Troubleshooting

Everybody's mailboxes and mail providers behave slightly differently. Here's some of the most common issues, and how to resolve them.

I tapped a button in the app and nothing happened

Most issues can be resolved by ensuring you’re running latest version of iOS (14.6) and macOS (11.4)

Right now Big Mail doesn’t support the iOS 15 and macOS 12 betas.

I’m unable to generate an app password

The most common reason people are unable to generate an app password is because two factor authentication is yet to be enabled on their mail account. Here’s how to enable two factor authentication:

• Gmail
• iCloud
• Fastmail

My sent folder is empty (or contains duplicates)

Some mail providers will automatically put a copy of sent messages in your sent folder (Gmail, for example). However some don’t (iCloud) which means mail clients like Big Mail can sometimes get a bit confused. Don’t worry, your messages are sending it’s just not appearing in your sent folder.

To fix, most mail providers allow you to turn on a setting called “Save a copy when sending through third party clients” (or something similar).

• Fastmail

Alternatively in Big Mail you can simply select “Save copy of sent items” in Settings of the account in question. Big Mail will automatically turn this on for known mail providers where this is an issue.

My Bouncer and Reply Later settings aren’t syncing

Big Mail will periodically sync these settings every 30-60 seconds. However if it’s been longer and they still don’t sync, here’s what you can try:

1. Login to your mail providers web interface and see if there’s a folder called “Big Mail”
2. If you see emails in there, that means Big Mail was able to upload your settings
3. In the Big Mail app, go to your account Settings and choose “Reset Flags”
4. Then wait for Big Mail to refresh or manually trigger a refresh

The settings should now re-sync. If you’re still unable to get them to sync, please contact us.

Why is my Archive folder empty?

This could be because Big Mail can’t see your Archive folder. This can happen for a couple of different reasons:

1. The Archive folder hasn’t been enabled to be accessed through IMAP (the technology Big Mail uses to talk to your mail provider).
2. Some mail providers don’t allow access to your Archive folder through IMAP at all.
3. Big Mail has the wrong folder name

You can check if your provider supports access to Archive through IMAP by logging into the web interface of your mail provider and checking “Show in IMAP”. For example, this is how the settings look in Gmail.

Alternatively you can also manually set the folder name by going to Settings and Preferences for the account in question.