iPhone mail ignoring IMAP path prefix after 10.3 upgrade

Well the bug is still open. You can see from the above (my bug tracker) that the original reported bug number 31394566 is is in the state OPEN so either thief working on fixing it or it's in the queue to be fixed... seeing that someone just recently posted that beta2 of 10.3.2 didn't fix this problem means that it still hasn't been addressed. Argh!! I do hope if their focusing on fixing anything with 13.3.2 the fixes are serious issues and not frivolous visual effects...

Well I'm glad to hear someone has good news. Well if the bug has been addressed, the registered bug isn't closed as you can see. The bug is still showing it's open. Let's just hope they are still testing the fix....

JUST AN UPDATE EVERYONE found this over at - https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/odDKf9I35fg;context-place=f orum/gmail

"The Mail app on the iPhone, preferring the Gmail app, but I added my account to the Mail app and tested adding and removing the prefix. My results are that this version of the Apple Mail app ignores the prefix when listing the folders, but uses it when moving or copying messages.

• It shows all of my labels as folders, even if they don't have the IMAP prefix. This is the first bug. Any folders that do not start with the prefix should not be shown in the app.
• It doesn't suppress the prefix on the folders that do have the prefix, so they show in the hierarchy as if the prefix was not set.
• When attempting to access any folders other than the Inbox, it is adding the prefix, even if it exists, and reporting an access failure because the mangled folder name does not exist
• When moving or copying messages, it is adding the prefix to the destination folder, creating a new, further nested label to hold the messages.

Edit: I tested with another IMAP provider (Fastmail) and got similar results if I set the IMAP prefix to a value that didn't match the server's NAMESPACE response, further indicating that it is an Apple problem, not a problem with the IMAP providers."

I run a mail server running dovecot and sendmail. I set the prefix path users can store mbox files outside of the mail mail directory. With 10.2.1 I had no issues I upgraded my iPhone 5s and my prefix is no longer being used. My iPad mini using 10.2.1 has no issues.... Apple needs to address this screwup...

Just updated from 10.3 to 10.3.1 and the IMAP prefix is still broken. Again my iPad running 10.2.1 works fine with the exact same email services. Apple must not have reviewed this bug yet. Fingers crossed with the release of 10.3.2....

Ok I filed a apple bug report but it was closed due to the fact that the bug has already been submitted and the bug report number is: 31394566. Hopefully that the issue will be addressed soon as this app needs to work....

This bug caused me major problems. My cellular data program suddenly has consumed all the 8GB of data. Took me some time to find out that this was consumed by Mail, and that the reason was this iMap path bug. My unix directory on the file server had a symbolic link to a huge directory, and the server tried to follow and bring the whole linked directory to the iPhone and iPad.

I have gone to apple about this as well they are playing the APPLE VS GOOGLE GAME throwing it back to google

I've put a couple of post already up on this.

Apple's IOS update 10.3.1 Broke gmail IMAP prefix. Apple vs Google being thrown to google now

Apple vs Google being thrown to google now

I recently updated to iOS 10.3.1 the other day and immediately after the update my gmail account stopped working correctly.

Just to give a heads up i am in the IT world as well so i am nota beginner to all of this stuff.

I have my gmail account setup as map the regular way you setup email on iOS devices except i use the gmail prefix feature [Gmail]

Right after the update all this went broke. Not only on my device even my wife's iOS devices. Yet our Mac's which use the IMAP prefix [Gmail] have no problem just the iOS devices.

Now we did not let her phone update, Only her iPad. We prevented her phone from updating because the prefix works on her iPhone without any problems using the 10.3.xx it was.

After speaking with Apple Support agents 2nd level support indicated she was able to reproduce the same thing with her own personal gmail account so she sent it to the engineers who came back with telling me to go to gmail now with this issue.

So out of logical conclusion it seem like this has all stem from the iOS update which is causing the prefix not to work anymore. I've tried a ton of things to get this fixed and right now back to square 1 .

Setting the gmail account up with no prefix and wishing i didn't upgrade

Also to point out imap prefix works with apple mail program on the mac but not on the iOS devices now after the update

I hope i get someone to shed some light to this.

See scree attachments of before and after to shed some further light on the situation.

THIS IS AFTER IOS UPDATE - and with the IMAP prefix used [Gmail] if you put the prefix in now it causes the mapping of folders to be all off also causing your emails if you for example delete an email it will create a [Gma][Gmail]/trash.

Like it creates an extra folder. But removing the prefix corrects all this.

The only bad thing now is visually it doesn't look pleasing and your suck with looking at the [Gmail]

So you can no longer use the IMAP prefix for gmail when your using iOS devices from what i discovered after the update to IOS 10.3.1

THIS IS WHAT IT SHOULD LOOK LIKE BEFORE THIS IOS UPDATE AND THIS IS WITH THE PREFIX BEING USED IOS BROKE THIS AND APPLE ENGINEERS INDICATE ITS NOW A GOGLE PROBLEM - Why on iOS devices does this not work anymore? google or apple?

Lets play the game toss it back between apple and google now .. Apple is having me go to google engineers lets see what is said

Already spoke with apple engineers who state its now google. But to me if its google why would and update break this. To me apple must of done something to make something that was work now not work.

Who does the repair fall to now.

hay its an issue its apple vs google now check out what i've posted.

even spoke with tier 2 and the engineers are saying google now.

check these links out

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apples-ios-update-10-3-1-broke-gmail-imap-p refix-apple-vs-google-being-thrown-to-go…

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/odDKf9I35fg;context-place=f orum/gmail

This is what someone post when i took this issue over to a google forum

"I understand your frustration, especially after you have created all your labels (folders) with the

[Gmail]/ prefix, but, as it is only affecting one piece of software, at one release level, it is far more likely to be a problem in Apple's Mail app. (Personally, I prefer not to set the prefix, because it is easier to switch between the web app and IMAP clients.)

In any case, it appears from your description that Apple Mail is mangling the prefix (from [Gmail] to [Gma][Gmail]), which can hardly be blamed on Gmail. "

Yah I did what i think is sorta the same thing but they ignored it and stated it was gmail's problem no.

But its starting to pop up on more forms. This form link below has good discussion going on to .

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/odDKf9I35fg;context-place=f orum/gmail

After struggling with this on all of my devices for some time, I came up with an interim solution. What worked for me was to delete the account and recreate. When recreating, DO NOT enter the IMAP prefix and use the account as-is.

For some reason, setting the account up in this way will allow you to view and file mail into your subfolders. You still see the partly broken directory paths, but all the mailboxes are useable. This is an acceptable solution to me while we all wait for Apple to make a permanent fix.

I hope this helps.

-Dave

Ok so I've tested not setting the prefix path and deleting/creating the account and it only partially works. So in my case I'm not a Gmail user but using email services such as smtp/imap which when setting up on the iPhone you have to select "other". Now as prior I can see all my folders and the email list of messages show up in the folders, it even contains the 5 preview lines in the list. Yet if you select any email folder the message does NOT and I strongly repeat DOES NOT show up. I cannot move messages between folders. So this bug has rendered the iPhone email app useless. My interm solution is to use the outlook app that is in the App Store. Now there are problems with this too. One being it cannot work with your iPhone's contacts.... Yet at least you can send email and move messages between folders. The app also harvests email addresses for you so some auto completion is there, just not what you would expect. Yet what can you say it's a M$ product which right now is out performing apple's product just by working.... sad...

We're also encountering this issue with DoveCot as our IMAP server. User's mail folders are stored in their Home Directory on our server. A user logging in to our server now has DOZENS of folders in Mail on iPad, as opposed to only displaying the contents of ~/mail, which has been our standard.

This is a bug. I hope Apple fixes it quickly.

Likewise I have seen the same issue after upgrading from 10.2.1 to 10.3.1 with two different IMAP servers. One system is running an old Washington IMAPD and the other server uses Dovecot IMAPD. Both used to work well under 10.2.1 and only showed me the email folders within the directory specified by the IMAP folder prefix setting in iOS. Since upgrading to 10.3.1 it now (on the Dovecot server) shows multiple copies of those folders and gets confused showing "~" as a subfolder with another set of (the same, but treated separately) IMAP folders in it. Washington IMAPD is just showing me my Inbox and no other folders! I reported the bug to Apple "bug report (31680533)" and was told it was a duplicate of "another issue (31394566) and will be closed".

As other people have seen due to the fact the Mail App wants to re-sync the folders my data usage has shot up and one of the first things I noticed was it draining my mobile data allowance. Also battery life went down with Mail being the top usage app (currently "Mail - background activity" is showing as 39% of battery usage for the last 24 hours). It has lead me to having to be very careful but when I turn mobile data on and keeping my phone charged.

I have tried upgrading to the public beta of iOS 10.3.2 (14F5080a) but the problem persists.

Really hoping Apple can fix this soon as I need to be able to access those IMAP server folders. It's definitely not just a Google Gmail issue, although I suspect as most people don't use IMAP these days that's where the majority of people will have encountered the issue.

Definitely frustrating!

Matt