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"Notify Me" option in mail

j-a-x

j-a-x

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Apr 15, 2005
1,567
285
Houston, Texas
I am a bit confused about how "notify me" is supposed to work in iOS8 mail. I already get notified of new replies (all new emails actually) via a combination of Push (work / Exchange account) and an hourly refresh (gmail).

If I were to say "notify me" on a Gmail message, would it be any different than the regularly hourly refresh of my gmail account?

If I were to say "notify me" on an Exchange account message, would it be any different than push?

Is the notification different than the standard mail notification via notification center that we've had for multiple iterations of iOS?
 
j-a-x said:
I am a bit confused about how "notify me" is supposed to work in iOS8 mail. I already get notified of new replies (all new emails actually) via a combination of Push (work / Exchange account) and an hourly refresh (gmail).

If I were to say "notify me" on a Gmail message, would it be any different than the regularly hourly refresh of my gmail account?

If I were to say "notify me" on an Exchange account message, would it be any different than push?

Is the notification different than the standard mail notification via notification center that we've had for multiple iterations of iOS?
Click to expand...

What this feature does is notify you if someone replies to an individual e-mail.

Say for example you have your mail set to fetch every 30 minutes. You could choose to have 1 speciifc e-mail thread notify you as soon as there is a reply regardless if it falls into the 30 min refresh window or not.

More info here

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2014/06/12/ios-8-mail-reply-notifications/
 
How does that work? For example if I have a 30 minute refresh set for Gmail, how can iOS 8 know to notify me of new messages without waiting until the end of that 30 minute refresh window and actually refreshing the email account? Is this an iCloud email only feature? Or is there some fancy integration with Google/Gmail that I don't know about?
 
j-a-x said:
How does that work? ie) if I have a 30 minute refresh set for Gmail, how can iOS 8 know to notify me of new messages without waiting until the end of that 30 minute refresh window and actually refreshing the email account? Is this an iCloud email only feature? Or is there some fancy integration with Google/Gmail that I don't know about?
Click to expand...

It's not for new messages. It's to notify you when someone replies to an individual e-mail. Gmail most likely still won't be pushing e-mails through the mail app because it's something Google needs to change/fix not Apple.
 
Not sure I totally understand. So the email won't be pushed but the fact that there is a new reply on the thread will be pushed and clicking on that notification will launch mail and trigger the new message to be downloaded?

I still don't know how iOS could know that there's a new reply on the thread without actually logging into gmail (or any other non-push mail account) and downloading new messages, unless it's using IMAP's IDLE command or something like that. Does anybody know if this is what it is?
 
j-a-x said:
Not sure I totally understand. So the email won't be pushed but the fact that there is a new reply on the thread will be pushed and clicking on that notification will launch mail and trigger the new message to be downloaded?

I still don't know how iOS could know that there's a new reply on the thread without actually logging into gmail (or any other non-push mail account) and downloading new messages, unless it's using IMAP's IDLE command or something like that. Does anybody know if this is what it is?
Click to expand...

Ok. Forget everything you know. The mail app will automatically check for mail ever 15-60 minutes depending on what you set. Let's say you have an urgent email that you need as soon as the response has been made.... well Mail will check for it only every 15-60 minutes. If you ask it to notify you, it'll notify you as soon as it is responded too rather than 15-60 minute intervals. It will check often for the email response to get it to you as soon as possible. I'm not sure how Apple figured out how to do this, but it's supposed to work. Maybe they have a server that constantly checks and pings you phone when it finds something important to download.
 
Before this it was all or nothing.

i.e. you either pushed ALL e-mails or you fetched ALL e-mails.

This gives you an option to maintain a fetch but push a specific e-mail only.

For me I get so many e-mails during the day I use fetch so my iPhone isn't constantly waking up but for important e-mails I'd like to put a priority on so this is a great new feature.
 
Interesting. my thought is that maybe they just check for IMAP headers (just the list of emails not the content of the emails). That would mean the app would make a connection to the mail server which would use some battery life, but not too much. Interesting solution for those of us without push email. I might disable my email refresh and just use this on select emails and see how it works.

Where'd you get the detailed info on this?
 
j-a-x said:
Interesting. my thought is that maybe they just check for IMAP headers (just the list of emails not the content of the emails). That would mean the app would make a connection to the mail server which would use some battery life, but not too much. Interesting solution for those of us without push email. I might disable my email refresh and just use this on select emails and see how it works.

Where'd you get the detailed info on this?
Click to expand...

The URL I posted with my 1st reponse to you? :p
 
Pretty sure this guy's talking nonsense.

I'll bet 10 monopoly dollars that all this means is you have another categorisation for Mail notifications. Previously you had distinct notification settings for VIP emails and regular emails Now you can set a distinct alert type for specific threads you want to get notified about.

E.g. say you had alerts off for regular emails and banners + lockscreen on for VIP (I think this is the default). Say Joe is not a VIP, but this particular thread with Joe is important. Now you can choose to be notified for this thread, and set up thread notifications similarly to VIP (or however you like). Now you won't miss the email.


tl;dr: Pretty sure it has nothing to do with how the email is fetched/pushed, just how you are notified of it once it has been fetched/pushed.
 
snappyfool said:
Pretty sure this guy's talking nonsense.

I'll bet 10 monopoly dollars that all this means is you have another categorisation for Mail notifications. Previously you had distinct notification settings for VIP emails and regular emails Now you can set a distinct alert type for specific threads you want to get notified about.

E.g. say you had alerts off for regular emails and banners + lockscreen on for VIP. Say Joe is not a VIP, but this particular thread with Joe is important. Now you can chose to be notified for this thread, and set up thread notifications similarly to VIP (or however you like). Now you won't miss the email.


tl;dr: Pretty sure it has nothing to do with how the email is fetched/pushed, just how you are notified of it once it has been fetched/pushed.
Click to expand...
That's how I'm understanding it as well--basically another way to get notified about new emails relating to some thread/conversation, outside of getting typical VIP alerts or alerts for all new mail essentially. Doesn't seem like it has anything to do with the frequency of how often mail is checked for, which seems to be separate and unrelated to it (and should work like it had before).
 
Either I don't understand this feature or the blog I read it from doesn't understand it either.

- I turned off Push e-mail and set fetch to manual
- Flagged an e-mail to notify me.
- Closed the mail app from task switcher
- Replied to the e-mail from my desktop
- No notification on the iphone

Repeated same steps as above with Push turned on and fetch set to manual.

Same results.

It's either broken or we are not using it right.
 
snappyfool said:
tl;dr: Pretty sure it has nothing to do with how the email is fetched/pushed, just how you are notified of it once it has been fetched/pushed.
Click to expand...

I would also tend to believe it works this way. I don't know if it's technically feasible to do Push for certain messages and Fetch for everything else. Pretty sure you have to set the client up to do it one way or another. This probably just lets you keep notifications for emails off (on your lock screen or notification center) but for certain important or non-personal emails you could individually turn them on. I would use this that way.
 
Armen said:
The URL I posted with my 1st reponse to you? :p
Click to expand...


That page didn't have any specific details about how it worked or what the refresh interval was etc.

----------

I wish this feature would let me use a different notification style for the emails I add to "notify me". I could for exams have an alert pop up for the most important emails I never want to moss but banners for other emails.
 
j-a-x said:
That page didn't have any specific details about how it worked or what the refresh interval was etc.

----------

I wish this feature would let me use a different notification style for the emails I add to "notify me". I could for exams have an alert pop up for the most important emails I never want to moss but banners for other emails.
Click to expand...

That's what it does

----------
Armen said:
Either I don't understand this feature or the blog I read it from doesn't understand it either.

- I turned off Push e-mail and set fetch to manual
- Flagged an e-mail to notify me.
- Closed the mail app from task switcher
- Replied to the e-mail from my desktop
- No notification on the iphone

Repeated same steps as above with Push turned on and fetch set to manual.

Same results.

It's either broken or we are not using it right.
Click to expand...

Read my post

----------
uma4ude2.jpg
 
snappyfool said:
Pretty sure this guy's talking nonsense.

I'll bet 10 monopoly dollars that all this means is you have another categorisation for Mail notifications. Previously you had distinct notification settings for VIP emails and regular emails Now you can set a distinct alert type for specific threads you want to get notified about.

E.g. say you had alerts off for regular emails and banners + lockscreen on for VIP (I think this is the default). Say Joe is not a VIP, but this particular thread with Joe is important. Now you can choose to be notified for this thread, and set up thread notifications similarly to VIP (or however you like). Now you won't miss the email.


tl;dr: Pretty sure it has nothing to do with how the email is fetched/pushed, just how you are notified of it once it has been fetched/pushed.
Click to expand...

Thank You, this is precisely what is does, great explanation !
 
"Notify Me" option in mail

It does not let you set different notification styles for regular mail notifications vs. per message notifications ("notify me") as far as I can tell.
 
That's for all mail notifications ie) the notification's you got in iOS 6 and iOS 7. It doesn't not differentiate the standard notifications from the ("notify me") ones.
 
j-a-x said:
That's for all mail notifications ie) the notification's you got in iOS 6 and iOS 7. It doesn't not differentiate the standard notifications from the ("notify me") ones.
Click to expand...

No dude.

On that screen, using this example, you tap iCloud to set up the regular notifications. As you can see the concise summary underneath tells you that Badges and Sounds are on.

Then at the bottom you can set up VIP and Thread Notifications ('Notify Me') notification styles separately. As you can see they have the addition of Banners.

The text at the very bottom spells this out:

'You can receive VIP and Thread Notifications even if other Mail notifications are turned off.'

???
 
j-a-x said:
That's for all mail notifications ie) the notification's you got in iOS 6 and iOS 7. It doesn't not differentiate the standard notifications from the ("notify me") ones.
Click to expand...
Seems like it would let you pick different ones for VIP and Thread Notifications (as can be seen at the bottom on that attached screenshot).
 
C DM said:
Seems like it would let you pick different ones for VIP and Thread Notifications (as can be seen at the bottom on that attached screenshot).
Click to expand...

Oh I see that now, thanks for pointing it out. I tried looking for that very option on my phone but didn't notice it somehow despite looking for just that. Now I have thread notifications turn to alerts while everything else is banners, so I won't miss the ones I flag as "notify me...", even if I look away from the screen.

So thread notifications (AKA notify me... notifications) are just a way to override default mail notification settings, the same way as mail VIPs but on a per thread basis rather than a per person basis.

Case closed.
 
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