iOS 13.1.2 - Email not being marked as read when I read it

A Frenchman a while back gave an answer I used, and works. Tap the edit key and then immediately afterwards the cancel key. It works well. The only thing, you must do it every time you enter the mail app. Do it for the first mail, then all others afterwards get marked as read.

I have 7 email accounts on each of 2 iOS devices and 2 Macs. Anything marked as Read on any device is always reflected on the other 3, as well as on webmail for each of the accounts, which tends to indicate it isn’t an iOS problem. So I doubt that there is anything Apple can do generically in iOS to fix what is almost certainly a server problem or connectivity problem.

There probably isn’t a clear and simple solution, because most likely the cause is different for different users. Start with the fact that for marking an email with any attribute and having it sync to other devices you must have a data connection to the server at the time the message is read or marked or flagged, or deleted or moved. These actions only occur in real time; the device can’t be offline. It also must be an IMAP or Exchange account; it can’t be a POP account. While all major ISPs support IMAP (AOL, gmail, iCloud, yahoo, MS...) not all cable companies do.

Oh, and I forgot to say, I am definitely connected to my home WiFi and all other devices, Mac PC, MacBook and Samsung phone do not have this app, but work perfectly fine with the WiFi and AOL.

***I JUST SWITCHED TO THE AOL APP a few days ago, and although not as fancy as the iPad Apple app, it’s WORKING CORRECTLY.

***THIS IS AN ISSUE WITH THE APP THAT I’VE HAD IN RECENT YEARS, HOWEVER, IT HAS GOTTEN WORSE WITH EACH SOFTWARE UPDATE.

What IS POSSIBLE, is my iPad has slowly been progressing toward being “outdated” with each update. A typical device situation in recent years with technology moving so quickly. I have a first generation iPad that sits in a cabinet, pretty much useless.

I know everyone is trying to be helpful, but the information coming through is starting to feel argumentative rather than anything that pertains to my particular situation. Please be kind when not agreeing.

Thank you all again.

Ali

I rarely have an issue with my Exchange account in the Mail app, sometimes but not very often It’s almost always my Google accounts (both configured in Mail, both with the issue). While it was random before iOS 14, it is now fairly regular in that reading messages rarely marks the message read on my gmail accounts. Forcibly sliding to the right to reveal and use the manual Read option does in fact Mark it read almost all of the time. Sometimes I can force Read and exit the app only to see the red badge still there, go in and see that the messages are once again Unread.

Given that, it’s not Google. It’s not Microsoft. It’s not my Wifi. It’s not my ISP. It’s the iOS Mail app. I have tested with the Gmail app. It marks the messages as Read every single time. I have the Outlook app. It marks the message Read every time. My Windows machine has no problems running Outlook. My Mac mini has no problems with gmail in the OS X Mail app there. If it were my Wifi, ISP, or the Mail providers servers in any way shape or form I would see the same problem in the outlook and gmail apps... on my Windows laptop... on my Mac mini... but I don’t, “ever”. Only in the iOS Mail app. One user here even used Wireshark to see that Read requests aren’t even going out.

Occam’s razor. What’s the more likely? That all of these different systems are breaking in consistent fashion to thwart this one single app, and only this one single app, for multiple people in a similar way, gmail for some, Exchange for others, AOL for others? Or could it simply be a bug in this one single iOS app?

I reset network passwords (I know it’s a pain) and rebooted phone, seems to have fixed it.

Resetting networks worked for me.

Looks like there may be a fix for Not Marked Read. In the iPhone’s Accounts record for Gmail turn off Contacts and Calendar. It may be related only to Contacts but I only use Gmail for email not Contacts etc on my iPhone.

I've learned that most "fixes" are temporary. What I've been doing is just rebooting my phone every time the problem returns, and that gives me at least 2 days of a properly functioning email. The longest it's worked for me after a reboot is 5 days. The easiest way to tell the issue has returned is the "mark as read" stops working (you have to look at the email twice to mark it as read). Once that happens, I reboot, and that gets it working again.

13.5 seems to have fixed this for my iPad Pro (9.7 inch) (imap mailbox and Outlook mailbox).

It also seems to have sorted the initial login error on Outlook.

Odly enough, my old SE iPhone never had the issue...

And it's back!

seems to be tied into to a failure to log in to outlook.com - when that happens I cannot flag mail as read, when it logs in first time I can. Oddly enough it does not matter if the mail is in the imap account or the outlook.com account in that a fail to login to outlook stops me flagging mail as read in the imap account...

I posted a while back that I had been having similar issues not being able to mark things read, but I haven’t been having this issue for probably a month or two now.

One thing that worked while I was having the issue was moving junk mail messages from my inbox to the trash, then going into the trash folder and deleting all. Then, go back into the Inbox, select all, mark as read, and it would work.

Not sure if that helps at all.

I’m not using Outlook or Exchange, so can’t help with that.

Good luck, all!

As of today, June 18, 2020, emptying my junk and mail folders, then going back to the inbox, has worked for me for over a week. l When I click on each email after emptying those folders, it will then immediately show as read. Most of the time. Sort of like when I hope there’s a carton of “those two guys “ ice cream in my freezer and mostly there is. It’s just so sad when there’s not.

And we’ve come full circle... my Gmail account just had the bug this morning. Ye ole edit and cancel trick didn’t work either. Killing the app and reopening did clear it up and let me get them marked as read... but that’s just silly to have to do each time, especially giving that I always kill every app when I’m done with them... meaning this was a fresh opening of the mail app already when the hit.

I think alioopla is expressing reasonable frustration with an issue that is a big time waster for a lot of users.

Apparently alioopla has some other things going on, but the basic issue discussed here is that iOS Mail is not being marked as read after many users read their mail, and alioopla is experiencing the same thing.

People are looking at their mail on an iOS device, but they have to manually mark mail as read.

I've confirmed this on multiple users' devices, under multiple versions of the OS from 13 through 14, including some users who only have a single device with a single Apple mail account, and others who have more than one mail account and share mail across devices from mobile to desktop.

In every case I've seen, if the mail is read on desktop Mac Mail, the mail is correctly marked as read and then all mobile devices also mark it as read. But, if the mail is read on the iOS device, it does not mark as read. So it would appear that this is an iOS issue.

So, whatever the technical underpinnings, for many users, when they use the app normally as expected, they're not getting their mail marked as read as they would normally expect. Whether this is a bug, a design issue, or an intentional part of the feature set, it's clearly a problem for a lot of people and hasn't been resolved.

If anyone has a clear and simple solution, that's great. But no luck so far.

I know the Apple software does not always update the servers as I have monitored the data between the iPhone / iPad and server using tools such as wireshark and running my own DNS monitoring.

As I have just updated iOS I can now use a different mail app and as outlook is free I'm going that route - nice one Apple - your just sent a user to the big M.