Email slow to load in mail app with iOS 11

Well, I finally got all aspects of Outlook for iOS working! Emails are once again nearly instantaneous in displaying the full message - just like they were when I used to use the iOS Mail app, pre iOS 11.0.3. Now I no longer have to stare at what must be the stupidest status message of all time "Loading...", which could display anywhere from 45 seconds to several minutes using the iOS built-in Mail app under iOS 11.x. It wouldn't take a rocket scientist to come up with a little more, um, useful status message - that might have helped Apple debug all these woes... Anyway, no more iOS Mail app for me 🙂

All - I have this issue also every since iOS 11 launched. Despite having my emails accounts set to automatically fetch/push, it will sit at "checking for mail" for several minutes, and sometimes time out. I just downloaded the Apple Support App and started a couple chat sessions on this. I was told by both chat agents that they've not heard of this issue. I pointed them to this website, and I was told that they usually don't respond b/c "the discussion forums won't contain enough detail to help resolve the issue. Hopefully other users contact us like you have so we can track the issue." Please: everything on here, download the app and start a chat so Apple can understand how many users are affected, and we'll get the horsepower for an iOS upgrade that finally fixes this! Thanks!

I just updated to 11.1 this morning and email seems slightly better. Overall though, it’s my opinion that the iPhone 6 does not work well with iOS 11. It may be time for a new phone. I have a few friends who have upgraded to an iPhone 8, and from what I could see, they are a lot faster. I suppose it makes sense that hardware will eventually not keep up. I’ve had my iPhone 6 for 3-1/2 yrs., but to me it seems llike I should be able to get more out of it.

The problem is not with your iPhone 6 hardware - it's buggy iOS 11.x from Apple. I abandoned using iOS's Mail app and switched to MS Outlook for iOS. Outlook apps pulls down emails very fast - as we're used to. Apple has some buggy code to fix in iOS 11.x 😟

I agree. The best course of action is either start using outlook or as in my case I have outlook and yahoo accounts so I had to go back IOS email app but deleted the accounts and added them back (so the indexing or wherever the bugs are with handling old data went away, BTW, I also deleted the email app and added it back because I saw some residual data sitting when I looked at iphone storage usage -- probably another bug with leaky "buckets").

I called Apple Care a while ago - they are in total denial. While they do admit to slowness problems with their Mail app, they think it got totally fixed as of iOS 11.0.1. I told them I went from 10.x to 11.0.3 and encountered this problem. They said they were not aware of any slowness issues with Mail after 11.0.1. I told them I could email them a link to this post in THEIR forums, but they were not interested 😟 Told them there were hundreds of similarly affected users reporting this issue in ONE post alone. They didn't care to be informed 😟

It will be good to get some technical magazine writers (if anyone has good contacts, please help), write about this IOS 11.* upgrade madness and that is one sure way to get their attention as their execs will get their support staff to wake up.

I’ll have to give Outlook a try. I use it on my Windows machine, and it’s always been the best email client app out there. However, for me anyway, the entire iOS UX has degraded on my iPhone 6. Mail was the worst of it, but overall, my iPhone 6 works like ****.

@tekie70 : Exactly what I was thinking... After such a long time without fix, it's time for this to come out in the press. I'm pretty sure this would speed up the resolution.

For those who use outlook app, well it's good for you if you can, but as I already wrote previously here, there are some privacy concern about this app, since all your emails and contact are downloaded and stored to Microsoft Servers before going to your phone. It's definitely not a problem for you if you use a microsoft email server anyway, but for some companies that host their own mail server and need confidentiality, it's a leak and a potential threat.

The release notes for 11.1 don’t make any mention of fixes or changes to Mail. I can’t waste any more of my time on Apple’s botched up Mail app under 11.0.3, as I’ve switched to the Outlook app. But I hope others are helped by 11.1

I installed iOS 11.1 and on an iPhone 6 I can say that mail is a little better. However, as I’ve said before in this thread, my iPhone 6 is a slow piece of **** on iOS 11. Often throughout the day, the screen becomes unresponsive for many seconds when switching between apps or basically just using the device for anything. It’s incredibly frustrating and I do not recommend upgrading to iOS 11 if you are on an iPhone 6.

Well said smitty I have the same issues have tried all sorts of fixes nothing works. Who on earth are the muppets at Apple who send out this rubbish obviously without testing. How much time is wasted by us the customer trying to find our way round these updates?

After being frustrated for months and reading all your comment, I decided to do the following: I downloaded and installed outlook for iOS and it's FAST (with the exact same mail accounts)! Maybe this gets Apple going.

Me too - not just the slow native app but my workaround to use a different Mail client althogether. In my case Yahoo mail. Open it up and the emails appear as if by magic - instantly!

Come on Apple ... at least engage with the conversation!

Hand Off was/is disabled on my iPhone 6s, and the Mail app essentially crippled itself after upgrading iOS 10.x to 11.0.3. Switching to Outlook for iOS solved the problem for me - and many others. I guess if “ignorance is bliss”, Apple is pretty blissful about this Mail mess they made as a result of 11.x 🙁