You may want to reset the Apple Mail app on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad when it doesn’t update or receive new emails, or when standard troubleshooting solutions don’t fix the problem. resetting the mail app from scratch is almost equivalent to uninstalling and reinstalling it. If you want to have a fresh start with the mail app, here’s how to erase everything in it. after that, you can set it again.
How to reset the Mail app on iPhone and iPad
We’ll start by showing you how to disable all added email accounts. and after that how to delete the app and download it again. doing these two things should restart the ios or ipados mail app.
1) open settings and tap mail.
2) touch accounts and choose the first account. most likely icloud. tap icloud once more and turn off icloud mail.
3) Now go back and tap your other added email account and turn off the switch for Mail.
4) repeat this process until you have disabled all email accounts from the apple mail app. now when you open the mail app it will show the welcome screen which means there is no active account here.
5) Go to the Home Screen, long-press the Mail app, and tap Remove App > Delete App > Delete.
6) Restart your iPhone or iPad.
7) open the app store and search for mail. you can also use this link to re-download apple mail app.
8) You have successfully reset the ios and ipados built-in mail app. now you can go ahead and re-enable or add the email accounts. you can do it from settings > mail > accounts > one by one, tap the added account and enable icloud mail or mail. once done, open the mail app and it should work just fine.
how to reset mail app on mac
unlike ios and ipados, you can’t completely uninstall apple’s built-in mail app on mac. So if the mail app won’t open on mac or you don’t get emails here, follow these steps to reset it as new.
Important: Emails will still be available on the mail server (such as icloud, gmail, imap accounts, etc.). but if you have some custom emails that are not on the server, please note that they will disappear once you follow these steps.
1) click the apple icon and choose system preferences.
2) click on internet accounts.
3) select icloud, gmail or the added impa accounts in the left sidebar and uncheck the box for icloud mail or email.
4) In Finder, press Command + Shift + G. Alternatively, from the top menu bar, you can click Go > Go to Folder.
5) copy the address of this folder and paste it there: ~/library/containers
6) In the search box, type Mail and click “Containers” to see all folders related to mail here. Now, select all and move them to trash.
7) Now, do the same for the folders mentioned below. Go to these locations, search for Mail, choose the “folder name” (not This Mac) and delete things related to the Mail app if you see.
- ~/library/mail
- ~/library/preferences
- ~/library /application scripts
note: Since you’re only focused on apple’s mail app, if you see any mail files or folders inside another folder called chrome or have words like mail.google.com, don’t touch that. those are just the mail folders of the account you are logged in to in the google chrome browser. for convenience, click view > show path bar to see the folder hierarchy at the bottom of the browser window.
8) restart your mac
9) You have successfully deleted the accounts and files related to the mail application. after reboot, macos will automatically create the necessary files. now you can open the mail app and sign in to the desired email accounts. or go to system preferences > internet accounts > one by one, select the added accounts and enable mail.
This is how you can reset the Mail app to factory settings on iPhone, iPad and Mac. I hope the above steps have helped you.
Finally, I’m sure you know this, but we remind you that if you wipe your iphone or mac entirely, that means you’re getting a whole new machine as far as software is concerned. If you want to opt for this option, here are the guides that will help you:
- how to erase everything on your iphone, ipod touch or ipad
- how to do a clean install of macos
- steps to reinstall macos on a mac without losing any data