ICloud Mail is Slow

What are versions of devices is it Mac / iPhone / iPad

Have you installed unknown softwares / apps / anti virus in Mac , any VPN services if so uninstall all of them .

See the article Troubleshoot email problems in Mail on Mac - Apple Support

If you are receiving very large mail attachments then also syncing will be slow , if mail box storage limit is exceeding the mails will not be received .

There is no fix on our side. I’ve spent most of the day with Apple Support about this. I have 2 iCloud accounts, one is fine and the other is having these issues on every device as well as on iCloud.com. That tells you there is no issue on our side. The support rep called me back this evening, said engineering got back to him and informed him that they were aware of the problem, it’s been scattered - not everyone is affected and not all accounts as I can attest - they are tracking it down. But wanted some diagnostic logs from my devices.

Back around May 27 and even before there were major iCloud mail outages, and intermittently since various other services have been affected. I have noticed something odd, I’m on the east coast and the issue improves somewhat in the evening. I see some messages load and display content noticeably faster than earlier in the day. I told the rep maybe the night shift guys are faster on the job than the day shift guys. Anyway he said he’s been fielding additional calls about this this evening and the engineering guys said they had been seeing this occur for about 3 days. Everyone should get a case and number generated to let them know how widespread this is.

This is a good site to check for iCloud issues they track posts and complaints from social media and display a map with problem hotspot areas. You’ll also see some posts from others who are affected. Issues are noted here long before Apple’s status page reflects them.

https://downdetector.com/status/icloud/map/

I had my call back from the Apple rep I was dealing with. He told me that engineering is making changes on the back end, and that it is a problem with increased volume during the weekday with their servers. He plans to call again on Monday to let me know what progress has been made. He also said that for anyone being told there is no problem or that this is normal to immediately request to speak to a senior adviser. He is unsure why the issue has not gone to yellow on Apple’s status page, but this is not normal.

I can definitively say I’m back to normal. I’ve communicated with several people directly and the front line phone reps still have no knowledge of these issues and are telling people that they have no reports of issues on their end. Only when you ask for a senior advisor will they have any knowledge of it and can create a case number. Given the communications I’ve had it does seem apparent that they are solving this account by account and without a case number your situation will not be seen and dealt with. The number of people having the issue does not seem to be a lot and thus has not created much of a stir. The status page still shows no issue and even down detector now indicates a very low number of email problems, iCloud log in seems to have eclipsed email as an ongoing issue currently.

So again for those still having an issue you will need to get a senior advisor involved to get your account looked at. There isn’t any blanket fix coming.

Did you tried google DNS server settings 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 in network settings Enter DNS and search domain settings on Mac - Apple Support

How to troubleshoot Wi-Fi connectivity - Apple Support

I have been having this issue since there was a partial server outage about a week ago. It was totally offline during that time and I saw the issue on the status site and it has been poor since then.

It's even awful on icloud.com/mail.

I'm sure it's 100% server side because I have my @me.com and @icloud.com linked to my Windows Mail App as well and even on a separate platform it has this issue.

I'm happy to say that my iCloud email is finally syncing with all three of my devices, though not always immediately, as it always has done in the past.

The third tech guy I talked with told me it might be because I just had too many emails still in my iCloud account (it was around 35,000!), so I started to delete them and am down to 25K. It might be a good thing to get rid of ancient unwanted emails, but I honestly don't think that this is the reason for the problems I was having, especially since so many other people were experiencing the same stuff.

When I clicked on the email notification of your post it took about 45 seconds to load. That may be a small improvement since last week but it still shows there is a significant problem during weekday peak daytime hours. From about 8:30pm EST Friday to early this morning everything was perfect. Now we’re bogging down. Obviously they have a server that is unable to deal with email traffic during peak hours. I feel like I’m back on a DSL or dial up connection.

If you check you can log into your account on iCloud.com click on Mail and see the same issue. That’s removed from any possible device issue, which is what the support people will always initially claim is the issue.

You got me curious so I went to iCloud and saw that message you’re showing. I tried to load an email notification of your post and got that message. Then I sent myself a message, had never done that from iCloud.com. It never showed up there but it did appear on my devices, eventually.

Everyone needs to keep calling in. I don’t know whether they are intentionally not putting a notice on the status board or being told to say there is no issue. I have not heard from the rep I’ve been dealing with today but I replied to the case number email to mention today’s issues. I know that gets back to him.

They will still have you run through several troubleshooting steps. That’s inevitable but don’t agree to anything drastic. The first one I spoke to wanted me to reboot everything including my router, even though this also occurs over the cell network, has nothing to do with WiFi. Then he wanted me to delete my iCloud account on my phone, I assume he meant sign out of iCloud which I refused to do, signing out of iCloud won’t change anything on my iPad and laptop or iCloud.com.

Fortunately the next guy who was very helpful only asked that I reset network settings. That has minimal impact, you’ll have to log back into your WiFi network and change the name of your device back to what you had. But once he realized all this was happening on iCloud.com as well he contacted engineering and got back to me that they were aware and were working on it. But that was a couple days ago and I haven’t heard anything else and there’s been no improvement. The pattern is exactly the same every day - during peak daytime hours the system slows to a crawl and then in the evening and overnight it’s pretty much normal. Also the weekend was completely normal. But at this point everyone should call in and get a case number established that will be sent in an email to you and keep replying to that every day. Those replies get back to the rep you’re working with and maybe they’ll get annoyed enough to keep pushing for a resolution. Also go after them on Twitter - @AppleSupport #iCloud. That’s what I’ve been using every day. They got back to me initially but are now ignoring my posts. But if everybody does it someone will take notice.

If you have another iCloud account or email account, forwarding emails from the affected account to the other is a workaround. I use 2 iCloud accounts, one is affected the other one is not, forwarding to the second account at least relieves the frustration of prolonged arrival and loading. The messages come to me now almost immediately and load instantly.

This is the best we can do for now until Apple either fixes this or admits that iCloud email is done and directs us to other providers. Since they don’t seem to be able to solve this or even publicly admit it exists I think it’s time for them to get out of the email business. I’m looking at other alternatives now but I’m pretty well tied into the other features so it would be painful to make a complete break.

I don't know about the web interface (iCloud on Safari), but I was having issues with Mail synching - in the MacOS Mail client seeing the status bar (bottom left) taking various minutes for moving each mail (into the trash, for example). I see various other users here describing similar issues.

I had just under 10.000 mails in my Inbox - and have tried the following, which seems to work: I created a rule moving all mail older than 90 days to the Archive folder and ran the rule on the existing mail in the Inbox. Now the status bar just briefly flashes as mails synch.

System Status - there are times that Apple Services - including iCloud mail are experiences issues and / or are not functioning at all.

That’s the typical pattern. If the pattern holds up it will improve over the next 2 hours, here on the east coast. Then back to really slow tomorrow mid-morning. I first reached out to Apple Support over Twitter. Everyone should do that as well as go to the support site and try to arrange a phone call to get a case initiated. They’re going to have to hear from a lot of people. It seems to be fairly wide spread, I’ve seen posts from the UK and Canada, but it may not involve a large number of people, yet.

You’ll know that it’s not anything specific to you. Just go to iCloud.com, log in and launch mail. It will take a minute or two for the message list to populate and then about as long for a message to load once you click on it. You can do this from any device or even someone else’s computer, Windows or Apple. Which proves it has nothing to do with your router or devices. All these hoops people are jumping through are useless.