E-mails automatically downloading

[Perplexer]

I have an iPhone SE 2020 with iOS 14.2 and I noticed that it automatically downloads e-mails in the Mail app, even though I have disabled automatic fetch in Settings -> Mail -> Accounts -> Fetch New Data (image attached).

I rarely open the Mail app on the iPhone so it is easy for me to notice the badge with a number over the Mail app icon after a few days even though I never used it to retrieve any e-mails. When I then open it, I see some e-mails inside. So it's obviously fetching them periodically even though it shouldn't. Funny thing is, it doesn't do that immediately since if I send myself an e-mail, it won't auto-fetch it on the iPhone immediately. It's only after a few days that I notice the Mail icon has a badge with some e-mails inside, even though the iPhone was never touched.

Does anyone know what could be causing this?

 

[Apple_Robert]

Are you using a different mail app? If so, set it as the default app. That should take care of that problem.

 

[Perplexer]

I'm using the default "Mail" app that comes with iOS.

 

[Apple_Robert]

I'm using the default "Mail" app that comes with iOS.

I must be having a slow day mentally, as I have gotten 2 other posts wrong in as many threads.

You say you use the stock app but rarely open it and are complaining that it automatically downloads emails you aren’t viewing with the app you rarely open. What is your reasoning for not wanting to be notified as well as having email delivered to you? I am not following the complaint behind your stated app usage.

 

[C DM]

I must be having a slow day mentally, as I have gotten 2 other posts wrong in as many threads.

You say you use the stock app but rarely open it and are complaining that it automatically downloads emails you aren’t viewing with the app you rarely open. What is your reasoning for not wanting to be notified as well as having email delivered to you? I am not following the complaint behind your stated app usage.

Well, if you set the app not to check for new data and it somehow still does it the question can come up as to why that might be happening.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Well, if you set the app not to check for new data and it somehow still does it the question can come up as to why that might be happening.

I got that part CDM. My question is if he is using the stock app but rarely opens it because he doesn’t want to get notifications he has mail in the first place, what is the concern that mail is being downloaded to an account that rarely being checked in the first place? I was just trying to figure out the reasoning behind his mail usage that led to the complaint.

 

[Perplexer]

I have the mail accounts configured on my iPhone for when I want to check the e-mail while "on the road", which is rather rare. When I'm at home, I don't use the Mail app on my iPhone and it bothers me when I see the badges appearing on it even though the app is basically never opened and is set to manually fetch e-mails. My primary e-mail client is on my PC and that's what I use regularly to read e-mail.

Again, the reason I'm posting this is because Mail on iPhone somehow manages to download e-mails on its own which causes the badge to appear on the app icon and I then have open the app and delete the e-mails in there.

I do handle the phone, I just don't use the Mail app. It is probably still in the background though. But I don't think it is supposed to auto-download e-mails if fetch is set to OFF and if I don't explicitly open it and swipe-down to refresh. Right ?

Actually, if I open it, it already starts to download e-mails, without me having to swipe-down to initiate a refresh. That's already weird (not truly manual). But ok, that doesn't necessarily bother me. It bothers me that it does that even when it's "closed", cause those badges appear over night (or after a day or two -- I wasn't paying attention to the exact time until now).

 

[C DM]

Actually, if I open it, it already starts to download e-mails, without me having to swipe-down to initiate a refresh. That's already weird (not truly manual). But ok, that doesn't necessarily bother me. It bothers me that it does that even when it's "closed", cause those badges appear over night (or after a day or two -- I wasn't paying attention to the exact time until now).

Typically when app is launchd it automatically tries to update/refresh as part of its loading process, which is more or less the expected behavior. The part about Mail still somehow checking for new data at some points when it's set to do that only manually is certainly an inconsistency of some sort. It's something that I've experienced as well.

 

[Perplexer]

Hmm, OK, I see. I did have the Mail icon down at the bottom row of the screen (whatever that "favorites" row is called). I opened it now and some e-mails came in. I didn't read the e-mails and instead just pressed the home button to "exit" the app. The badge showing "4" stayed on the icon. So it is possible that I kept unwillingly / accidentaly opening the app and then closed it immediately, which caused the e-mails to download and the badge to appear.

I have now moved the app icon to a sub-folder so I don't accidentaly launch it. I will keep a closer eye on it now and see what happens.

 

[C DM]

Hmm, OK, I see. I did have the Mail icon down at the bottom row of the screen (whatever that "favorites" row is called). I opened it now and some e-mails came in. I didn't read the e-mails and instead just pressed the home button to "exit" the app. The badge showing "4" stayed on the icon. So it is possible that I kept unwillingly / accidentaly opening the app and then closed it immediately, which caused the e-mails to download and the badge to appear.

I have now moved the app icon to a sub-folder so I don't accidentaly launch it. I will keep a closer eye on it now and see what happens.

I have it in the dock as well, but only open it here or there. Still once in a while, even if I haven't opened it in a few days (even restarted my phone in that time period) I would still see a badge with some new messages appear.

One other thing, when you are in an app and you go back to the home screen you aren't really exiting the app at that moment per se, just leaving it and it can still do some things in the background. You can usually bring up the app switcher (by pressing the home button twice on phones that have the home button) and then swipe the app to the top to remove it from there which would be closer to actually exiting it.

 

[Perplexer]

Yes I do understand that. Even if I "exit" the app, it stays in the background. But in that state it really shouldn't be auto-downloading anything! I rarely completely closed apps by swiping-up and I never had this issue. Actually it started a week ago with this new iPhone SE 2020 that I bought and upgraded to iOS 14.2. Before that I had an iPhone 6 with iOS 12.4.9 and never had this happening there, and I was using it the same way. So it started with iOS 14 for me. I don't know if iOS 13 had this problem as well because I immediately upgraded the iPhone SE 2020 to iOS 14.1 and then 14.2 after activating it.

 

[C DM]

Yes I do understand that. Even if I "exit" the app, it stays in the background. But in that state it really shouldn't be auto-downloading anything! I rarely completely closed apps by swiping-up and I never had this issue. Actually it started a week ago with this new iPhone SE 2020 that I bought and upgraded to iOS 14.2. Before that I had an iPhone 6 with iOS 12.4.9 and never had this happening there, and I was using it the same way. So it started with iOS 14 for me. I don't know if iOS 13 had this problem as well because I literally upgraded the iPhone SE 2020 to iOS 14.1 and then 14.2 after activating it.

Some apps are allowed to do various background activities if they have been opened before (and not explicitly closed out). In this case realistically even that shouldn't happen with everything set to "Manual". However, even if the app hasn't been opened it still seems to happen at times in my experience (at last in iOS 14 and I recall even in iOS 13).

 

[Perplexer]

Yep, it just happened again. The app is in a sub-folder so I couldn't have opened it by accident and yet I just see a badge appeared. So it is indeed apparently a bug in iOS. Granted the app is technically still running after I exit, but it shouldn't be downloading e-mails unless I explicitly tell it to. So now I have to remember to "kill" it every time I'm done using it if I don't want it to drain my battery / data plan in the background. Sucks!

 

[Apple_Robert]

Yep, it just happened again. The app is in a sub-folder so I couldn't have opened it by accident and yet I just see a badge appeared. So it is indeed apparently a bug in iOS. Granted the app is technically still running after I exit, but it shouldn't be downloading e-mails unless I explicitly tell it to. So now I have to remember to "kill" it every time I'm done using it if I don't want it to drain my battery / data plan in the background. Sucks!

Do you have app background refresh turned off?

 

[Perplexer]

I did look for the "background refresh" option for the Mail app but there is none I can find. It is not present in Settings -> Mail" nor in "Settings -> General -> Background App Refresh" ("Mail" is not listed there at all). There is a "Background App Refresh" option under "Settings -> General -> Background App Refresh" but that one is probably a system-wide setting and would turn off background refreshing for all apps on the phone if I turned it off.

It makes sense to me that the Mail app is missing from the list because being able to turn background refresh ON for the Mail app would kinda conflict with the manual fetch setting. The whole thing seems to be BUG.

 

[Perplexer]

Looks like it's been going on since iOS 13 indeed, and they just don't fix it.

iOS - Mail auto-fetch will not disable

Since iOS 13 Mail seems to auto-fetch new mail every time the iPhone is plugged into any charging source, either Mac or simple wall-wart. Late Edit: This has continued through to iOS 14 & 15, e...

apple.stackexchange.com

They say it happens when plugged in. Could be. I wasn't paying attention. I did plug it in earlier around the time when I said it happenned again, lol. That would explain why I only noticed it days later, when I decided to charge up the iPhone a little bit again. As far as I gathered, Apple moved some "Accounts & Passwords" settings around in Settings and they probably introduced a bug while doing that. Instead of "Fetch" being set to "Manually" it appears to always be working in the "Automatically" mode. At least in this scenario it doesn't drain the battery after all.

 

[C DM]

Looks like it's been going on since iOS 13 indeed, and they just don't fix it.

iOS - Mail auto-fetch will not disable

Since iOS 13 Mail seems to auto-fetch new mail every time the iPhone is plugged into any charging source, either Mac or simple wall-wart. Late Edit: This has continued through to iOS 14 & 15, e...

apple.stackexchange.com

They say it happens when plugged in. Could be. I wasn't paying attention. I did plug it in earlier around the time when I said it happenned again, lol. That would explain why I only noticed it days later, when I decided to charge up the iPhone a little bit again. As far as I gathered, Apple moved some "Accounts & Passwords" settings around in Settings and they probably introduced a bug while doing that. Instead of "Fetch" being set to "Manually" it appears to always be set to "Automatically".

There is that "Automatic" setting which can check for Mail when plugged in, but if things are not set to that (and set to "Manual") then that shouldn't change even when plugged in.