Mail not working on iPhone after iOS 18 Update

Not solved again in the version released today….(the third)

Ok. I found the problem on my side!

The 2 accounts that where not working where using IMAP folders with some specials characters in their name.

No problem with iOS 17 and many years prior that. And no problem with other mail client ... but they makes the connection fails with iOS18.

After I renamed thoses folder (and changed all my setting on all my different clients...) ... it works again!

KiltedTim wrote:

Millions of people have upgraded and not experienced this problem.

You might not have noticed the news today.

millions of Rogers network users in Canada did experience this issue. Plus there are numerous tech blogs bubbling about it.

It seems to me that TWO big regressions are active in this release - iOS mail client has some funky bugs with imap prefixes; and, there’s this fetch mail bug also.

the OP may well have a separate issue with the TLS 1.1, but this ios/ipados 18 mail app issue is growing and already pretty big.

apparently ipadOS is bricking iPad pros also. Thankfully, I didn’t experience that bug.

I have confirmed that my iphone with ios18 connects to the IMAP server (because it successfully fetches list of folders) with TLSv1.2, but still is unable to show any email messages.

I tried removing, rebooting and reconfiguring email account multiple times, without success.

OK, also here, IMAP stopped working on my Iphone after upgrade to IOS 18.

Ipad remained working on IOS 17.

Installing another mail client on the Iphone fixed the issue, clearly Apple changed something in their Mail app.

Had contact with customer support a few times, but what strikes me is that they are not aware of anything that changed!

I also used self signed certificate for years. After playing around for a while I decided to replace them with Let's Encrypt certificated.

Then it instantly started to work again and the error messages on the server side were gone, indicating the client had difficulties with the self-signed certificate.

So Apple, please fix the self-signed certificate support again and, AT LEAST, inform the public and your helpdesk people that something has changed so people like use are/can be informed.

Lacking information and transparency here is killing!

I updated to iOS 18.0 at the weekend and same thing has happened keep getting the message saying my password is incorrect even though it’s 100 percent correct. Any ideas what to do to fix? Or will there be another update to fix if Apple are aware?

Sadly it doesn't! I'm hoping when 18.1 finally comes out it will address this.

I personally tried everything so far. Deleted app, deleted accounts, readded them, erased iPhone, restored from backup, restore as new, forward slash, "INBOX", changing auth methods, changing push/fetch etc.

Nothing worked. And behaviour is the same as mostly everyone else. IMAP fails to fetch new emails despite SMTP working just fine. All my servers are my own work servers running on OSX 10.13.6 on Server 5.6.1. TLS is 1.2

MacOS is unaffected only iOS18 and 18.0.1 and also ofc iPad OS. iOS 17.7 still works just fine but Apple stopped signing those so hurrray for no ability to rollback either.

I am not happy at all! I have purchased every iPhone since its birth. I have an IPad Pro and a a MacBook Pro. This issue with IOS 18 turned my work imap email on my iPhone and iPad in to bricks. I tried all of the proposed fixes in this thread! Come on Apple this is the best you can do in new software deployment? You should be ashamed! I am waiting for the fix! My imap email on both can send emails and I get green check marks on all systems go but can get my inbound emails! Really unhappy and frustrated

I am having the same issue. After upgrading to iOS 18, I am no longer able to receive emails to my Inbox. Interestingly enough, I do get receive mail in my Junk folder, and am able to send email. I just cannot receive email to my Inbox. I hope Apple fixes this soon.

NickAleshgo wrote:

I'm trying to help people who need that, but not like you, please ignore that, thank you.

No, you are trying to financially benefit from your spammy posts that do not in any way address the problem.

The service you keep promoting, Securityfile, is a rinkydink operation at which you are programmer, tester, etc. – that's what your profile said yesterday, before you deceptively changed it. Moreover, I personally would be concerned about its safety, given that I can't find any evidence of anyone using it, reviews, or anything to give me any comfort that it is even on the level.

Please stop. Your posts are unhelpful noise.

This is a partial update, since my problem is not yet solved.

I called Apple HelpDesk last Saturday as you indicated (thank you) and I passed 2 hours with them. They collected all the information I could give them. Then I was invited to reinitialise my phone (which is cumbersome, but no other solution than do what they want) and got an appointment for today at 12.00 (Paris time).

Note: this was a partial reinitialisation that did not put the phone back to factory settings (so I did not need a backup to restore it), but I had to reconfigure every app again. Credit cards are also deleted as well as ALL wifi passwords saved on the phone. (solution to it: go to the Passwords app, check the Wifi passwords stored there, save them somewhere else).

Today I had first on the phone a technician who after 30 min passed the call to an ‘upper level technician’. He (they all connect to your phone) did some actions on the phone (just to verify once again the problem and some settings) and collected some info via screen capture as well as the history of the phone. Next appointment is due for next Tuesday.

If you have the same problem with a second iPhone which was also updated to iOS 18, please mention it to them. It is an important information.

If you have a non-Apple email service that you access via Apple’s Mail app and that is not functioning correctly with that Apple app as it once did then I do strongly recommend that you contact THAT email service provider as well. I know that doing so can often be a relatively major time commitment but they *should* be able to be at least as helpful as Apple was for you if not moreso (no guarantees though, of course).

Is not only this. I am having issues with iCloud mail services too (yes - that is correct - apple icloud service mail and mail app : ). On Mac all folders being synced correctly, however on iphone some subfolders, mails are dissapearing - so there is a clear bug with mail app after IOS 18 upgrade.

Problem you mentioned with certs they had for ages and they never fixed (this was since 2011). After each setup I had to recreate mail accounts (imagine this doing for multiple business and family accounts - for every family member after every IOS upgrade). Is not funny Apple! Your support useless. Every time I am trying to explain this issue to tech guys I am being ignored or they admitting is a bug and telling me that not much can be done.

WHOA…. This evening, my iPhone (18.1) started getting mail from my IMAP account. It started around 9:40 central time. It has so far updated and gotten new mail a couple times since — it seems like it is going really slow or delayed, but it IS grabbing it. I checked my iPad (also 18.1) and was NOT getting anything new from that account. The only thing I did different is that I had been on the phone with apple support to cancel an AppleCare renewal, and was searching my mail to find the agreement number.

So I tried searching mail in the IMAP account inbox on my iPad…. I thought, maybe that’s what changed something here? I mean, how could Apple suddenly “Fix this” remotely, right? (Well, maybe there are things they can silently update, who knows)

Then, about ten minutes ago (10:30 central), my iPad started getting and showing the new mail from that account also…

My (hopefully temporary) workaround has been to use the Gmail app to sign in with my non Gmail account. At least I know I can reliably access my email. Seems to work better than the Apple mail app too.