iOS 9.0 and 9.0.1 show wrong unread count for Exchange

Same here on both my devices. The 9.0.2 update seems to have made it a little better, but the problem always comes back.

The bug seems to be related to showing threaded conversations and mail items that are identical. In my case right now, they're junk items. As this moment, I have 7 unread junk messages in my Exchange Inbox. In the iOS Mail app, it shows a count of 7, but only 5 actual items. (Previous versions of the app put duplicates into the same thread.) The Mail app's Home screen badge shows 5 unread. Now, I clear the unread junk mail from my Inbox, the Mail app shows no unread items, but reports a count 2 unread; the app's badge shows no unread items. That definitely is not working as intended.

Turning off "Organize By Thread" seems to do the trick. Unfortunately, it affects all mail accounts, so it's an inconvenience, but much less annoying than putting up with either an erroneous unread count or having to go through the turn-off-mail-restart-phone-turn-mail-back-on process all the time.

My mistake. It worked for a day or so, but that must have been a coincidence, since the problem has returned with the same symptoms. 😠

And, sadly, 9.1 doesn't fix it on either device.

So how can we tell whether anyone who could fix the problem knows or cares?

Probably the best way is to contact support directly! 😁

Why didn't I think of that!

Well, the answer is reasonable in a sense: I have a new appointment at the Genius Bar! I expect that I'll have someone go through some steps (hopefully, it won't include resetting the device and restoring from back-up again!), see that the problem returns persistently, and then they'll say something like, "Hmm, weird." There seems to be a real reluctance to admit the obvious: when your app is reporting two different numbers that are supposed to be the same, it's a bug. 😝

Out of curiosity, do people have "Mail Days to Sync" set to "No Limit" on the affected accounts? The latest support advisor mentioned that that was one of the changes between iOS 8 and 9. Rather than having the option to keep a specific number of messages locally, you now keep all the messages belonging to a certain number of days. I've always done that.

Simply changing the "Mail Days to Sync" to "No Limit" didn't fix the problem, but having done that combined with resetting the count (turn off mail on the account, restart the device, turn mail back on) has given me a couple of hours without the problem. Maybe this is the workaround. Of course, I've thought that before.

Setting "Mail Days to Sync" set to "No Limit" does indeed seem to be the way to go. I would call it a workaround, but I think Apple would characterize it as a solution. Regardless, I no longer have the unread counts out of sync with each other. Whether anyone on the Mail app development team is working on the problem is an open question. I'm curious whether anyone else has tried this.

So you will love this little bit of hilarity: As soon as I posted the previous comment, the Mail app went into a brief spasm where I thought I'd have to kill it. It eventually came back, and now has the wrong unread count! It's like it was waiting...