Email Sound Notifications Not Working After ios 18 Update - Temporary Fix Found

This Solved My Problem.

This is how I solved my problems on my iphone 16 ios-18.3.1 apples email app not giving sounds and notifaction's, first let me say this i also have a apple watch-9 my watch always gave alerts as normal. After I read in another fourm to try turning off the bluetooth on my iphone because it was connected to my watch or for others it may be connected to a speaker or so on, My watch has celluar service so when bluetooth is off i still get notifactions on it,

I turn it off and tried it sent myself and email and got nothing. so than i went into settings, apps, Apples Email, than mail accounts i have 4, go to the bottom "Fetch New Data" on the top is "Push" my switch is Off than go to the bottom you will see Automatically my setting was set to this, there is also these setting-Manually, Hour, Every 30-Minutes, Every 15-Minutes, i set my to"Every 15- Minutes" and than i tried sending myself another email and it worked great on my phone and my watch.

Than i turn the bluetooth back on and connected to my watch with it on my waist sent myself another email and got sound notifactions on my watch only which is correct and got notifactions on my iphones lock screen (No Sounds) sounds were on the watch, than i took off my watch and left it sitting on the counter, i sent myself another email and i got the sounds and notifactions on my iphones lock screen on. This fixed my iphones sounds and notifactions and badges,

I hope this may work for others. try turning off bluetooth check to see if connected to another device and change fetch data to 15 minutes.

This is a update on 2/17/25 everything is still working perfect sounds, notifactions and badges 5-days later. if anyone needs to know a setting on my phone let me know.

Hey guys, i’m hesitant to post this, but I feel like I need to. I’ve been experiencing this issue for months with no fix. I’ve called Apple numerous times and been all over the forums. Nothing’s seemed to work. I was on the phone for the hundredth time with an Apple rep today and he had me go through multiple settings which took over an hour. Long story short, I don’t want to jinx myself and I wouldn’t be surprised if it stops working, but this is what he had me do -

Delete the Mail app and reinstall it.

go to settings, notifications, mail.

Then go to the bottom of the page to customize notifications.

I don’t have the setting “ Unread messages in primary” checked.

I have “all unread messages” checked.

he had me click on unread messages in primary and noticed that the alerts were off. I could’ve sworn that I had them on, but maybe they were turned back off when I reinstalled the app. Either way I turned them back on and then went back to “ All unread messages”.

now I’m getting the notifications. I’m not sure how long this will last because I’ve tried everything under the sun prior to this and nothing has worked. But I figured I’d share.

I spent a lot of time on this over the last week for an elderly friend that is impacted greatly by not having sounds alerts when emails arrive. We also visited the Genius bar at Apple Store Bondi Junction and despite trying many options they could not find a resolution. At first I thought it was the Sounds settings, then the Haptics settings, but was continually frustrated by the inconsistency that we seemed to be getting sounds with some emails and not others. The only pattern I could find was that I was only getting sounds for email addresses that were not in my contacts. The only setting I could find that seemed to have anything to do with suppressing or enabling sounds based on Contacts or Apps was Focus. I then removed all ‘Focus’ profiles other than ‘Do Not Disturb’ and this has resolved the issue and I now get sound alerts for any email that I or my elderly friend receive. I think that somehow configuring the focus settings caused this issue even though we both do not have any Focus profiles enabled. I hope this works for you as it seems to work for me.

I have just solved my problem iphone 16 ios-18.3.1 apples email app not giving sounds and notifaction's, first let me say this i also have a apple watch-9 my watch always gave alerts as normal. I read in another fourm to turn off the bluetooth on my iphone because it was connected to my watch, My watch has celluar service so when bluetooth is off i still get notifactions, so i turn it off and tried it sent myself and email and got nothing. so than i went to settings, apps, Apples Email, than mail accounts i have 4, go to the bottom "Fetch New Data" on the top is "Push" my switch is Off than go to the bottom you will see Automatically, Manually, Hour, Every 30-Minutes, Every 15-Minutes, i set my to"Every 15- Minutes" and than i tried sending myself another email and it worked great on my phone and watch. Than i turn the bluetooth back on and connected to my watch with it on my waist sent myself another email and got notifactions on my watch only which i beleave is correct and got notifactions on the lock screen (No Sounds) sounds were on the watch, than i took off my watch sitting on the counter i sent myself another email and i got the sounds and notifactions on my lock screen on my iphone. this fixed my iphone, i hope this may work for others. try turning off bluetooth check to see if connected to another device and change fetch data to 15 minutes.

I just installed 18.5 and - SURPRISE - the sound notifications are back. However, the sound I got was not the one I had previously selected (no big thing but annoying) and so I had to re-select my preferred sound. I tested email several times and it seemed to work fine, although somewhat slowly.

With the problem solved (permanently I hope), a couple of thoughts about this whole mess.

1. It shouldn't have taken months to solve this problem (or you might say it shouldn't have happened at all).
2. Apple never directly addressed those thousands, if not more, users who complained about this issue. You'd think the least they could do would be to put out an alert, or update, or something to keep users informed of progress toward a permanent fix. If they can put out regular sales pitches for products it should not be difficult to keep users updated on a fix for a problem.
3. Apple tech support - either a live tech or the chat feature - was absolutely useless. Further, in some cases users who posted on this thread said they were told to just trade in their phone. Not an appropriate response at all.
4. Apple needs to up its game. I've been an apple user for decades and this is the first and worst experience in terms of a product glitch and the tech support that was not at all supportive. Apple needs to review this entire episode and hopefully learn from it so that a problem never occurs again and if it does to fix it faster and keep users informed of progress toward a solution.
5. Apple? Can you at least say 'sorry.?'

I've previously been through the process of downloading 18.3, shutting down and rebooting, closing and changing various options all to no avail. As a pro-tem alternative until Apple can be bothered to make the necessary changes to correct their faulty product, I've downloaded MS Outlook version for Apple users and guess what, notifications given both visually and audibly both on my iMac and my iPhone.

It's not the ideal solution. I would much rather have a complete system operated solely and successfully by Apple, but at least it works!

Apple should be ashamed that MS can get the Apple system working better than Apple can!!!

I know is frustrating… but the solution in my case was to just tik Alerts in customise notifications. I dont remember if the settings was there in iOS 17 or it is just deactivated after the update. Maybe the best bet is to make a backup then put iPhone in DFU and do a fresh install of iOS 18.2 instead of OTA or just update from a Mac.

Hi everyone, Happy New Years !

In iOS 18.2, just go to Settings-> Notifications-> Mail-> Customise notifications, here you can activate Alerts for every account you have. It was deactivated, now works and Badges too.

Best regards

Updated to IOS 18.4 and it seems that sound email notifications are back.

Lets hope stay that way!

For my case, after updating to 18.5, the email notification sounds are back and stay fixed for all devices.

This is still an issue in 18.4

Push notifications has been an issue since iOS 11

Mail notification sounds and delivery in 18 can only be fixed by deleting the mail app. When will apple fix the notification issue in Apple Mail.

Steps I have our internal Helpdesk follow to resolve notification issues starting in 18.

Delete the mail app, force close all apps,

Add the Mail App back

Turn on Mail

Turn off Push

power off device.

Power on Device

Turn on Push

Open Mail

Pull down Mail.

Apple could not care less. Get outlook problem solved.