The Mail app has long been one of Apple’s most popular and important first-party iPhone apps, but at the moment, it appears to be broken. As spotted by MacRumors on Thursday, there have been multiple reports from around the internet about iPhone owners encountering a completely blank screen when they try to open the Mail app.
What’s up with the Mail app?
“My [Mail] app no longer works after the [iOS 18.5] update,” said one frustrated iPhone owner in a thread on Apple’s Support Community forums. “I uninstalled and re-installed and it attempts to open (blank white screen) and crashes every time.”
Hundreds of comments on a Reddit thread show that this is not an isolated or uncommon issue, either. A wide range of iPhone models are affected, stretching back to at least the iPhone 12, so it’s probably safe to assume it’s a software issue.
In fact, I experienced this issue myself on an iPhone 14 Pro when I woke up this morning. I tapped on the Mail app, and after hanging for a few seconds, the last email I’d opened appeared on the screen. Then, the buttons on the top of the app vanished, the app froze, and I had to swipe up to return to the Home screen. After force-closing the app, I attempted to reopen it, but I either saw a blank screen or had the same freezing issue as before.
Is there a fix?
I wasn’t sure what else to do, so I tried turning my iPhone off and back on again. For whatever reason, that worked, and I’m able to use the Mail app normally now. That solution also seemed to work for some of the other users who encountered the bug.
Another user claims that they were able to fix the app by going to Settings > General > Keyboard and disabling features like Auto-Correction and Smart Punctuation. Unfortunately, none of these appear to fix the problem permanently.
As MacRumors notes, Apple has yet to acknowledge the issue. There is no indication on Apple’s System Status page that the app is experiencing any problems on Apple’s end. We’ll be keeping an eye out for any updates on the matter.
