You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Error in downloading mail on IMAP after ios 18 upgrade

I am unable to download my mail using the native mail app after upgrading to IOS 18. I am getting the following error; “Network Error (POSIX 96)”

The mail configuration is on imap with SSL.

iPad Pro, iPadOS 18

Posted on Sep 16, 2024 10:24 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 15, 2024 4:36 PM

The case finally landed in Cupertino! We have a case no. and the developer are in the process of analyzing the problem and implementing a solution. It is a bug that will be fixed in one of the next releases. As soon as I have news I will post them...

134 replies

Oct 4, 2024 9:06 AM in response to Luca Maltese

I have the same problem, but it occurred way before I downloaded IOS 18:

I have Hotmail as my main email account—have for decades. Lately, the mail app on my iPhone Willy Nilly decides my password is incorrect and stops receiving and sending mail. I use the same password I have been using since I changed it earlier this year and sometimes it gets my mail working and sometimes it doesn’t. Oddly enough, the mail app on my iPad doesn’t behave this way, logging on to Outlook via a browser to access my mail doesn’t have a problem—it’s just on my phone mail app. I’m at a loss as to how to fix this. Any help would be greatly appreciated. 


I’m getting: Network Error POSIX 96 

Nov 2, 2024 7:35 AM in response to Hari1975

Thank you for persevering with the case!

However, I find it strange that Apple is now looking at your iPhone individually in detail.

Has Apple still not realised that thousands of users worldwide have been experiencing these Apple Mail problems since the update to iOS 18? This is not an individual problem of a single iPhone! My German mail provider has also confirmed to me that it must be an Apple error. He rules out the possibility of a fault with himself or the phone provider. Best regards from Berlin!

Nov 15, 2024 5:12 PM in response to Hari1975

My iPhone was updated to 18.1 and I noticed immediately that my imap email account would not refresh for hours, despite sometimes advising all Mail had been downloaded. Whenever I checked the same account on my iPad or M2 MacBook the mail came down immediately. After the 18.2 update I thought issue might be fixed but after several days it is the same. Only iPhone is affected. The error message seen for the first time today is POSIX 96 - imap settings might be incorrect. All settings are the same on the iPad and MacBook and are correct on the iPhone. Conclusion - the update to 18.xx has caused the issues. I’ll try Spark instead of Apple Mail as I have been told that other Mail clients are not affected with this very inconvenient bug.

Nov 16, 2024 9:31 PM in response to Obi1net

My fix was to go to IMAP server name a type over the greyed out forward slash following the server name.

I backed out of settings and shut down the iPhone, and then restarted it a minute later. After the phone rebooted I went to mail and pulled down the mail to refresh it from the server. After a few seconds (which I think was the IMAP server resyncing with my mailbox, all my mail for the last few days came down. After two days it is behaving as it should with new mail appearing when it should. I note that this problem was not evident in my iPad which is iOS 17.x and not on my M2 MacBook Pro, nor on my partner’s iPad with iOS 18.1. I can only conclude that Apple can solve the mystery of this and the other issues with email that can’t be solved with this fix.

Nov 22, 2024 6:13 AM in response to Hari1975

So bad news. Apple support has come back to me saying there is nothing wrong with the app and that they cannot guide me with how to fix the issue on my mail server. Considering that there were no changes on the mail server and that my mail worked in 17.x just before I upgraded to 18 and stopped working post the 18 upgrade, it should be obvious to the meanest intelligence that the issue is with the mail app upgrade that was bundled with ios 18. All I see is to hope for them to see the light and fix the app in one of the upcoming releases.


For those of you who managed to fix the issue, would be glad to get some pointers on anything you changes on your mail servers to fix the issue. Please note I am using a mail server with a qmail based mailing system. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Oct 16, 2024 10:24 PM in response to Hari1975

In my case, I still had the old Hotmail account on the Mail app as my primary email. I got in a live chat with Apple help and they had me delete the Hotmail account and just install Outlook as my primary email. That fixed it; I can now receive/send email using my original hotmail address through outlook. I hope this helps someone—sorry I’m not more tech savvy.

Error in downloading mail on IMAP after ios 18 upgrade

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.