How to Refresh Apple Mail on Mac and iPhone (Step-by-Step Guide)

Email Client vs. Email Service Provider

While some may use these terms interchangeably, there is a difference between an email client and an email service provider.

An email client is the tool you use, such as desktop software or a mobile app, to access your email. You can read, compose, reply to, and manage messages. Apple Mail, along with applications like Thunderbird, Mailbird, and Microsoft Outlook, are email clients.

An email service provider (ESP) is the company that provides the email service for you to use. They maintain an infrastructure to send, receive, and store your messages. Common providers include Google (Gmail), Yahoo Mail, and AOL.

With an email client such as Apple Mail, you can access messages from most any email service provider, giving you one spot to manage messages for all of your accounts. However, you can use other email clients for the same purpose — especially if you run into problems with Apple Mail on Mac or iPhone.

📌 Clean Email is a supplementary mailbox management tool that can function like an email client. You can connect your email accounts, read, write, and organize messages, and use the application on the web, desktop (Mac), iOS (iPhone/iPad), and even Android mobile devices.

What makes Clean Email a superb complement or alternative to Apple Mail is its smart feature set, which we’ll detail later.

💡 Related: The 7 Best Email Clients for Mac in 2025

Why Refresh Apple Mail?

When your macOS or iOS Mail app is not updating and you believe new messages should be coming in, you can do a quick app refresh. And you can perform this manually even if you set the Mail app to check for emails automatically.

In addition to messages being delayed, refreshing the Mail app can help you troubleshoot other possible issues, like when you’re not receiving new email notifications as expected or simply to confirm your push email settings are working.

The benefit to using Clean Email is that it reduces the time you’d spend organizing and cleaning up new messages that arrive after refreshing Apple Mail. Clean Email’s tools can automatically handle emails as they land in your mailbox, letting you focus on what matters most.

Automatically Refresh Apple Mail on Mac and iPhone

You can set the Mail app to automatically refresh on Mac and iPhone, which can be a convenient way to go. While the refresh timing on Mac covers all connected email accounts, you may have different settings for accounts on your iPhone.

Before we show you how to adjust these settings, it’s important to know the difference between the two methods of receiving emails, especially for iPhone, which are push and fetch.

Push vs Fetch

With the push option, emails are delivered in real-time as they arrive. While it seems ideal, this method does consume more power and battery. Email providers that allow push include Outlook, iCloud, and Exchange accounts.

With the fetch option, emails are delivered at regular intervals. Although this method consumes less power and battery, the downside is that you don’t receive the messages in real-time. Email providers that use fetch include Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and AOL.

Automatically Refresh Mail on Mac

With a single setting in Mail on Mac, you can have all email accounts, whether they support push or fetch, check for messages automatically or at regular intervals.

1. Open the Mail app on Mac and select Mail → Settings in the menu bar.
2. In the pop-up window, go to the General tab.
3. Use the drop-down menu next to Check for new messages to select Automatically or a specific interval. If you choose Manually, you can follow the steps in the next section to do so.

📌 Note: Apple does state that the frequency of the Automatic refresh depends on if your Mac is plugged into an electrical outlet or not.

Automatically Refresh Mail on iPhone and iPad

Different from Mac, you can set each account to either push or fetch depending on the email account type. As mentioned earlier, some providers offer push while others only offer fetch. Note that those providers offering the push option also allow you to use fetch if you want to conserve power and battery.

1. Open the Settings, select Apps, and pick Mail.
2. Choose Mail Accounts.
3. Еap Fetch New Data.
4. Turn on the Push toggle at the top to enable push when available.
5. Select an email account and pick Push, Fetch, or Manual. Again, some providers only offer Fetch (or Manual).
6. Tap the Back arrow and repeat for your other accounts.
7. In the Fetch section at the bottom of the Fetch New Data screen, choose Automatically, Manually, or an interval to check for emails.

📌 If you pick Manual for certain accounts or only have fetch instead of push, follow the instructions in the next section to perform a manual refresh on iPhone and iPad.

Manually Refresh Apple Mail on Mac and iPhone

Whether you’re having trouble receiving new emails or choose to check for messages manually with the above settings, here’s how to reset Mail on Mac, iPhone, and iPad using manual methods.

Manually Refresh Mail on Mac

You have a few different ways to manually refresh Apple Mail on Mac, so you can use whichever you like.

Open Mail and do one of the following:

• Click the Get Mail button in the top toolbar. This checks for new messages in all email accounts.

• Use the keyboard shortcut Command + Shift + N. Like the Get Mail button, this checks for all new emails.
• Select Mailbox in the menu bar and either click Synchronize All Accounts or move to Synchronize and pick the specific email account in the pop-out menu.

📌 Using any of the above methods, you should see a brief “Checking for Mail” message at the bottom of the sidebar on the left. If you don’t see the sidebar, select View → Show Sidebar in the menu bar.

Manually Refresh Mail on iPhone and iPad

On iPhone and iPad, there’s one simple way to refresh the Mail app.

1. Open Mail and choose a mailbox or select All Inboxes.
2. On iPhone, pull down from the top of the screen using your finger. On iPad, pull down from the top of the message list on the left. On both devices, you’ll see the refresh icon animate as the app checks for new messages.
3. Release your finger and you should see any new emails.

Wrap-Up

If email won’t update on your iPhone or Mac, a quick Mail refresh usually does the trick. But if you try to refresh the Mail app on Mac or your mobile device and still have problems, consider the Clean Email solution…not only can you check your email from any device but take advantage of all smart features for better mailbox management.