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

Last night my background activity also came back for Spark, but not for Mail (yet) 😭.

Not sure if relevant, but Spark is being used with a Gmail account, while Mail is being used for an iCloud account.

Keep you posted with any updates. 🤞
 
I’ve been having the same issue as well. I’ve tried almost all of the things in this thread to no avail.

So…I decided to open mail and from that screen I performed a Force restart of the iPhone (14 Pro). So far this has worked for me. Not sure it will hold but so far so good; it’s been around 24 hours since I tried this.
 
Rastapopoulos said:
Last night my background activity also came back for Spark, but not for Mail (yet) 😭.

Not sure if relevant, but Spark is being used with a Gmail account, while Mail is being used for an iCloud account.

Keep you posted with any updates. 🤞
Click to expand...
GMail could be the culprit...
 
lindros2 said:
GMail could be the culprit...
Click to expand...
Yeah thought so too, but a few days ago the Mail app started its background activity again, so that’s not it.

Deleting Mail, restarting and reinstalling Mail again has resolved it again, but I don’t expect it to be a permanent fix anymore. It only works for a few days/weeks sadly.
 
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Looks like it’s back…. -_-

What’s even more weird about it is that I was on airplane mode…
 

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we understand that there is no way to prevent the return of the problem. If you delete mail, after a few days the problem returns. It remains to understand (together) 1) why the activity occurs only when the phone is in airplane mode and connected to the charger 2) what this background activity consists of
 
I am sorry for not being able to post something helpful, but I thought it might be of interest that I had the same thing happen to me right after I installed the iOS 16.4 update earlier in the year. Mind you, I had never even set up an e-mail account in Mail and if I had ever opened the app, that was solely by accident. Still hours of battery-draining activity was recorded on behalf of Mail. I deleted the app and now the issue is gone, but I seem to remember that a nighttime battery drain happened once (though only once) even after the deletion.
 
For me until now it didn`t came back. I am very happy with iOS 16.5 and Battery life on my 14 Pro Max. Maybe I had luck. I am using a Gmail and my iCloud Account with my own domain.
 
I’m on 16.6b2 and it’s not back.
I do not use O365 - we are legacy exchange.
however my 14 pro has been warm/hot - much more vs 16.5 and earlier.
 
Sorry for an out of left field idea:
For people WITH the drain AND using Gmail (account), can you see if it still happens if you install Gmail (CLIENT) and have it running in the background?

I’ve done this and turned off all notifications/alerts. I think my battery background was spazzing when I didn’t have Gmail installed - like iOS was trying to index a moving target of mail.
 
Today it returned for me after more than 1 Month and with iOS 16.5.1

Very strange. I had no issues after reinstalling everything with iOS 16.5.

@lindros2 I have the Gmail App installed and always had. I am using that mostly for checking my mails. I only use Apple Mail for sending with Gmail and for iCloud.
 
I’m running the third beta release (dev) of iPadOS/iOS 17 and the d*%ned issue is still happening
3 days, 63 hours and change in the background
‘same as everyone
1. Push off
2. fetch set to manual

i have four accounts, iclou, GMail, Outlook (inactive and app not on one of my iPads, same thing) with a throwaway Yahoo account. I found deep in the Mail app settings somethimg called Privacy Protection and “Protect your activity“ behind that. It’s a nice security check that downloads your email to Appl’s servers which can sift out the pixel slug and send you clean or rinsed email. It’s not impenetrable but it’s a cool feature

I bring it up because it’s explanation talks about hiding your IP address, and loading remote content privately, in the background even if you don’t open the message.
I’m not concerned with trackers etc and was considering turning it off t see if it makes a difference, as my email - well let’s just say I’m not very disciplined anymore with my personal email-checking it or cleaning/organizing it and I probably have 100,000+ unread, not looked at messages between my 20+ year old dot mac address and GMail so if it’s incessantly working in the background on messages sent 10 years ago I haven’t bothered to open, it would make sense why it’s working so much behind the scenes.

Are you all organized w/email or ridiculously overfilled like me?
anyone try turning off Protect Your Activity?
its all I can find in the settings with the words background and unopened messages so it’s possible that it’s a two edged sword. And unlike iMessage, Mail isn’t E2EE… they’re doing this intermediary scan at Apple to pull the tracking pixels out and when you open the email, it’s actually being downloaded from Apple, not the sender’s servers
 
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