Having problems connecting or logging into to your Yahoo email account? Seeing pop-up messages on your iPhone or iPad that iOS “Cannot Get Mail” or “Connection to the server failed?” Unable to receive or read emails, delete accounts, or add accounts using the Mail App or the Yahoo App?
We have seen many email related issues over the years on the iPhone.
Most are easily fixed by deleting the account and re-installing it. But some of the recent Yahoo mail issues are somewhat entirely out of the left field.
What is even weirder is that some of these problems appear only to impact a handful of iPhone X Series phone users.
If you are seeing your Yahoo mail not update on your iPhone X Series, you are not alone; there’s plenty of folks reporting similar issues on the yahoo technical support forum.
After speaking to Yahoo support at length, we have finally found a few tips that work, including uninstalling and installing the Yahoo mail app on your iPhone X/XS/XR.
If an update is available, backup first and then update
Are Yahoo Mail Servers Down?
Before you start a potentially lengthy troubleshooting process, it’s a good idea to take a look and see if Yahoo is currently experiencing any service issues.
Deleted Yahoo Mail Account from Your iPhone or iPad and Now Can’t Add It Back?
Yup, you guessed it–that’s usually a Server problem.
Can’t Sign In To Your Yahoo Email and It Says Your Password is Incorrect?
This is a common error when the servers go down. So double check your password and if you’re confident it’s correct, make sure you check the status of the servers.
If you check and don’t see any reported problems or outages in your area, move on to the troubleshooting steps listed below.
Can’t Get Passed the Yahoo Mail Welcome Screen?
That’s another sign that there is a problem with Yahoo’s Servers or the communications between Apple’s Mail servers and Yahoo.
We recommend looking at sites like Down Detector and typing in Yahoo Mail (for some sites, you need to enter mail.yahoo.com) into the search bar or tapping on the Yahoo! Mail logo, if available.
In sites like Down Detector, you can see user reported problems within the last 24 hours.
There’s also a Live Outage Map to give you a quick snapshot of the problems around the globe.
Try the Yahoo Mail App for iOS or the Web Version
Oftentimes, the problem is with the communication between Yahoo’s Servers and Apple’s Mail Servers.
So try logging in through the Yahoo Mail App or an internet browser of your choice (such as Safari, Chrome, or Firefox) on your Mac, PC, iPhone, or iPad.
Verify your Yahoo account works outside of the Mail app
Open a web browser using a computer
Log into Yahoo
Compose a new email and type in your Yahoo email address in the To field
Send the email
Check if that email to yourself arrived (you may need to wait 5 minutes or so)
If you receive the email to yourself, then your Yahoo account is working (and consequently, we narrowed down the problem to your iPhone)
Change Your Yahoo Mail Security Settings
The next thing to do when faced with this issue is to change a setting on your yahoo mail profile by logging into yahoo.com via a web browser (not an app)
Once you have logged onto Yahoo mail using your browser, tap on the account security settings
Here turn on the option Allow Apps that use less secure Sign in
Now that you updated the setting on the Yahoo side of things, you need to make the following changes on your iPhone to get things working.
Delete and Add Your Account Back
If nothing else worked, the best remedy is to delete your Yahoo account from the Mail app and the iPhone and then add it back in.
If you’re worried about losing any email, there’s good news! Your Yahoo email is always stored on Yahoo’s servers, so when you delete the account from your iPhone, you are NOT deleting any email.
It’s easy to delete and then add your Yahoo account back using Settings > Passwords & Accounts
Tap on your Yahoo account’s name
Choose Delete Account
Confirm the removal
Restart your device
Go back to Settings > Passwords & Accounts
Choose Add Account
Select Yahoo from the list
Follow the on-screen instructions to add your account back to your iPhone
Yahoo Mail Still Not Updating on iPhone?
1. Close the Apple Mail on your iPhone if you have it open
On an iPhone or an iPad with no home button from the Home screen, swipe up from the bottom of the screen and pause slightly in the middle of the screen
On an iDevice with a home button, double-click the Home button and swipe right or left to find the app that you want to close
Swipe right or left to locate the Mail app you want to close
Swipe up on the Mail app’s preview to close it
2. Delete the account
On your iPhone, tap on Settings > Passwords& Accounts
Tap on your Yahoo mail account
Choose Delete Account in Red font and confirm
This removes the existing yahoo account from your iPhone, but you still have access to all your emails on the yahoo server
3. Restart your iPhone
On an iPad with no Home Button and iPhones X or later: Press and hold the Side/Top/Power button and either volume button until the slider appears
On an iPad or iPhone with a Home Button and iPod Touch: press and hold the Side/Top/Power button until the slider appears
Drag the slider to turn the device off and after the device turns off, press and hold that Side/Top/Power button again until you see the Apple Logo.
With iOS 11 and above, restart using Settings > General > Shut Down
4. Re-add the email account
Go back to Settings > Passwords & Accounts and choose Add Account
Select the Yahoo option
Sign in with your Yahoo user name and password
If you cannot add your Yahoo account, try adding it in manually
Go to Settings > Passwords & Accounts, then tap Add Account
Choose the Other option
Tap Add Mail Account
Enter your name, email, password, and a short description
Tap Next
iOS looks up your account info to confirm information
If iOS cannot confirm your Yahoo account, choose IMAP
At this stage, you need to manually enter the information for your Yahoo account’s Incoming Mail Server and Outgoing Mail Server.
You can use the information below or use Apple’s email account settings lookup tool to get the settings. Apple’s tool verifies your email settings when after you enter email address in the search bar.
Type in all information manually, even if it’s listed as optional!
Yahoo’s Incoming Mail (IMAP) Server Settings
HostName – imap.mail.yahoo.com
The user name is your full email address
Enter your account’s password
Depending on your iOS version, you may also need to enter the following:
Port – 993
Requires SSL – Yes
Yahoo’s Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server Settings
HostName – smtp.mail.yahoo.com
The user name is your full email address–type this in, even if it says it’s optional
Enter your account’s password
Depending on your iOS version, you may also need to enter the following:
Port – 465 or 587
Requires SSL – Yes
Requires authentication – Yes
Once you enter all your Yahoo account details and server information:
Choose Next
iOS verifies the account information
If confirmed, tap Save to complete the set-up
If not confirmed, iOS asks you to edit and correct your entries
Lastly, go back to the Mail App and check if your Yahoo emails come through or are updating.
Switch Your Email Account’s Fetch Settings
Some users report that the updates work for some time and then pause all of a sudden. If you are facing that issue, you can try to switch the fetch settings to manual.
On the Accounts and Passwords screen
Tap on Fetch New Data and under FETCH set it to Manually
Once you have done this, when you are in the mail account, scroll down the screen from the top of the iPhone, and it should update your mailbox with the latest emails.
Wrap Up
This is by far not the best solution but is a workaround. We hope that Yahoo and Apple work together to get this issue fixed as many of us use Yahoo mail on our iPhones. The other resort is to use the Yahoo mail app on your iPhone until this issue is sorted out.
If you have found a better way to deal with this issue, please let us know in the comments below. Hope the step-by-step solution here was helpful to you.
Reader tips
Check that you are not always Bcc yourself on your email automatically. Go to Settings > Mail and scroll down to the Composing section. Toggle off Always Bcc Myself
Please try deleting and then adding your Yahoo account back into your iPhone using Settings > Passwords & Accounts.
Yahoo also offers some tips for iOS users:
1. Check if your account works outside of the app
Open a web browser using a computer
Log in to your Yahoo
Compose a new email and type in your own address in the “To” field
Send that email and see if it arrives within 5 minutes
If you receive it, your Yahoo account is working fine and the problem is on your device
2. Update your system and make sure you’re using the latest version of the iOS
3. Remove and re-add Yahoo Mail
Remove your Yahoo Mail account
Re-add Yahoo Mail using IMAP
If that fails, add your Yahoo account manually
Go to Settings > Passwords & Accounts, then tap Add Account
Tap Other, then tap Add Mail Account
Enter your name, email address, password, and a description for your account
Tap Next–Mail tries to lookup your account info
If it cannot locate this info, choose IMAP
Enter the information for Incoming Mail Server and Outgoing Mail Server as listed below
Incoming Mail (IMAP) Server
Server – imap.mail.yahoo.com
Port – 993
Requires SSL – Yes
Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server
Server – smtp.mail.yahoo.com
Port – 465 or 587
Requires SSL – Yes
Requires authentication – Yes
Your login info
Email address – Your full email address ([email protected])
Password – Your account’s password
Requires authentication – Yes
Then tap Next.
Tap Save to finish.
If the email settings are incorrect, you’ll be asked to edit them.
Maybe not the answer for everyone but for me I was having this problem only with sending myself emails, the problem ended up being that I have my email set up to BCC myself.
Once I deleted my email address in the BCC field and sent the emails to go through just fine.
Oofta, been having this problem for quite some time.
Tried deleting the email and re-adding several times, calling phone service provider, searching internet extensively, and searching yahoo help forum all with no results.
Kinda feel dumb now that I figured out it was such a simple fix… But then again not really considering no one else had a fix either.
Just glad to have it fixed. Hope this helps someone else.
Unfortunately, none of this worked for me with a Yahoo account. It has happened since the latest update to 12.2
Hi Alex,
Please try deleting and then adding your Yahoo account back into your iPhone using Settings > Passwords & Accounts.
Yahoo also offers some tips for iOS users:
1. Check if your account works outside of the app
Open a web browser using a computer
Log in to your Yahoo
Compose a new email and type in your own address in the “To” field
Send that email and see if it arrives within 5 minutes
If you receive it, your Yahoo account is working fine and the problem is on your device
2. Update your system and make sure you’re using the latest version of the iOS
3. Remove and re-add Yahoo Mail
Remove your Yahoo Mail account
Re-add Yahoo Mail using IMAP
If that fails, add your Yahoo account manually
Go to Settings > Passwords & Accounts, then tap Add Account
Tap Other, then tap Add Mail Account
Enter your name, email address, password, and a description for your account
Tap Next–Mail tries to lookup your account info
If it cannot locate this info, choose IMAP
Enter the information for Incoming Mail Server and Outgoing Mail Server as listed below
Incoming Mail (IMAP) Server
Server – imap.mail.yahoo.com
Port – 993
Requires SSL – Yes
Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server
Server – smtp.mail.yahoo.com
Port – 465 or 587
Requires SSL – Yes
Requires authentication – Yes
Your login info
Email address – Your full email address ([email protected])
Password – Your account’s password
Requires authentication – Yes
Then tap Next.
Tap Save to finish.
If the email settings are incorrect, you’ll be asked to edit them.
Thank you! This worked!
Maybe not the answer for everyone but for me I was having this problem only with sending myself emails, the problem ended up being that I have my email set up to BCC myself.
Once I deleted my email address in the BCC field and sent the emails to go through just fine.
Oofta, been having this problem for quite some time.
Tried deleting the email and re-adding several times, calling phone service provider, searching internet extensively, and searching yahoo help forum all with no results.
Kinda feel dumb now that I figured out it was such a simple fix… But then again not really considering no one else had a fix either.
Just glad to have it fixed. Hope this helps someone else.