Mail notification WatchOS 5

I believe you are referring to the Thread Notifications setting it overrides all other mail notifications. I have an iPhone XS Max since launch day and bought an Apple Watch Series 4 last Saturday. I noticed the email notifications issue about a day into having the watch and talked to 4 apple support reps before taking the watch to the store they shipped it off to their repair depot couldn’t find anything wrong with it hardware wise and sent it back to the store. At the apple store they checked my settings unpaired/re-paired it as new which I had already done and added an iCloud email after some tweaks it seemed like it worked until about 9pm that night then I started to not get the email notifications on my watch but on my phone even though it was locked. After looking through a thread on apple support I believe the issue is the software between iOS 12 and watch os 5 and the thread notifications settings set to none instead of vibrate. When I changed these settings I tested it by sending an email from a device that wasn’t connected to my Apple ID and it worked several times. Weird how it was intermittent for me some times I would get the email notifications to my new watch but some times not. I had an Apple Watch series 3 prior to this and it didn’t seem like an issue and it was running watch os 5 and my iPhone was running iOS 12. Any thoughts?

My mail alerts are now working with haptic feedback thanks to another post on here. iOS12 changed the default behavior of mail on the iPhone to not vibrate. You need to go under Settings on iPhone, Sounds & Haptics, and change new mail to have a vibrate alert. Once you do that, set your apple watch to mirror the phone's notification settings, and your notifications should work properly again. This is not even the slightest bit intuitive and I have no idea why Apple did this; it's got to be an oversight.

However, there's still an issue with mail alerts if you don't mirror your iPhone. If I switch over to custom, Apple Watch Mail alerts stop completely. I have tried restarting the phone and watch, turning custom alerts on and off, turning the individual mail account alerts on and off, turning each setting within each account on an off, and just about everything else I could think of - none of which worked.

I called apple support and they got me as far as mirroring the iPhone to at least get alerts to somewhat work, but they did not know how to get haptics working. They also had no idea what's going on with the custom alerts not working at all.

My problems persist as well. Mail notifications still can't be swiped away. iOS 12.1 iPhone Xs and S3 Watch now on 5.1. I had really hoped this would be fixed. I can still swipe mail notifications away on my Series 0 watch - not sure what that indicates - it's running 5.0 since after the bricking I'm afraid to update it.

To give others a point of reference, the 5.1 ug on my iW4C did not brick my watch. My iPhone X is 12.1.

I am still getting email notifications after using the solution proposed upthread. Swiping works as expected.

Hi,

I’m new to this thread but have been following it.

Thanks for all your suggestions but none of the fixed mentioned worked on my watch (Series 3). I get the notification on the watch and the red dot but no vibration.

I have just downloaded 5.1.1 and this is still not fixed.

This is getting really frustrating now as I’m finding the watch really useless without the email vibration notifications.

Nick

I’ve been working with Apple support since September 24. In my third senior adviser now. Done everything. Still cannot fix the email notifications. It’s been since upgrade in September. Very frustrating and disappointing that they seem to not care that we are loyal customers and their products are not cheap to continue with this issue.

i finally gave up. i deleted the mail app on my phone. and installed edison mail's 'email' app. notifications (audio and haptic) route to the watch without a hitch.

the downside is now there is no way to read emails on the watch itself (since the paired mail app on the phone is gone) and i won't be able to use the mail complication once they put it back on the infograph face.

but this app has been rock-solid reliable and i haven't missed a notification.

We’ve unpaired. Paried. Did as new phone. Backed up phone. Reset. Everything. Was about to send it back for new watch but was told it’s a software issue. That was 2 days ago. And each senior adviser said they’d get back to me. But silence

I just completed a lengthy support call with Apple Support and they have confirmed that this issue is known "A Bug". No estimate on a fix at this time.

The bug affects all Apple Watches running WatchOS 5 (Series 4 included).

Jason

Here's my experience, just to keep things confusing for everyone:

After upgrading my Series 1 Watch to watchOS 5 and my iPhone 8 to iOS 12, I had this problem: Arriving emails would make my Watch vibrate, as expected, and if I immediately raised my wrist, the arriving email would open on the Watch screen. But if I didn't look at the Watch immediately, the notifications didn't stick. In other words, I'd feel my Watch vibrate and I'd make a mental note to check it later. But a few minutes later, when I'd look at the Watch, there would be no indication of a notification — no red dot, and nothing listed when I swiped down to check the Notification screen. This only happened with email. All other notifications appeared to be working as normal on the Watch.

After erasing my iPhone and setting it up from Recovery Mode as a new phone and setting up the Watch as new: Notifications for emails sent to my iCloud account work perfectly on the Watch. Notifications for emails sent to my other email account (Fastmail) do not work at all, not even the initial vibration. Notification settings for both accounts are identical and are set in the Watch app to mirror the phone.

It should be noted that I did the restoring of the iPhone and the Watch very soon after the watchOS 5.1.1 update. So it's quite possible that the 5.1.1 update made the difference, but I didn't have the presence of mind to check before erasing both devices and starting over, because I had a few other reasons to take that drastic measure, not just this notifications issue.

Weird workaround but installing the Outlook mail client and turning on notifications and having at least Banners selected mostly allows IOS and watch mail notifications to work. IOS 12 iPhone X’s and Watch S3 5. Turn off Outlook notifications and you’ll lose IOS Mail notifications again.

What bothers me is that Apple does so many updates and so many issues happen but they ignore them? I was told my case was unusual and no one else had it. But I see it’s common.

I’m on my third senior advisor and now no one is responding to me.

Watch OS 5.1.2 finally solved it.

It is very disappointing that Applebintroduces bugs that affect core functionalities of their products and then refuse to admit it and rapidly rectify it. It seems that ‘honesty is the best policy’ does not apply here. Very sad but very true. Wish they took more pride in what they do and be honest with themselves and their loyal customers.

I hope someone at Apple is reading this and taking notes.

watchOS 5.1.2 broke almost all notifications for me and my calendar events no longer sync. I re-paired x2 with no success. Then after restarting both phone and watch a few times more I got most of the functionality back. However every day I have to restart both devices several times to get notifications back. Many calendar events still don't sync. And iMessage dictation is also broken and requires toggling iMessage on and off in iPhone settings.

I had this same issue and found a fix for it. 

In Settings>Notifications>Mail look for the options for Favorite mailbox. If this option exists than you have a mailbox set as a favorite. This option seems to default to off. When all other mail notifications are set to on and this is set to off, you will get a sound, and vibration, but no banner, no notification in Notification Center, and no notification on an Apple Watch. As soon as I turned this on, all notifications started working. I then deleted my inbox as a favorite, and this option went away completely and notifications continued to work.

To delete the favorite, open the app Mail and touch Mailboxes in the top left corner and then Edit in the top right. In the first section you will see a list of folders (Inbox, VIP, Flagged, etc.) that will have blue checks, this indicates what folders you will see in your mail app. At the bottom of the first section, click the Add Mailbox... option. You will see a list, if any of them are chosen, indicated by a grey check mark, they are selected as favorites and will only notify if you turn on Favorite notifications as mentioned above. Or you can simply uncheck them and standard notifications will apply.

Hopefully this helps some of you