I’m having an issue with my gmail not always pushing new messages to my phone right when they are received. I have tried searching all over but have not found anything exactly like my issue. I think it is an issue with my account more than my phone or app, and I’ll explain why. This is going to be a LONG post because I want to give all the background on the problem, in hopes that someone will recognize my issue. If this post belongs in another forum, mods please move. Thanks.
A little background:
I’ve had occasional sync issues for the entire time I’ve had an Android phone, about 10 years. It always used to be very rare, so was just mildly annoying, but in the past couple years has been happening more frequently and is therefore more frustrating. For reference, I receive on average about 1-2 emails per day, and this happens 1-2 times per week, so say about 15-20% of the time.
During the past couple years when this has been happening more frequently, I’ve had several phones: Droid Turbo on Verizon, LG G6 on Verizon, Google Pixel on Project Fi. The Turbo didn’t have doze/battery optimization. I have turned off battery optimization for Gmail on the G6 and Pixel. Because this has happened on multiple phones and carriers, I don’t believe the problem is with the phone or app.
Again, most of the time messages sync to my phone right away. Once or twice a week, here's what happens: say someone sends me an email at noon. It doesn’t sync to my phone and push a notification through. It will later sync and push through to my phone in one of several scenarios:
1) Someone sends me another email later, say 3pm. That email syncs to my phone and pushes a notification that I have two new emails in my inbox. One received at 3pm, and one received at noon that I never got a notification for.
2) I manually open the gmail app at 3pm. Initially there are no new emails at the top of my inbox. If I wait in the app for about 10 seconds, a new email will pop up, showing it was sent 3 hours ago. Or, if I see no new emails in my inbox and close the app, lock the screen, set the phone down, a notification will pop up in about 10 seconds showing a new email, received 3 hours ago.
3) I open gmail on my desktop browser. A new “bolded” email from 3 hours ago is already there waiting for me in my inbox the instant I open it. If I do nothing more than open my inbox (don’t click the email or anything) in about ten seconds my phone buzzes with a notification for a new email, received 3 hours ago.
4) If none of the above 3 scenarios happen within a few hours of the new email being sent, I will usually get a notification within about 12 hours. For example, last night someone sent me an email at 6pm but I didn’t interact with Gmail in any way that evening, so I had a new email notification when I woke up at 6:00 this morning, stating the email was received at 6pm the day before..
I think it’s important to emphasize that in all of those scenarios, the phone properly displays when the email was received, regardless of when I actually got the notification. I really think the key is Scenario 3, where I don’t interact with my phone at all but opening gmail in a browser causes the new email to sync through, and why I think it is something with my gmail account rather than my phone. I don’t do much filtering in my gmail account at all, I’m more of a “searcher” than a “sorter”. Most of my emails I’ve received in the 15 years I’ve had the account are still just in the inbox. I haven’t really done anything to mess with “priority inbox” vs. regular, I have tried setting my phone app to both regular inbox and priority inbox, and get the same issue either way. I’ve browsed through all my account settings on both the browser and the phone, and have seen nothing that jumped out at me as the possible problem. All of my gmail settings on my phone are set to always sync. On my gmail settings in the browser, the “Inbox type” is set to “default” and IMAP is enabled.
This has been driving me crazy for a couple years now, so if anyone has any ideas I would appreciate it. Thank you in advance if you made it all the way through my post
A little background:
I’ve had occasional sync issues for the entire time I’ve had an Android phone, about 10 years. It always used to be very rare, so was just mildly annoying, but in the past couple years has been happening more frequently and is therefore more frustrating. For reference, I receive on average about 1-2 emails per day, and this happens 1-2 times per week, so say about 15-20% of the time.
During the past couple years when this has been happening more frequently, I’ve had several phones: Droid Turbo on Verizon, LG G6 on Verizon, Google Pixel on Project Fi. The Turbo didn’t have doze/battery optimization. I have turned off battery optimization for Gmail on the G6 and Pixel. Because this has happened on multiple phones and carriers, I don’t believe the problem is with the phone or app.
Again, most of the time messages sync to my phone right away. Once or twice a week, here's what happens: say someone sends me an email at noon. It doesn’t sync to my phone and push a notification through. It will later sync and push through to my phone in one of several scenarios:
1) Someone sends me another email later, say 3pm. That email syncs to my phone and pushes a notification that I have two new emails in my inbox. One received at 3pm, and one received at noon that I never got a notification for.
2) I manually open the gmail app at 3pm. Initially there are no new emails at the top of my inbox. If I wait in the app for about 10 seconds, a new email will pop up, showing it was sent 3 hours ago. Or, if I see no new emails in my inbox and close the app, lock the screen, set the phone down, a notification will pop up in about 10 seconds showing a new email, received 3 hours ago.
3) I open gmail on my desktop browser. A new “bolded” email from 3 hours ago is already there waiting for me in my inbox the instant I open it. If I do nothing more than open my inbox (don’t click the email or anything) in about ten seconds my phone buzzes with a notification for a new email, received 3 hours ago.
4) If none of the above 3 scenarios happen within a few hours of the new email being sent, I will usually get a notification within about 12 hours. For example, last night someone sent me an email at 6pm but I didn’t interact with Gmail in any way that evening, so I had a new email notification when I woke up at 6:00 this morning, stating the email was received at 6pm the day before..
I think it’s important to emphasize that in all of those scenarios, the phone properly displays when the email was received, regardless of when I actually got the notification. I really think the key is Scenario 3, where I don’t interact with my phone at all but opening gmail in a browser causes the new email to sync through, and why I think it is something with my gmail account rather than my phone. I don’t do much filtering in my gmail account at all, I’m more of a “searcher” than a “sorter”. Most of my emails I’ve received in the 15 years I’ve had the account are still just in the inbox. I haven’t really done anything to mess with “priority inbox” vs. regular, I have tried setting my phone app to both regular inbox and priority inbox, and get the same issue either way. I’ve browsed through all my account settings on both the browser and the phone, and have seen nothing that jumped out at me as the possible problem. All of my gmail settings on my phone are set to always sync. On my gmail settings in the browser, the “Inbox type” is set to “default” and IMAP is enabled.
This has been driving me crazy for a couple years now, so if anyone has any ideas I would appreciate it. Thank you in advance if you made it all the way through my post
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