Push email with Mail app

[Homeyjay]

I've asked this at the official forum and had no answers at all.

My Mail app won't get push email from any source. I have Outlook, gMail and iCloud email accounts but none of them arrive by push. My Mac can sit all day, not getting any push emails at all, but the moment I launch the app, everything will arrive all at once.

My Phone (Google Pixel) will receive these emails without any issues.

I've checked all accounts and they're online and the activity pane is showing that nothing's going on.

I briefly installed the Outlook app and that had no issues receiving emails via push but that's now subscription only so I had to delete it
I've deleted all the email accounts and added them again.
I've deleted the Mail app and re-downloaded it
I've taken all accounts offline and put them back online.

Can anyone please suggest anything - this used to work flawlessly but it stopped a couple of months ago..

 

[galad]

Apps on Mac usually don't use push notifications. If you want Mail to check for emails, you have to keep it open.
On the other hands, on macOS apps can be open without having any window, so either open Mail, and close its window, or hide it, and keep it open.

 

[Bigwaff]

I briefly installed the Outlook app and that had no issues receiving emails via push but that's now subscription only so I had to delete it

Outlook for Mac is free to use.

Microsoft Announces Outlook for Mac is Now Free to Use

Microsoft today announced that its Outlook app for Mac is now free to use, eliminating the need for a Microsoft 365 subscription or license. ...

www.macrumors.com

 

[Homeyjay]

Downloaded that! Many thanks for the heads-up!
Only issue is that now that's not giving me emails either unless I launch it.
I really cant work this out..

 

[cateye]

You already got your answer you're just choosing to ignore it. The Mac Mail app, like Outlook, like every mail client on MacOS will rely on IDLE to receive notice of new email which triggers the download and subsequent notification to the end user. This only works when the app is running. Leave the app running and you will get the behavior you are looking for. Quit the app and you will not. The end. There is no background mail fetch service on MacOS as there is on iOS. "Push" is a mobile OS construct.

A tangential exception to this would be if you're using gmail, for example, and have it set to send you desktop notifications when you get new mail. But that relies on you keeping gmail permanently open in its own browser tab or window.

 

[Homeyjay]

Sorry, I should have explained further. The issue is that Mail wont notify even if it’s running. The only app that I’ve found that notifies reliably on my Mac is Thunderbird and that too, has to be running! It works really well and I’m in the process of swapping all my accounts to that.
Outlook seems to notify 50% of the time when running.

Thanks for your explanation of why push won’t work but it seems to do very well on all the Win10 & 11 PCs at work with no email clients running at all - seems that it’s not a “mobile OS construct” there!

 

[Bigwaff]

This is what notifications in (System) Settings > Notifications > Mail configuration looks like for me and I get notifications when I receive new email... but Mail needs to be running.

 

[Homeyjay]

Yup, that‘s exactly like mine looks. I’ve turned everything on and off and restarted the app each time too.