Mail not working on iPhone after iOS 18 Update

After trying just about everything possible, I finally gave in and installed Outlook. I had it on my MacBook and it was working fine, and now I have useful email on my iPhone. I'll have to install on my iPad now. I just hate installing a bunch of Apps to fix bad Apple Apps, but I need my email working.Of interest maybe is the fact that Gmail kept working, just the IMAP mail was failing to connect.

Apple1138 wrote:

Here is a temporary fix…scroll down to incoming settings and turn off the SSL, that’s it. Mail flowed.

It goes against the whole idea of SSL …

Bad, bad idea.

1. Like many ideas floated here, it may have worked for you or a few other people, but it is not a fix. Indeed, many email servers will not connect if SSL is turned off, so for many, it is the opposite of a fix.
2. You omitted the reason why SSL is used. It encrypts your communication with your mail server, so that your data is not transmitted as readable text. Depending on your configuration, turning off SSL will also transmit your password as plain text. SSL is a hugely important security measure.

This is an unsafe, and likely ineffective, workaround.

So far, the only sure workaround is using an alternative email client until this mess is fixed.

1) Delete the account

2) shut down the phone

3) start phone

4) add account (again)

send and receive should now flow.

Took five times but eventually it worked let’s see if it lasts usually when Apple ignores multiple requests for a problem they feel like they’ve solved it already but still it’s hard to find concrete results. What I listed above worked totally fine and I literally updated the patch this morning, hoping it would fix things, but it didn’t so I did the above steps one more time and had success.

Try to reduce the number of mails in your mailbox. For me, only two mail folders including Inbox and Sent Messages kept failing to be synchronized with my IMAP server. After moving mails in my Inbox to the other folders on macOS mail client, it began to work properly. Sent Messages which has 11,258 emails is still suffering synchronization problem. On the other hand, a mail box which has 4,950 mails is synchronized without problem. I think it' worth trying.

My Mail App is working again. I don’t know if this a coincidence or not but after I turn off my vpn in the control center. My Mail App start to receive mail again. Also , websites that previous deny my device access are now allow me to access it again.

@JoninDurham - I suggest you contact your local ISP and ask if other clients are having this issue. I had the EXACT issue you described. I ended up taking my iPhone and iPad to the tech at my ISP. They changed some settings and now both can send and receive emails. There remains this issue on my Mac mini, but I am hoping we can figure that out over the phone. In short, the local provider had received a LOT of tech calls from their customers with Apple devices and were prepared to help.

Idris, you really don't know what you are talking about. There is a documented architectural change in iOS 18 that broke functionality with certain mailservers. A link helpfully posted by cube_23, states:

Starting with iOS 18, Apple Mail began using a technique called "pipelining," where multiple IMAP commands are sent together in a single network packet. Specifically, after the IDLE command is terminated with the DONEcommand, iOS 18 was immediately sending other commands in the same packet.

Although Stalwart supports command pipelining, it was not prepared to handle this scenario. When it received the DONE command, it stopped processing the rest of the packet and ignored any subsequent commands that followed. This caused Apple Mail to get stuck, as its subsequent requests were not being processed correctly.

Based on the above, stephen boyle (in this closed discussion) suggested disabling advertising the IDLE capability in dovecot servers, which several of us did. This "fixed" the iOS 18 mail problem but also disabled IDLE for mac and other clients. I suspect that a service provider using dovecot would not be willing to make that compromise. An update to dovecot (and other impacted mailservers) may be able to resolve it, but a fair assessment is that Apple broke it and Apple should fix it.

While there have certainly been a number of "my email isn't working either" posts unrelated to the specific problem that is the subject matter of this and the other thread, the problem is both serious AND impacts a large number of users.

Hi guys

Here's a bit of good news that may be useful to some of you:

Since iOS18 my ZIMBRA business mail account no longer synchronizes in IMAP, as many here do.

My admin suggested I use ActiveSync (Exchange account) instead of IMAP. The good news is that it works fine in iOS 18.3.

I've got incoming mail to work by reverting to NOT using SSL on the incoming server in Account Settings > Advanced > Incoming Server:

• toggle Use SSL to off
• serverport will revert to 143

Tap out of the settings app.

Force Quit and restart the Mail App

This is siloed to the Mail app. Other mail apps (e.g., Outlook, Spark) are not affected.

Had the same problems with imap

just installed 18.1.2 and problem solved

I reported this bug and I'm surprised Mail is still broken.

In the meantime I downloaded the free Microsoft Outlook and it connected to my mail server just fine.

After updating iOS 18.1 (Build Number: 22B83), it works as expected.

Delete the app. Reinstall, but before lauching the app reset you network settings.

Delete the email account not the app. Then reinstall the email account.

It worked for me.