Would really like Mail notifications to go away when read on a different device

[DesertSilver]

Anyone also find it strange/annoying that mail notifications (lock screen, badge count) don’t go away on a device when it’s read/deleted on another?

I could kind of understand if I was using a 3rd party mail app and/or a non-icloud.com email but I’m using default mail.app with an icloud.com email address, so both native to Apple. So unless I’m doing something wrong, mail notifications stay on my phone lock screen when I read/delete them on my iPad or Macbook.

I can’t think of any technical reason this can’t be done, especially fully utilizing Apple’s own ecosystem. I don’t think anyone can say it’s due to bandwidth, processing, or lack of communication protocols.

I wonder what the reasoning is…

 

[Sheepish-Lord]

Been this way for years, Mail sync is trash across devices and still doesn’t work on the new OS. No idea why but I’m sure Apple has some lame excuse for not doing the most basic things on 1st party software.

 

[DomC]

I agree. I've always wanted my iCloud notifications to be removed if read on another device.

But hey, Liquid Glass...

 

[DesertSilver]

It seems to me like it’d be such a relatively insignificant code change to make it work better and here we are. Every engineer at Apple, and Tim Cook himself, would seemingly notice this behavior with their numerous devices. So bizarre that it works this way.

 

[Sheepish-Lord]

Here’s what chatgpt says:

Why iCloud Mail doesn’t sync unless the app is open:

• Background push limitations:
  Unlike iCloud Drive, Notes, Contacts, or Calendar (which use Apple’s push notification service), Mail relies on IMAP IDLE for push. On iOS and iPadOS, Apple restricts background network activity to save battery. If the Mail app isn’t open (or hasn’t recently been used), the device won’t maintain a live connection to iCloud Mail’s servers, so new mail isn’t pushed until the app wakes up.
• No system-level push for Mail:
  Gmail, Exchange, and some enterprise servers support Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) for mail, which lets them trigger system-wide push instantly. iCloud Mail does not use APNS for new mail. Instead, it depends on the Mail app staying connected via IMAP IDLE.
• Result:
  • On macOS, Mail can stay open in the background and keep syncing.
  • On iPhone/iPad, Mail suspends in the background, so you only get updates when:
    • The Mail app is open or recently active.
    • The system wakes it on a schedule (fetch, e.g., every 15 minutes).
    • A manual refresh is triggered.

iCloud Mail is technically push-capable, but iOS/iPadOS doesn’t let the Mail app stay connected 24/7 in the background like macOS does. That’s why it feels more like fetch unless the app is open.

 

[DesertSilver]

Limiting background activity for the sake of battery life can the thought behind a lot of limitations but our phones are doing so much more in the background already that seemingly would be a lot more intensive than updating an email status. iCloud Photos showing up on my phone if I take pictures and videos on another device is a huge one.

Oh well, first world problem.

 

[VigneshB]

Here’s what chatgpt says:

Why iCloud Mail doesn’t sync unless the app is open:

• Background push limitations:
  Unlike iCloud Drive, Notes, Contacts, or Calendar (which use Apple’s push notification service), Mail relies on IMAP IDLE for push. On iOS and iPadOS, Apple restricts background network activity to save battery. If the Mail app isn’t open (or hasn’t recently been used), the device won’t maintain a live connection to iCloud Mail’s servers, so new mail isn’t pushed until the app wakes up.
• No system-level push for Mail:
  Gmail, Exchange, and some enterprise servers support Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) for mail, which lets them trigger system-wide push instantly. iCloud Mail does not use APNS for new mail. Instead, it depends on the Mail app staying connected via IMAP IDLE.
• Result:
  • On macOS, Mail can stay open in the background and keep syncing.
  • On iPhone/iPad, Mail suspends in the background, so you only get updates when:
    • The Mail app is open or recently active.
    • The system wakes it on a schedule (fetch, e.g., every 15 minutes).
    • A manual refresh is triggered.

iCloud Mail is technically push-capable, but iOS/iPadOS doesn’t let the Mail app stay connected 24/7 in the background like macOS does. That’s why it feels more like fetch unless the app is open.

Not completely accurate.
For eg, Fastmail worked with Apple and their service gets proper push sync with Apple mail

 

[doogm]

I'd love that for all app notifications.

 

[Shin-Ra]

My only way to rationalise this is that the average Apple employee, perhaps like the average person has dozens or hundreds of unread email messages so the difference in badge count between devices isn’t very meaningful.

But if you keep on top of your email so any badge count other than NONE is an indication that you’ve got new email, this lack of syncing is a misleading irritation.

 

[DesertSilver]

My only way to rationalise this is that the average Apple employee, perhaps like the average person has dozens or hundreds of unread email messages so the difference in badge count between devices isn’t very meaningful.

But if you keep on top of your email so any badge count other than NONE is an indication that you’ve got new email, this lack of syncing is a misleading irritation.

I get what you’re saying that the number on the badge count wouldn’t matter if it was 215 or 216, but for me personally, the annoyance is that the email(s) that I’ve already read/deleted stay on my iPhone lock screen.

Looking back at the response above from chatgpt that mentions Mail works more as fetch than push, I guess that doesn’t make complete sense since new mail comes in as push so it is always connected somehow.

Would be nice for it to work like iMessage where the notification goes away on my phone right after I read it on another device.

 

[klasma]

From this old Apple support page: "However, moving an email to a folder, reading a message, or flagging a message does not trigger a push notification. These kinds of updates will appear when you open the Mail application on each of your devices."

The ChatGPT answer is beside the point. Apple simply chose to not implement push sync for email status changes.

In addition, even on a single device, the Mail badge takes many seconds to update, which is annoying. When you leave the Mail app after reading all mail, the app icon still shows unread Mail, making you wonder if you missed any.

It's garbage, and Apple doesn't seem to care.

 

[exi]

As mentioned, this is a years-long issue and UX annoyance.

It's beyond me why Apple chooses not to implement something that we know can be done and would contribute to a much more polished experience (read: Fastmail since about a decade or so ago).

This and the silent filtering issue are collectively why I'm not using my custom domains on iCloud right now. Just my preference.

I'm hopeful it changes one day, but I've been hoping for that for years.

 

[DomC]

Would be nice for it to work like iMessage where the notification goes away on my phone right after I read it on another device.

Exactly.

I use the Gmail app on my mobile devices but have it connected on my desktop to the Mail app. If I read a message on the desktop, I get no badge on mobile and the Gmail app shows the mail being read. And visa versa. Seems right.

If there's grain of truth to the ChatGP piece with battery use, maybe users could make their own decision by turning Background Refresh for the Mail app on or off?

 

[exi]

Exactly.

I use the Gmail app on my mobile devices but have it connected on my desktop to the Mail app. If I read a message on the desktop, I get no badge on mobile and the Gmail app shows the mail being read. And visa versa. Seems right.

If there's grain of truth to the ChatGP piece with battery use, maybe users could make their own decision by turning Background Refresh for the Mail app on or off?

IMAP IDLE and battery use is a thing on mobile devices (though much less of one now than it used to be), but APNS for push mail support, like Fastmail uses, is a different ball game and even more efficient.

 

[ChandlerBing#77]

Hi! I am new on MacRumors Forum and I have the same annoying problem!
Indeed, I have an @icloud.com mail address and sync across devices works only from iPhone to other devices and not viceversa, unless I plug in the phone or I open the Mail app.
Just got in touch with Apple Support that suggested to me an useless DFU restore despite I told them that I have the same issue using other devices too.
I read article you posted some post above and shared it with Apple Support too but they told me that article is now archived because Mail app beahviour is no longer the one mentioned in that article.
So, in their opinion, current beahviour should be allow the background sync across devices.
Is there anyone that maybe have an almost clean iOS installation that can try?
Sorry for my poor English, I hope I was clear enough. Thank you!

 

[bob_zz123]

I think this is a more difficult problem to solve than people think.

Devices can't trigger push notifications, they are sent from a server to a client. So in an ideal world it would be that if the status of a message changes on the server then a push notification is sent to all registered Apple Mail clients to update their internal status of that message (read/unread/deleted whatever). But this is not something that all e-mail services support.

So in order to do this in a provider-agnostic way (that would work across all e-mail servers), Apple would have to maintain a per-user server side database of e-mail messages (or at least some way of uniqely identifying each message). When you recieve a new message into any e-mail account (Apple or non-Apple - Hotmail, Gmail, whatever) your Apple Mail client pings an Apple server which then creates a unique ID representing the message and its status and inserts it into this database. Then, when you take action on the message, as well as updating the (actual) IMAP/Exchange/whatever mail server, it also pings the new status of the message to Apple's servers which can then update its master database and then send a push notification out to other devices which can then update their own internal status of the message when they get the notification.

It's not difficult to see how this could a) be complex to implement b) expensive (in terms of resources required) and c) a bit of a privacy nightmare in that metadata representing your messages (at the very least a globally unique identifier and message status) from all your Apple Mail e-mail accounts are held on Apple servers. It would also only work on Apple Mail applications because of the dependency on knowing about and communicating with an Apple service, so if I read a message in (say) Outlook on the Web, there's no way that the status update (I've read the message) would be able to get a signal to the Apple service in order to update the message state and send a push notification out to my Apple Mail client that I also have my Outlook e-mail set up on (unless Apple produce a public API and e-mail vendors agree to implement it).

The reason that iMessage etc. can do this is because Apple controls the entire infrastructure and probably implements it in a way that I have just described. To do this in Apple Mail across all possible e-mail services, it's a lot harder and (quite rightly) it's probably been chalked up to the "too hard" / "risks outweigh benefits" tick box.

 

[lemimouth]

It seems to me like it’d be such a relatively insignificant code change to make it work better and here we are. Every engineer at Apple, and Tim Cook himself, would seemingly notice this behavior with their numerous devices. So bizarre that it works this way.

While I agree that it should be the case, like Gmail, but from a technical point of view, it NOT an “insignificant code change”…

 

[DomC]

The reason that iMessage etc. can do this is because Apple controls the entire infrastructure and probably implements it in a way that I have just described. To do this in Apple Mail across all possible e-mail services, it's a lot harder and (quite rightly) it's probably been chalked up to the "too hard" / "risks outweigh benefits" tick box.

In my situation, the only mail being used in the Mail app on my mobile devices and not push-syncing is Apple iCloud mail.

 

[Ruggy]

In case it helps anyone, if you are on the Inbox of the mail app on your phone, just put your finger/thumb near the top and pull down. It will force a synch and you'll see a little gear wheel turn for a second.

 

[DesertSilver]

While I agree that it should be the case, like Gmail, but from a technical point of view, it NOT an “insignificant code change”…

Yeah I totally understand that there would be a technical reason for the lack of this background syncing feature but looking at it from a layman’s point of view, smartphones are doing unthinkable amounts of processing and keeping tons of data in sync with numerous devices in every room of my house…other than let me know if I’ve already read an email on a different devices. Try explaining that to an alien that drops onto our planet and looks at you to ask “didn’t I already read this email hours ago?”

As I said earlier in this thread…first world problem.

 

[gwang73]

My iCloud Mail sometimes syncs up across devices but it can take up to hours for it to happen.

Not completely accurate.
For eg, Fastmail worked with Apple and their service gets proper push sync with Apple mail

True and also Apple Mail (the app), supports Exchange ActiveSync, which enables much better (and faster) syncing across devices with work exchange accounts, Hotmail and outlook.com accounts.