After installing iOS 18.2, some users have difficulty reliably checking email in Apple Mail. A new feature may be triggered at the same time.
In some cases, Apple Mail in iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2 may not work smoothly. As affected users have described, retrieving new emails no longer works smoothly. When this happens, the Mail app will display a short message indicating that it’s establishing a connection and looking for new emails, but will get stuck downloading messages. These will no longer be able to be opened or read on your iPhone or iPad. It remains unclear how widespread these email issues are. When the Mac & i editorial team compared iCloud mail accounts on iPhones with email read status, they found some discrepancies, but these were temporary. Gmail (IMAP) and Exchange accounts worked fine, however.
Email retrieval issues on certain networks
Some affected people have noted that email retrieval issues are particularly prevalent on WLANs or networks where ad blockers and the network filter Pi-hole are also use. In these cases, disconnecting from WiFi and switching to a cellular network may help ensure that email arrives properly on your iPhone or iPad again.
iOS 18 was released in September, there were widespread issues accessing IMAP accounts, and in some cases email providers had to step in to re-establish nAfteormal connectivity. As of iOS 18.1, this issue appears to have been largely resolved. The email errors in iOS/iPadOS 18.2 are unrelated and likely occur much less frequently. Brand logo appears in Apple Mail
Starting with iOS 18.2, Apple Mail on iPhone gets a new feature to automatically categorize emails. However, this is only available if the operating system (or Mail app) is switched to English.
Apple appears to have built another quiet innovation into Apple Mail when it comes to accessing brand logos. Senders can use this to display their trademarks as icons. Previously, this worked through the BIMI standard, but was relatively cumbersome. Apple has recently made this option available to many other businesses through the Business Connect portal. Companies can now display their logos in Apple Mail, as well as on calls and Apple Pay transactions.
To avoid any insight, Apple retrieves the trademarks from its servers using encryption techniques (Private Information Retrieval and Homomorphic Encryption). It is believed that network filters such as Pi-hole block these connections, causing problems with retrieving emails.
