when i checked storage in setting it is showing around 15 gb used by apple mail app. So i deleted the app as its way too much for an app. But even after deleting this mail app storage still shows same amount used.
Deleting the mail app does not delete downloaded email, unless you also delete the email account(s) in Settings/Mail/Accounts. And deleting the accounts but not deleting the mail app will clear out the downloaded mail. In other words, the mail data and the mail app are independent of each other. It works this way so you can use a 3rd party mail app to access your mail accounts if you don’t like the Apple mail app.
Deleting the mail app does not delete downloaded email, unless you also delete the email account(s) in Settings/Mail/Accounts. And deleting the accounts but not deleting the mail app will clear out the downloaded mail. In other words, the mail data and the mail app are independent of each other. It works this way so you can use a 3rd party mail app to access your mail accounts if you don’t like the Apple mail app.
Hello saroj101,
When you deleted the app, did you offload the app? If so, this would delete the app but keep its documents and data. If you would like to remove all its content, when visiting the screen that is showing in the screenshot, tap on Mail and you should see the option "Delete App". This will remove the app along with its content.
You can also take a look at the following resource to manage your device storage: If you need more space for an update on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
We hope this helps.
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities. Have a good one!
Deleting the Mail app accomplishes absolutely nothing. The app itself isn’t that large; it just displays mail that is synced to a mail server. Go to Settings/Mail/Accounts. How many accounts do you see? Each of them occupies space. Tap on each one, then tap to remove it. Go to Settings/Contacts/Accounts. What accounts do you see? Those sync to a mail server also. As do those in Settings/Calendars/Accounts.
If you delete all accounts you won’t have contacts or calendars on your phone, either. Is that what you want?
After deleting all accounts you need to restart your phone to recover the space used by the mail accounts. Have you done that? And if that doesn’t clear it you need to back up the phone, then restore the backup you have just made.
It is not a known issue (did you notice no one has posted in this thread in almost 4 months?), and there is no fix in the works. And this forum is user-to-user; it is not a place to expect an answer from Apple. If you want to communicate with Apple use the Get Support link at the top of this page. Other alternatives - Apple’s formal support can be reached several ways:
Note that both of the above have options to receive a callback or chat
About the only communications method not used by Apple support is inbound email, probably because the volume would be overwhelming, and separating the wheat from the chaff (or, to us engineers, a poor signal to noise ratio) would be almost impossible.
Back to your issue:
Deleting the Mail app accomplishes NOTHING! NADA! The Mail app takes pretty much NO storage (about 100 MB); it is the mail in the mail ACCOUNTS that is synced from the mail server that take up storage. And deleting the Mail app does not delete the mail accounts. To delete your mail accounts go to Settings/Mail/Accounts. Tap on each account and tap to remove the account, then restart your phone.
The mail app contains NO DATA except for some settings; it just displays content synced from your mail server. When you delete the mail app all of the messages that you synced from your mail provider's server are still on your phone. To actually delete that downloaded mail you must go to Settings/Mail/Accounts and delete the mail ACCOUNT or accounts, then restart the phone. This will delete your downloaded mail.
Repeating: The mail app contains NO DATA except for some settings; it just displays content synced from your mail server. When you delete the mail app all of the messages that you synced from your mail provider's server are still on your phone. To actually delete that downloaded mail you must go to Settings/Mail/Accounts and delete the mail ACCOUNT or accounts, then restart the phone. This will delete your downloaded mail.
I was having the same issue and was only able to resolve it by doing a backup, erasing all content and settings, then restoring from the backup I made. I have a 64gb iphone 12 and I was constantly running out of space regardless of what I was deleting. After I did this my space used dropped to around 40gb, so it freed up almost 24 gb of nonsense.
iOS 16 instructions
BACKUP FIRST
Settings > click your name at the top > iCloud > iCloud Backup > Backup Now
RESET
Settings > General > Transfer or Reset Phone > Erase All Content and Settings > Continue
RESTORE
Follow the instruction from the blank screen to sign into a wifi and your apple account first, then restore it from the backup you just made. It will take some time to download a lot of the apps again so plug it in and let it do its thing for a while. You'll have to set up FaceID and sign into a lot of apps again, but the space that was created from the process seems worth it to me.
Hope that helps!
Thank you ! This is worked !
1) Delete the mail accounts
2) Delete the mail app from the main screen
3) go to settings > general > iphone storage > mail > reinstall app
repeat steps 2 & 3 until you have cleared all the mail storage that was being used.
each cycle you see it decreasing
I fixed it on my phone and iPad. Tried all the stuff mentioned here but with some additions.
first off I did this all my with iPhone and iPad plugged into the wall.
reinstalled Mail and went into settings and deleted the accounts. Then deleted the mail app. At this point it is still showing up in my storage. I then restarted and then I closed all my apps and started opening some random ones including my gmail app. After this I checked my storage and mail was gone. Then I resinstalled mail and it was a small file (all data gone) and I set my email back up in the app.
hope it works for you too.
Replying from a different account...
And yes, under normal circumstances, that's how it's supposed to work.
However, it is clear from working on this device (and reading the other responses) that the app/phone can have a glitch where the accumulated data does NOT delete when the account is removed and the app reinstalled.
I can vouch for this because I:
And all the data (15 gigabytes in this case) was still there. However, deleting and reinstalling repeatedly eventually removed the excess data. (Even though the app STILL says its using 15 GB... it actually isn't.)
It's a pretty weird glitch. But it's definitely a glitch and not user error.
I fixed this by continually deleting the mail app from the main screen and then reinstalling the app from the iPhone storage screen. I noticed that even if I deleted the app it still showed up here, but by deleting from the main screen and reinstalling about 8 times it disappeared… below are screenshots of just how much space was being used. I did all of the troubleshooting steps you did before and nothing worked. I also removed my mail app data from iCloud and backed up my phone once after I changed that setting.
DOING THIS FIXED THIS ISSUE FOR ME...
I had this same issue too and I'm not sure if this will fix it for you or not, but it worked on my end. I had already offloaded the app and deleted the app and then I came here to see if anyone else was having this same issue. After reading through some threads I saw that people were still having issues even after erasing and resetting their iPads (so I'm not sure if this will work for those people), but I thought I'd add a step before I erased it all and it did the trick for me. I went to:
Settings > iCloud (in my Apple ID profile) > Manage Storage (right at the top under the bar that shows your storage usage) > Backups > iPad > and then I deleted that backup completely.
One note: When I saw there was an iPhone backup listed along with the iPad's I decided to check my iPhone's storage to see if Mail was using a ton of storage on my phone as well and it was only showing 2 gb instead of 20. Then I checked Mail's settings and saw that they were the same as what my iPad had so I wonder if somewhere along the line these iPad backups might be what is causing this issue? I chose not to delete the iPhone backup on my iPad after I checked this out.
Then I went to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPad > Erase all Content and Settings
Another note: When it reset it came to the Welcome screen on the iPad and I chose to use my iPhone to restore its settings. It's possible that you may want to skip that completely if your iPhone storage showed high gbs used, but since mine didn't I chose to try it. I wish I had written down a screen that came up later and asks if you want to do something, I think it was restore your apps maybe? I can't remember the exact wordage. I know that I chose the last option to not bring in anything or have them restore anything. Again I can't remember what the wording was. But I thought it's better to be safe than sorry in that instance. Then I just downloaded the apps I wanted and started from scratch.
It's worth noting that I don't use my iPad for much of anything besides tv/movie apps at this point so erasing everything and starting over wasn't much of a risk for me. If you're not one of those people I don't know what to tell you. But this worked for me. Just thought it might for someone else. Hope it helps!!
This works for me ,
i deleted the accounts in mail including ICloud (sign out). And after I did Reset All Settings. iPhone got restarted, I download again Mail app to check Specific storage and occupied storage has been released.
P.S. : I am not sure that Reset All Setting is necessary or not, or may be just signing out From iCloud mail ) helped.
Anyway my problem has been solved.
I found a weird semi-solution.
If you delete the Mail app, redownload it, then delete again, the storage marker for how much space Mail is using doesn't change. BUT! The overall usage space on the phone DOES.
So... repeat the above process (delete, download, delete again) until your available storage space stops increasing. This is a pretty stupid solution, but it seems to work. (Even though the phone will continue to claim massive storage for the Mail app.)
I’ve sorted mine.
My mail app was showing 13Gb. Tried all the suggested but in the end I downloaded all the stand alone apps for the third party email accounts. Gmail, OutLook ect. I did keep gmail signed in but for contacts and calendar only and now Mail is only using 1Gb!
The other apps have much better data usage settings to help minimise storage usage.
hope this helps 👍🏼
Storage used up even after deleting apple mail app
