iOS HTML email slow to load on iPad Air 4

You are not the first (and perhaps not the last) to report this issue within the Apple Support Community. At present, a definitive cause has not been identified - although there are potential workaround solutions which may or may not be applicable in your situation.

I have personally spent many hours analysing this (or at least a similar) issue affecting both an iPhone 8 and iPad Pro - each with iOS/iPadOS 15.x installed. While analysis of this issue is too complex to attempt detailed description here, the two workarounds that I have have successfully tested are:

1) For iCloud+ subscribers with iOS/iPadOS15.6 installed, enable Apple Private Relay:

Settings > [Your Name / AppleID] > iCloud > Private Relay > Private Relay - set to ON

2) Consider installing a paid/reputable commercial VPN - and enable

Private Relay is only available to Apple Users with an active iCloud+ storage subscription - which brings with it additional functionality. If you only have a “basic” iCloud plan (with the “free” 5GB iCloud storage tier), Private Relay will not be available.

iCloud+ plans and pricing - Apple Support

To repeat, these workarounds may or may not resolve your specific problem.

Do please reply and confirm if either or both of these potential workarounds work for you - as this information will help with broader diagnosis of root cause.

You are very welcome. Until (or if) Apple identify and resolve the underlying problem, continued use of either workaround will continue to be necessary in the short term.

Consider reporting your issue to Apple using their Product Feedback portal:

Feedback - iPad - Apple

When sending your report, please ensure that you include full detail of your iPad model and installed version of iPadOS in the body of your report. Please don’t solely rely upon the drop-down selector for your device details.

Be sure to include full details of the problem and the circumstances in which it occurs. Consider including a link to this topic.

The two workarounds are potentially viable should you wish to try them.

If you are not a current iCloud+ subscriber, the lowest 50GB subscription tier is almost nothing - and can be cancelled at any time. In addition to additional iCloud storage, iCloud+ provides access to many security and privacy benefits - including Private Relay and Hide My Email.

As for testing the VPN option, some of the reputable VPN operators offer a free trial - or a limited “free” tier. Of the available services that fit within this category, for testing at no cost, I recommend hide.me. You can create an account from their website - and use these credentials for bandwidth-limited access to their service using the hide.me App (available from the Apple App Store.

While the technicalities of this issue are complex - and beyond immediate scope of allowed discussion within ASC - your observation of being able to access your email without issue when using some other networks is entirely consistent with structured testing and analysis to date.

This is indeed useful additional information. Thank you.

You have confirmed that at least one of the two suggested workarounds is consistent in its efficacy. In using a VPN connection, you are “tunnelling” your traffic past the source of the issue.

Diagnostic testing suggests that the issue of some types of Mail message loading very slowly, with a consistent and repeatable delay, is linked to Apple’s Private Relay service. I’ll try to keep this description relatively simple and non-technical…

Apple introduced its Private Relay (Beta) service in iPadOS15. Its purpose is to provide additional privacy and security for unencrypted network protocols included within your internet traffic (e.g., DNS and basic http protocols); these “in clear” protocols leak significant information - and can be intercepted and manipulated by almost anyone along the path from source to destination. Private Relay encrypts and anonymises this otherwise unprotected network traffic using a client element and a double-hop relay via infrastructure servers.

The Private Relay client element “shims” the device network stack. Whether Private Relay is locally enabled on the device or not, the network shim is ever-present - and as such has the capacity to influence processing of network traffic on your device.

With the VPN client enabled, your internet traffic completely bypasses both the client and server elements of Private Relay. While VPN is enabled, your Mail is seemingly retrieved and processed without issue.

Testing also suggests that the problematic processing of network traffic is similarly ameliorated when Private Relay is itself enabled - this feature perhaps being enabled by the majority of iCloud+ subscribers. When processing traffic via Private Relay, a VPN tunnel workaround is not required to resolve Mail performance issues. Interestingly, the issue with Mail does not appear to occur when using a Cellular hotspot connection.

More analysis and testing is required - hopefully obtaining additional information from similarly affected Users concerning their network configuration and device settings. If the cause of the issue is confirmed, use of available workarounds will continue to be required until such time as Apple resolves the underlying problem.

In the meantime, subscribing to either (a) the base iCloud+ tier, or (b) a full service VPN provider will restore nominal Mail performance pending correction by Apple. Given the relative low-cost of iCloud+, coupled with the ability to cancel at any time, this may be the most appropriate of the available options at this point in time.

I hope this information and insight proves to be useful to you.