How to limit downloaded emails in iOS 8

It's a shame this key feature was removed in iOS 8. It's a big step backwards.

As of July of 2015 there are 411 other people who have said they also have this problem.

Another important feature has been removed for no good reason.

Why do you keep that many emails on your server? Delete them, using a computer, and they won't be downloaded to your phone.

That just puts the burden back onto the user to compensate for a feature in previous versions of iOS that was working fine, had a useful function, and was easy to use.

That is correct; that "burden," as you call it was always yours to bear in the first place. You should have been using best practices regarding your email account all along and now you're being forced into organizing it whether you want to or not. You can't change what Apple does with its operating system, so I would respectfully suggest you get your email account in order. It will serve you well now and in the future.

Let's briefly analyze your holy-than-thou response regarding what you think I, as an end user, should do about the issue that over 400 other people have stated they also have:

First, your statement that I can't change what Apple does with its operating system assumes Apple has no interest in any feedback from its users and wouldn't make changes based on any user input. That's just false. Apple has multiple feedback mechanisms to understand how users are interacting with their products and is now even doing public betas to further refine that experience.

Second, your response fails to recognize the salient differences between OS X and iOS mail clients and that's the key issue here. I have lots of smart mailboxes controlling how my mail appears and gets sorted, on my Mac. I don't need to spend needless minutes and hours each week deleting emails off the server (which was your original suggestion) because Apple Mail organizes my mail, but thanks so much for the "best practices" suggestion, whatever that means. The issue is when there are many emails piling up on my iOS devices, I have no easy way to curb or organize the mess because email on iOS just isn't easy to organize or sort through.

You can stand high and mighty about what some "best practices" should be used by all users in organizing their email, but a far simpler, easier, and much more Apple-like UI element would be to reinstate how many emails can load onto an iOS device.

I'm gonna guess with your eight thousand two hundred and thirty points you're one of the illustrious folks who just can't let go of any discussion without having the last word no matter how monotonous and repetitive the replies become. I hope for your sake the hundreds, if not many thousands, of hours you've already spent on discussions.apple.com actually has some sort of pay-off for you. But for me, I just want Apple to hear my voice about a fairly minor part of the overall experience with their products. I got your precious opinion, you think I should manage my email better. Pat yourself on the back, you've been heard.

Rowan Morrigan wrote:

Let's briefly analyze your holy-than-thou response regarding what you think I, as an end user, should do about the issue that over 400 other people have stated they also have:

First, your statement that I can't change what Apple does with its operating system assumes Apple has no interest in any feedback from its users and wouldn't make changes based on any user input. That's just false. Apple has multiple feedback mechanisms to understand how users are interacting with their products and is now even doing public betas to further refine that experience.

Second, your response fails to recognize the salient differences between OS X and iOS mail clients and that's the key issue here. I have lots of smart mailboxes controlling how my mail appears and gets sorted, on my Mac. I don't need to spend needless minutes and hours each week deleting emails off the server (which was your original suggestion) because Apple Mail organizes my mail, but thanks so much for the "best practices" suggestion, whatever that means. The issue is when there are many emails piling up on my iOS devices, I have no easy way to curb or organize the mess because email on iOS just isn't easy to organize or sort through.

You can stand high and mighty about what some "best practices" should be used by all users in organizing their email, but a far simpler, easier, and much more Apple-like UI element would be to reinstate how many emails can load onto an iOS device.

I'm gonna guess with your eight thousand two hundred and thirty points you're one of the illustrious folks who just can't let go of any discussion without having the last word no matter how monotonous and repetitive the replies become. I hope for your sake the hundreds, if not many thousands, of hours you've already spent on discussions.apple.com actually has some sort of pay-off for you. But for me, I just want Apple to hear my voice about a fairly minor part of the overall experience with their products. I got your precious opinion, you think I should manage my email better. Pat yourself on the back, you've been heard.

If this is what you want to happen, then you have come to the wrong place. This is a user to user technical support forum. For Apple to hear your voice, you need to go to the feedback mechanism that you allude to. That is at http://www.apple.com/feedback and click on the appropriate subject area.

Obviously...

That's pretty funny....you callling me "holier-than-thou" within that screed.

Ha ha! Exactly!

Isn't it obvious WHY Apple made this move? When your memory is full, you need a new phone. When you buy a new phone because your memory is full, you are likely to buy one with more memory. Apple is a brilliant company that does not make accidental mistakes like this. It's inconceivable this anti-user change was not a calculated move. It's a shame...

Um...NO. When your storage is full (not your memory, that is another item entirely), you remove items and make more room on the device - you don't buy a new one. That would be a waste of money. Your theory about Apple is patently ridiculous.

The point is I NEED to keep e-mails for archive and reference purposes. With unlimited online and 1T space on my computer this is no issue. In the days where I could limit the number of e-mails on my i-phone this was no issue. I have no reason or need to view older e-mails from my phone. BUT when Apple decided NOT to allow any limit on e-mails, THEY caused the issue! Who are they OR you to tell me how many old e-mails I should keep? There would have been absolutely NO reason to remove the limit of e-mails on the i-phone and they DID get feedback when they made the change in IOS7. Had it been an oversight they could have EASILY fixed this in an update or IOS8. The ONLY conclusion is that they deliberately chose to make this move and my theory is the ONLY logical reason why this decision would have been made. YOU may have drank the Apple Cool Aid. More power to you. The fact is Apple created an UN-necessary issue. (Kind of like putting in a chip in the lighting cords to prevent the use of perfectly good aftermarket cords.)

I definitely feel your pain and have, like you, chosen to add a comment rather than just click on I Also Have This Problem. I think voicing your dismay/disgust via Apple's feedback mechanism is really important. They do listen to user feedback and will change things if they think it's good or what they did wasn't the right direction to take (except that you never know what the impetus actually was ultimately).

But in thinking about this mechanism, that is, the current lack of it, I don't think their motivation is to get customers to purchase phones with more memory to accommodate email storage. Most people just aren't going to think that way and wouldn't even know to look in Settings > General > Usage > Manage Storage to even know how much space their email is taking up.

What would be a better solution would be to have a way for a user to select how much storage to allocate on their mobile device, rather than number of emails. On mine, my emails are taking up 2.6 GB of space on iCloud but only 388 MB on my device, not enough to buy a new device, LOL! I'd rather say, just allow 250 MB of space to my emails and don't back up my Gmail email (as a separate setting). Then, "Manage Storage" in Settings would have some meaning. What's weird is that under "Manage Storage," the allocation for Mail is the only one that can't be changed!

There are multiple issues with doing even that. If, for example, your iPad is your primary device and your email is set-up as a POP account, then going in and limiting the size would by necessity delete emails, which would result in losing them forever. Not good. If, alternatively, all your accounts were IMAP, then presumably you could limit the space on the device, knowing the server was keeping your mail safe. (In your case, you have a desktop with plenty of room so you likely have a local copy and probably just have your devices set as IMAP clients; at least, I'd recommend that approach.)

But if you want a conspiracy theory, a better one would be this: If you're backing up to iCloud, and you have multiple devices storing gigs of email, then you'd be more likely to up your storage, thus paying more to Apple for storage. But if your email is already iCloud based (.mac, .me, .icloud) then it's not (as explained here) getting backed up anyway and not taking room in the cloud. It's not clear if your non-iCloud based email does get backed up, thus using more iCloud storage.

I don't think Apple would have a plan to manipulate or trick people into buying more storage on their iOS devices using email as the mechanism. (Another conspiracy theory: Just keep upping the memory requirements of iOS itself, making the devices with less storage slow down to a crawl, and there's your motivation to upgrade.)

Whatever else you say here, take a moment to voice your opinion to Apple directly.