Even though schedule is set to "Manual" and Push
is off, iPhone will still download mail even with the Mail app closed. This can
be verified by turning on Airplane Mode before opening Mail which would
otherwise initiate a manual download of mail. This has been a problem for years
and still occurs with iOS 13.3 which is the most recent version as of this
writing. How can this problem be solved?
iPhone 7, iOS 13
Hey there wardjk,
Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities. It sounds like Mail is downloading to your iPhone unexpectedly. I’ll be happy to help.
To verify, do you have multiple email accounts on your iPhone? If so, make sure all set to Manual.
If this is happening with just one account, remove the account from your iPhone and restart:
Restart your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
Add the account back and see if this has any impact on the issue:
Add an email account to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
I hope this helps.
Hey there wardjk,
Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities. It sounds like Mail is downloading to your iPhone unexpectedly. I’ll be happy to help.
To verify, do you have multiple email accounts on your iPhone? If so, make sure all set to Manual.
If this is happening with just one account, remove the account from your iPhone and restart:
Restart your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
Add the account back and see if this has any impact on the issue:
Add an email account to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
I hope this helps.
Hi wardjk,
Thanks for that update. Based off that info, you may want to back up your iPhone, restore it to factory settings, and test Mail in this state. You can look at how to do this in these links:
How to back up your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch
Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to factory settings
If it works in factory condition, restore your backup and test once more:
Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from a backup
If that doesn’t help, use the following link to reach out to Apple Support so they can look into this with you:
Cheers.
becky_s22 marked the problem as solved but it is not. The suggestion to remove the account and add it back has been suggested to others many times in the past but it has also been proven to not solve the problem. I have not seen a documented case of this suggestion working. It may initially appear to have solved the problem because new email messages were not immediately seen but they were downloaded later due to another event. In this specific case, there is only one account but even if there were multiple accounts, they should not have to be set to manual to ensure the affected account is not updated automatically. Even if this were proven to be a workaround, the bug still exists. Individual control is provided for each account so the setting for one should not affect another. Opening the Mail app is not the only event that occurs that triggers the download of email messages for accounts set for Manual download. Something else is occurring around midnight that triggers the download.
iPhone Mail downloads automatically even when set to Manual
