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   Paco Hope #resist (paco@infosec.exchange)'s status on Wednesday, 09-Apr-2025 09:37:34 JST Paco Hope #resist

   Anybody ever had problems with an #iphone and #IMAP on a #selfhosted #email server? Feel free to boost for fun.

   I was just helping my wife and her mail app (iPhone 13, iOS 18.3.2) would just spin saying “connecting”. I’m standing next to her, with my iPhone 13 Pro, iOS 18.3.2 and I’m on the same WiFi checking email on the same server just fine.

   I tried a bunch of things. Rebooting, using cellular data instead of WiFi, closing the mail app and opening it again. Nothing fixed it. The root cause seems to have been low power mode. Her battery was low; so the phone was in low power mode. I plugged it in, took it out of low power mode, and poof! Mail connects just fine.

   This is reproducible. If I go to low power mode and pull down on the screen to try to fetch, no imap. It just spins saying “connecting.” Come out of low power mode, imap is fine and fast. One thing we both do that is not the default is fetch email. The default is to push, and the phone polls quite often. I figure that’s a waste of battery, so we have ours set to fetch every 30 minutes. I’m a bit of a nut, so there are probably LOTS of other things that are not the default.

   Anybody have any ideas?

   I’m sure all of us have used low power mode before, and I’m fairly sure I’ve checked email under low power mode. I’ve never seen this before. #selfhosting

   • Embed this notice
     Paco Hope #resist (paco@infosec.exchange)'s status on Wednesday, 09-Apr-2025 09:37:33 JST Paco Hope #resist

     in reply to

     So to test this out, i put my phone in low power mode. Since i don’t do that often, i got this warning. It says “mail fetch…is disabled” which i expect for BACKGROUND fetching. But if I’m in the mail app asking it to check my mail right now, I don’t see why it should refuse. It will play audio books, videos, and many things that take more power than IMAP when it is in low power mode. That’s so bizarre.
     #ios #iphone #mail

     feld likes this.
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     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Wednesday, 09-Apr-2025 09:38:46 JST feld

     in reply to
     @paco > selfhosted mail server
     
     Yeah that's the problem. It can't get push notifications and Apple's mail client won't do IMAP PUSH because that requries the process run in the background and iOS will quickly kill it, so I imagine in low power mode they disable all inbox polling, period. Even when mail app is open. Which clearly must be a bug, but it kinda makes sense!