mail slow to update in iOS 13

I have a similar problem. Everything was going fine until I updated IOS 13. After that everything went to ****. I have had a plethora of problems with IOS 13. Between my cursor which is now possessed and won't go anywhere that I tap, and Mail that is similarly cursed, I'm about to lose my mind.

What I'm experiencing in Mail is that is it not synchronizing correctly with my Hotmail (outlook.com) email application. I have "boomeranging" emails in my junk folder; meaning when I delete them, a number of them will return to the junk folder days or weeks later. It's very random in that a few deleted junk emails will suddenly reappear in my junk folder, but only on the iPhone. The junk folder is empty on all my other devices.

I have another synchronization problem when moving emails from one folder to another using the iPhone. For example, if I move 200 emails from one folder to another, the iPhone will move them correctly, but then it will show 75 "ghost" emails in the original folder that they were moved from. The 75 ghost emails are also properly located in the folder that I moved them to, they just also appear in the folder that I moved them from, so they are in two places at once according to the iPhone.

The ghost emails will not go away. They will sit there for weeks on end in the original folder until I decide that I can't take it anymore and I select them all and delete them. Once I do that the folder remains empty, and the original 75 emails remain in their proper place in the other folder.

The problem is clearly with IOS 13, because I never had this problem before I updated to IOS 13, and my email application synchronizes perfectly in Mail on all my other devices (iMac desktop computer and MacBook). I also have the Outlook.com app on my iPhone which synchronizes 100% properly. My email works correctly everywhere, except on my iPhone’s Mail app.

I reported these issues to Apple a number of times and have done every update since then but the problem still persists. When it first started happening I deleted my email account from the phone's Mail app and added it back in. It worked fine for a little while until the boomeranging emails started all over again. It's never the same emails that boomerang back to the junk folder. It could be half a dozen junk emails that reappear from the last couple of days or it could be 30 junk emails from the last 30 days. It's totally random.

The next thing I tried was to delete the Mail app altogether from the phone and add it back from the App store. After doing that I added my email account to the new Mail app, but unfortunately that made no difference. The exact same problems with synchronization occurred again over time. Before doing the last update to 13.3.1, I deleted my email account from the Mail app, and tethered my phone to my desktop computer and did the update that way, just in case there was a Wi-Fi glitch that was causing hiccups with the prior updates. After that I added my email account back to the Mail app, but it didn't help. The same problems reoccurred.

Unfortunately, Apple will not escalate my support ticket to the engineering department unless I first agree to restore my phone from a current backup and start over. Admittedly they said it's going to take me several days to get my phone back to the way it was after I do a restore. I said why should I have to do that when the problem is with iOS 13? I am tired of having to go through repeated time-consuming diagnostics on my own and with Apple senior support only to end up being told that there's nothing they can do to escalate the ticket unless I first agree to blow up my phone and start over. No thanks! I will wait till iOS 14 comes out and hope that these problems are resolved.

It's clear from the number of reports in the Apple support community that I am not alone in my horrific experiences with IOS 13. And don't even get me started with my possessed cursor. Chasing it around endlessly like my iPhone is a pinball game is the least of my problems.

Followup: I did more research on the internet and nothing helped. I removed all my email accounts (several times!!!), removed mail app itself, tried all combinations of push/fetch/background refresh but nothing helped. My iphone mail worked for 5 to 10 minutes after restart, than it stopped receiving or sending emails (stuck in checking new mail) and drained my battery in less than an hour and turning my iphone into a "hand/pocket warmer". Nothing I tried helped, and I've tried everything... yes, everything. Local genius bar had no clue either. So I decided to try one more thing before I ditch my iphone. I've backuped my iphone to my mac, reset it to factory defaults a few times and reinstalled ios using my mac (finder method, macos catalina way). After restoring back from backup my mail seems to work (for now)... it is still a bit sluggish, and on a few occasions I still get the new email sound and new mail icon but after opening mail app I have to wait for email to be displayed (or check manually), but at least I can send/receive email from my phone without reseting it repeatedly. Battery lasts me almost a full day now. Before I had to charge it every three to four hours (!!) and carry powerbank or two with me all the time. Definitely a huge improvement, but still not as good as it was in IOS 12 or 11. Hope this helps someone .... one more thing: after reset you may need a few charge cycles to recalibrate your battery, don't get alarmed about that sudden drops to 1% battery remaining. Battery reporting improves with every charge.

i have found a solution that works for me.

my email is collected from a pop3 server in which i had a very large deleted email folder.

i cleared out the deleted email and switched ios mail to store deleted mail

on my phone and ios mail is now quick and no longer a battery hog.

maybe it will work for you?

-Steve

I just had issue with god ole iPhone 7. aol email was working fine until recent update ios13 .3.1! whatever email not downloading , not showing , error message at bottom . all kind of issues email totally screwed up . my solution was delete aol mail account then renter add it back with automated aol apple settings . it works fine and fast now., no problems now. I believe has something to do email settings that need to be updated too. hope this works for all people with this problem .

this is what sorted the problem for me,

reducing the size of my inbox, but ALSO my deleted mail, archive, and any other folders.

since doing this, and putting my deleted messages folder on my phone rather keeping it on the remote imap server my mail app is quick, absorbs little cpu, and battery.

FWIW this worked for me. Turned everything Siri related off, waited for a bit (an hour or two maybe), turned all the Siri stuff back on and, Bingo! All is well again. Thank you for the suggestion/help.

i sudpect all that is needed to prove if this will work for you is to go to all the folders for all your mail accounts and delete any messages you don't want.

in the mail app, select mailboxes, then pick a folder. if its all rubbish the do Edit->select all->delete. this is important on the deleted mail folder, mine was huge and full of rubbish.

if this heps the performance of the mail app (leave it a few days to judge things) then go into the passwords and accounts page in settings, select each mail account , goto the account, advanced, and you can select where the archive, trash, and sent mail folders live. i chose to keep them on my phone.

thus i cannot see sent mail from my mac, but the advantage is reduced net traffic from the mail app and faster response times and less battery use.

-Steve

I just had issue with god ole iPhone 7. aol email was working fine until recent update ios13 .3.1! whatever email not downloading , not showing , error message at bottom . all kind of issues email totally screwed up . my solution was delete aol mail account then renter add it back with automated aol apple settings . it works fine and fast now., no problems now. I believe has something to do email settings that need to be updated too. hope this works for all people with this problem .

Hi everyone

I’ve also been having the exact same problems across ALL my devices, my wife’s brand new iPhone 11 Pro Max, my iPhone 8 Plus, and now my brand new iPad Pro 12.9 2020 setup as new device, so it’s definitely not hardware related!

HOWEVER, I ‘may’ have found out how to fix it, it’s been working on my iPhone 8 Plus so far, have t tried it on anything else. Basically, I never used to use the threading feature of mail. I’ve now switched all the buttons on in ‘Threading’ and push is working more or less instant even with the screen switched off. Before this, push would only work correctly if the screen was on.

please report back to me...

I have noticed a moderate improvement in speed by disabling Siri Suggestions and Learn From This Appl in Settings > Siri & Search.

struggled for last 3 months with the iOS 13 on loading emails until today. The emails have been responding less sluggish thus far.

Basically you need to do a hard restart. The one with volume up/down hold right key until logo appear thing. Google it. I have iPhone 8 btw

I have the issue with the apple email app where you put all you email accounts together. In the other hand, I downloaded Gmail and hotmail app separated and they work perfect. It is obvious that apple has an issue and it is a big one.

I tried Apple Support. The rep wasn't aware of the problem, but she acknowledged it when I sent her the link. We tried toggling it back from push to fetch and back to push. It didn't solve the problem for me, as I am having the same issue.

iOS 13.3 has not resolved the Apple Mail issue.

This problem is only present with my gmail address. The issue is not present when using my icloud address.