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Mail app - excess background activity (iOS 16.x)

L

lindros2

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 21, 2011
949
583
So I'm banging my head on this issue. iOS 16 (all of them up through 16.5 beta). iPhone 14 Pro (not sure it matters).

- Mail app is running - background - throughout the night when on my charger (and daytime, even if NOT plugged in) - light blue bar in battery usage
- I have four email accounts, three active (iCloud, MS Exchange, and GMail; Outlook.com inactive)
- I've turned OFF background refresh, turned OFF push (and disabled fetch/disabled timed email)
- Email app not running

I've also removed (deactivated) mail accounts, which stops the drain, but as soon as I turn ANY of them back on, it goes back to draining.

I thought it could be my corporate account w/ MDM, but that's not it.
Thought it could be iCloud, nope. Finally, GMail, but nope.

No idea what is draining it.
 
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I had this happen for no reason. I factory reseted my 13P to fix an issue and 8 hours after the reset I noticed the mail app running in background for 8 hours 😂
I Factory reset it again and is gone and fixed. But keep in mind that my backup consists in 7 gb of data plus about 30gb of photos, so factory resetting and recovering from backup is quite fast.
 
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I'd recommend giving the phone a good hard reset. That's the only thing that's seems to minimize it constantly draining during the day. It used to be all day, now I only get a few minutes background activity at night.
 
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ph.rei said:
I had this happen for no reason. I factory reseted my 13P to fix an issue and 8 hours after the reset I noticed the mail app running in background for 8 hours 😂
I Factory reset it again and is gone and fixed. But keep in mind that my backup consists in 7 gb of data plus about 30gb of photos, so factory resetting and recovering from backup is quite fast.
Click to expand...
“… is quite fast or slow?”

I have gigabit internet but am more concerned with music …although it appears apple has fixed that restore.
Why I mentioned 14 Pro is that I don’t have 5 years of junk - this phone is 8 months old.

Also if I reset, I have to reenroll Okta and MDM, which is a PITA.
(Thankfully google auth is now backed up to cloud)
 
Quite fast. This is my first iPhone after many years of android and I don't have much data. Takes me about 25 minutes to restore and set up the phone and face ID and then maybe and extra hour of downloading (in the background) everything thats in icloud.
Anyway, the background usage of the Mail app it happened random for me. It happened right after a factory reset and it didn't after another one. I'm trying to remember what I did different during the restore. Maybe setting up the wallet card during the restore on time and "setting it up later" the other time. No idea if this has anything to do with the issue but thats all I remember.
 
ph.rei said:
Quite fast. This is my first iPhone after many years of android and I don't have much data. Takes me about 25 minutes to restore and set up the phone and face ID and then maybe and extra hour of downloading (in the background) everything thats in icloud.
Anyway, the background usage of the Mail app it happened random for me. It happened right after a factory reset and it didn't after another one. I'm trying to remember what I did different during the restore. Maybe setting up the wallet card during the restore on time and "setting it up later" the other time. No idea if this has anything to do with the issue but thats all I remember.
Click to expand...
I'm just really afraid of the whole enterprise management debacle I'll have to go through.
My last company was self-service re: MDM and certs.
New company requires IT helpdesk ticket and a whole lot of nonsense.
 
Did you find a solution? Because I have the exact same issue for a few months now and many more people over the years apparently.
 
I have the same issue since 16.5RC. Same issue with RC2.
I tried everything from offloading or deleting the Mail app. Change Push settings. Nothing helps.

I reported it to Apple with the Feedback app and I saw there that there are more than 10 People reporting the same. On the status Page you can only see if you are the only one or more than 10.

Apple is holding back with iOS 16.5 release. I hope even if it never happened before that they Release a RC3 or at least a new Build on release day. Or they release 16.5.1 directly.

This is a very annoying bug. I have a Gmail and iCloud Mail Account in use.
 
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Rastapopoulos said:
Did you find a solution? Because I have the exact same issue for a few months now and many more people over the years apparently.
Click to expand...

Cruncher said:
I have the same issue since 16.5RC. Same issue with RC2.
I tried everything from offloading or deleting the Mail app. Change Push settings. Nothing helps.
Click to expand...
Cruncher said:
This is a very annoying bug. I have a Gmail and iCloud Mail Account in use.
Click to expand...
Hey folks - after deleting and reinstalling Mail - and removing my Gmail account for the 10th time - it appears resolved in RC2.

This was in fact going on months, and unsure if it was a server-originated malfunction or my local device.

It also only plagued my iPhone, not iPad, which is running 16.3 or 16.4. Nor did it impact my wife who has 10000 unread mail messages.
 
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Well..it came back again for me randomly in 16.6. I'll try your tip and hopefully that's the end of it. So random. -_-
 
IMG_2569.jpeg
same problem here. background activity occurs at night when connected to the charger. I wonder what it does...solution???
 
lindros2 said:
Hey folks - after deleting and reinstalling Mail - and removing my Gmail account for the 10th time - it appears resolved in RC2.

This was in fact going on months, and unsure if it was a server-originated malfunction or my local device.

It also only plagued my iPhone, not iPad, which is running 16.3 or 16.4. Nor did it impact my wife who has 10000 unread mail messages.
Click to expand...
Do you own an Apple Watch ? I followed your instruction and it stopped background activity but now I am unable to login to gmail on my Apple Watch . I am receiving authentication error . On iPhone - no issues
 
MarcinRSE said:
Do you own an Apple Watch ? I followed your instruction and it stopped background activity but now I am unable to login to gmail on my Apple Watch . I am receiving authentication error . On iPhone - no issues
Click to expand...
sorry for delay - yes i have an apple watch - initially it had [no sender] and [no subject] for my Gmail messages, but after a minute or so it cleaned itself up.

Truth be told - and I even have a cellular Watch - i never, ever read email on my watch. So I didn't even know how to answer your question until looking...

(I mostly/only use it for alerts and health tracking.. plus open/lock my front door when I'm locked out)
 
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ITsamsamsam said:
View attachment 2205637same problem here. background activity occurs at night when connected to the charger. I wonder what it does...solution???
Click to expand...
my solution was to delete/re-install the Mail app.

Removing accounts did nothing for me.

Note that I tried removing Gmail (main), Outlook.com (personal/removed), corporate Outlook on-prem (w/ MDM profile), and iCloud. When all were gone, no background.

However, when one or more came back, the background activity came back.
 
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lindros2 said:
Hey folks - after deleting and reinstalling Mail - and removing my Gmail account for the 10th time - it appears resolved in RC2.

This was in fact going on months, and unsure if it was a server-originated malfunction or my local device.

It also only plagued my iPhone, not iPad, which is running 16.3 or 16.4. Nor did it impact my wife who has 10000 unread mail messages.
Click to expand...
Because of your post I did the same with the two mail apps that were giving problems (Mail and Spark in my case) and it seems that it works. No background processing for the last few hours. 🥳
Thanks 🙏🏼!
 
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@lindros2 You are my Hero 👍

I tried to offload the Mail app and also reinstall Gmail and iCloud Mail. It did not work. I has to be something with the saved data or Profile.
After removing the Gmail Account, deleting the Mail App I did a force restart and reinstalled the Application and Account. Now it is already ok for 2 days.

I thought Offloading will have the same effect but I guess it was not the application which caused the issue. It seems to be the saved gmail sync credentials or so.

Thank you ❤️
 
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I've had this issue for the past several months. I've fixed it by deleting the Mail app and then reinstalling. It will fix the issue for a week or 2 and then come back. I've done this three times. Those of you who have fixed this issue with these steps I'm curious if it sticks or not. It has not for me.
 
jaypjas said:
I've had this issue for the past several months. I've fixed it by deleting the Mail app and then reinstalling. It will fix the issue for a week or 2 and then come back. I've done this three times. Those of you who have fixed this issue with these steps I'm curious if it sticks or not. It has not for me.
Click to expand...
it's stuck for me.
But also I moved on to 16.5 RC3 and now 16.6 B1, so .... dunno
 
i wonder why so many people using mail app while there are tons of way better mail app available (gmail, outlook, etc)
 
NichoMarpaunk said:
i wonder why so many people using mail app while there are tons of way better mail app available (gmail, outlook, etc)
Click to expand...
I don't have a choice. Either containerized all-in-one MDM+EMM, or native apps. It's a limitation of on-prem Exchange and the security profile.

Outlook requires O365/M365 for corporate use (n/a for personal email - you can connect to anything), and "Gmail" requires additional apps for email, calendar, and contacts, which is nonsense.
 
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