mailboxes.

Close email completely

Settings > Passwords & Accounts > Turn Email OFF for each account

Close Settings

Reopen Settings > Turn Email ON for each account

Reopen Email

Viola!

If you pull down and refresh the view/folder before you close the app, next time the app will automatically open up to that view/folder and NOT the last folder that was open.

So if you’d like the app to open up to the unread messages folder, then go to that folder before closing and refresh. The next time you open the app, it will automatically take you to the unread messages folder.

After I updated to the latest 13.2 the problem has corrected itself.

I'm on 13.3.1 and having this problem. One thing I do notice is that if I keep fully closing the mail app (e.g. 2 or 3 times) then the next time it starts up it takes a little longer, but does open correctly in the inbox. This is making me wonder whether the email app is always closing properly the previous times.

Doesn’t work for me. On latest iOS 13.3. Still opens in inbox not unread box. Before iOS 13 once you set it to the folder you want open it would ALWAYS open in that folder. I have a iPhone 6s that still on iOS 12 and the mail app works like it should so I’m pretty sure it’s iOS 13 causing this.

Update seems to have fixed it for me

I am having the same issue with the mail app opening the last email on my phone even if I have fully closed/killed the mail app.

I sometimes read an email then mark it unread to deal with it later in the day. When I go back to my inbox later on it automatically opens that email in full text rather than bringing me to my new unread emails. I do tunes have to mark the same email unread up to 5Xs in a day! Just to get back to my inbox to look at new mail.

very frustrating since 70% of my day is spent on emails.

This wasn't happening when I had ios 11, 12 but when I updated to ios 13 it started happening. So I'm pretty sure it's a software issue. It's not a major issue so Apple could care less. They might fix it in ios 14 but then something else will go wrong and will be back on this forum complaining about that. It's a vicious cycle.

I'd like to report exactly the same issue. Couldn't find a setting so must be a bug (new feature?!)

Soooo it looks like Apple isn’t going to address this issue? Not one reply from them?

This is extremely annoying to keep dealing with.

Had this problem since I upgraded to iOS 13. Updated to iOS 13.2 on October 30th, still having same issue with Mail opening last email read. Very annoying.

Updated to 13.2, still happening. Still annoying.

I fixed this problem by going into Settings. Then Mail then turning off “load remote images.”

that seems to have fixed the problem for me. Good luck!