I have the latest ios 13.1.3 and the apple mail app has major issues, has anyone else had problems? I have the latest ios 13.1.3 and the apple mail app has major issues, has anyone else had problems?

I have the latest ios 13.1.3 and the apple mail app has major issues, has anyone else had problems? I mainly use MS Outlook in the apple Mail App (NOT the MSOutlook App - it keeps all my emails in one place) There is a broken run of emails (ie dates missing), it’s deleted all my draft emails and is hit and miss when I want to find an email from my history - I mirror the email app on my Iphone (8+) and IPad Pro (both run latest IOS). When I try to find an email from history, both Devices turn up different results - sometimes non of them are accurate. There appears to be bugs in the app?

Posted on Oct 16, 2019 12:37 AM

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Posted on Nov 5, 2019 7:37 AM

I hope this is helpful: First, following Apple's advice I restored my entire iPhone which is a big pain, and forced me to pay for more iCloud storage, which feels a lot like a shake-down. The restore helped maybe a little bit, hard to say, but Mail was still not really functional. Deleted and re-added accounts also, and that did not help. Apple support was not particularly helpful, since their operating assumption is that everyone is completely clueless and hasn't done simple things like rebooting their phone.

So I tracked my problem (blank screens, crashing, laggy response, mail disappearing...) down myself to my work-related account, by deleting each account and seeing how they behaved. gmail itself was OK, my work-related account was not good by itself. I talked to my work sysadmin who immediately figured out what was happening, which was that about 25 years ago (!) he set things up to deal with everyone's different mail files, and that decision meant that everyone's /home directories were being treated as mail directories. Well, people (like me) dump a lot of stuff in those /home directories, and what I think has happened is that Apple has started to cache EVERYTHING in Mail directories to the phone. If you have more junk there than the phone has RAM, it either swaps it to disk (if you have enough) or it just fills up the RAM and crashes. I tested this by getting rid of lots of old junk in my /home directory on my server, and sure enough Mail is much better (but still not what I would consider "normal" or satisfactory, but at least functional.


What does this mean for you? Well, it might be that some people have a huge number of old mail messages either in their inbox, or in archived mail, or drafts, or spam, or whatever. And it may be that now Apple is trying to cache all of that stuff on the phone and using up all the RAM or trying to swap (which is slow). So some of you might try deleting all your spam (for example) and seeing if that helps, or even (gasp!) deleting old mail, or backing it up somewhere, etc. If you click on your account after opening mail (if you have more than one, it will be in the shaded lines below the line with the "envelope" icon) you will see what Mail thinks is in your directory on your host. If there are a lot of things that don't look like mail (other files or whatever) then that probably does mean you have stuff in there that is slowing things down, and you may have to figure out how to remove it on the host itself.


All of this has come up with iOS 13.1.3/13.2 because Apple has done something in how it handles IMAP. While there may be good reasons for it (I would guess they thought it was faster; or maybe they have AppleMail that they want to force people to buy...) there is no excuse for the Mail app to crash or behave so poorly without at least providing an error message like "Mail can't load host directory" or whatever.


Good luck.

52 replies

Oct 22, 2019 4:36 AM in response to bonorholm

Thanks for all the above reply’s. I guess we are just waiting for Apple to fix - as I assume they know?! Since the first post, I’ve also found when you ‘reply or send again’ (an email - which I do regularly and change the recipient) it asks you to “download the attachment” - answer “yes” then “download the message” - answer “yes” then hey presto - nothing appears below the Subject line! The only way to get around this is to swipe the mail app “up” forcing it to close, and re-open - sometimes it works, but no always.

Oct 26, 2019 10:08 PM in response to Earny007

What we have here is the mindset of people at Apple making the iPad compatible as the iPhone. An Apple guru in our computer club was astute enough to view my problem, iPad Pro on 13.1.3, and recognized that if you have an arrow at the bottom right of the screen, you click on it, it gives you a bunch of options, just like the iPhone. Dumbing down the iPad to make it be like the iPhone.

Oct 28, 2019 2:50 PM in response to Earny007

I have similar issues. Why can’t you delete “all” the messages from trash and junk in one step now? If you “select all”, in the first place, it doesn’t “select all”. Certain messages are left “deselected”. And then, your only choices are to archive them or move them to another folder—you can’t mass delete. I also noticed that when I went in and deleted each message from junk, there are some messages it will not let me do anything with. This is very alarming because, these are messages that contain suspect information, have weird characters and other odd information in the subject and preview. Why can’t I delete this type of message or even select it?


Things like this are making me, more and more, want to go back to an Android and eat the dollars I’ve spent on Apple Music. Each update goes back in time and makes things worse and makes my phone more backwards.


Please get a grip apple. There are many more phones and other devices out there besides yours.

Oct 29, 2019 4:55 PM in response to Earny007

I At 78 years of age I am a creature that sets items in the order I like. Since 13.1.3 my world in upside down and I don’t have the technical ability to make computer changes that are evidently required nor do I have the patience in dealing with such uncalled and inconsiderate action on the part of Apple. Older people enjoy iPhones, iPads and the like but when you have no one to help you through these situations it is exasperating. I have lost my friends listing, groups associated with Facebook and my messages are not getting through. I have missed doctor appointments as well as other events. I want my life back. Please send out olde version 12

Oct 30, 2019 8:59 AM in response to Earny007

I keep having the same problem with Apple Mail....my main gmail account in the apple mail client is flagging emails from YEARS ago...and I mean years ago. Wake up to anywhere from 1500 to 2000 emails from 2011, 2012 that were deleted that show up as flagged emails in my flagged folder. And at the moment I only have about 25 emails that are current and flagged right now and for a reason. Deleted or archived "All Mail' emails are showing up as unread, again from years ago that should be neither flagged nor unread, whether trash or All Mail. Very frustrating! This did not happen in any way shape or form before the recent two updates.

Nov 13, 2019 2:52 PM in response to Nuosc

That makes a lot of sense. Thanks.

Some people never delete their mail which is pretty frightening. This collection of chatter cannot be stored by suppliers endlessly.

I also recommend that in mail users hit Mailbox/Rebuild periodically as this does keep things shipshape.

I also delete swathes of email from my in box occasionally as if I have not filed it it must not be of import.

Apple is still not forgiven though. Most unlike them.

Nov 24, 2019 6:58 AM in response to Samoht Gnik

I expect you e managed to find the Reply arrow by now, but Apple have kindly moved it to the bottom of the Screen. Why? And when you tap it, we now have come up an oblong box with choices in it. Again to tap.... either Reply, or Reply All, Forward etc etc. It has ALWAYS infuriated me that one MUST remember to do a Forward to include photos from in the original email to me. If you just do Reply, the darned photo is never included.

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I have the latest ios 13.1.3 and the apple mail app has major issues, has anyone else had problems? I have the latest ios 13.1.3 and the apple mail app has major issues, has anyone else had problems?

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