If you can’t receive email on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

: June 7, 2024
: Apple

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If you can’t receive email on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

If you can’t receive email on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

If you can’t receive email in the Mail app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, there are a few things you can try.

Before you begin

There are a few things to keep in mind and check:

When you make an iOS or iPadOS backup in iCloud or iTunes, it backs up your mail settings, but not your email. If you delete or change your email account settings, previously downloaded emails might be removed from your device.
Make sure that your device is connected to the Internet.
Check with your email service provider to find out if there’s a service outage.
If you can’t access your email, or you can’t send and receive messages with your @icloud.com email address, learn what to do.

Check your email address and password

If the Mail apps asks you to enter a password for your email account, make sure that your password is correct. To check your email address and password, sign in to your email provider’s website.

If you still get a username or password error, contact the email provider or system administrator.

Check Mail Fetch and Notification settings

By default, Fetch New Data settings are based on what’s provided by your email service. If Push isn’t available as a setting, your account will default to Fetch. These settings affect how your device receives email. To adjust these settings:

Go to Settings > Mail, then tap Accounts.
Tap Fetch New Data.
Choose a setting — like Automatically or Manually — or choose a schedule for how often the Mail app fetches data.

With iOS 11 and later, and iPadOS, Automatically is set by default. Your device will fetch new data in the background only when your device is charging and connected to Wi-Fi.

Make sure that your Notification settings are correct for the Mail app:

Go to Settings, then tap Notifications.
Tap Mail, then tap an email account.
Adjust your Alerts, Sounds, and Badges.

Contact your email provider or system administrator

Contact your email provider or check their status webpage to see if there’s a service outage.
Ask your email provider or system administrator if you turned on any security features or restrictions, like two-step verification, for your email account. You might need a special password or may need to request authorization from your email provider to send and receive email on your device.
Check your email account settings with your email provider or system administrator to make sure that they’re correct.

Remove your email account and set it up again

On your computer, sign in to your email provider’s website. Make sure that all of your email is there or make sure that your email is saved somewhere other than your device.
On your device, go to Settings > Mail, then tap Accounts.
Tap the email account that you want to remove.
Tap Delete Account.
Add your account again.

If these steps don’t work, contact your email service provider for more information.

Published Date: May 20, 2021