When emails show up minutes or hours after they were sent, the cause is usually in one of three places: the sender's system, your email provider, or your own device or app. The fix depends on which one, so the first job is finding where the delay happens. This guide shows a quick way to do that, then covers the fixes for each case. For a related guide, see Email Search Not Working? How to Find Missing Messages.
Step 1: Check whether the email is late or only your app is
Open your email in a web browser (Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo Mail, or your provider's webmail) and compare it with your phone or desktop app.
- Webmail shows the message but your app doesn't: the problem is syncing or notifications on your device. Go to the device section below.
- Webmail is also late: the delay is happening before the message reaches your mailbox. Go to the message-header check and the provider and sender sections.
- Only some senders are late: suspect that sender's system, or your spam filtering treating their mail with suspicion.
- Everything is late, including mail from your own other accounts: check your provider's status page for an outage or degraded service.
Step 2: Read the message headers to see where the time was lost
Every email records each server it passed through, with timestamps. This is the most reliable way to locate a delay. Open a late message and view its full headers:
- Gmail: open the message, select the three-dot menu, then choose Show original.
- Outlook desktop: double-click the message to open it, then choose File > Properties and look in the Internet headers box.
- Outlook on the web: open the message, use the more-actions menu, and look for the option to view message details or source. The wording changes between versions.
- Apple Mail on Mac: select the message, then choose View > Message > All Headers or Raw Source.
Find the lines starting with Received:. Read them from the bottom up, since the bottom line is the first server that handled the message. Compare the timestamps from one line to the next, keeping time zone offsets in mind.
- A large gap early in the chain points to the sender's side: a queued message, a slow outgoing server, or a retry.
- A large gap just before your provider's server suggests a temporary rejection and retry (often greylisting, an anti-spam technique) or heavy filtering on your provider's side.
- If all timestamps are close together and match the send time, the message arrived on time. The delay is in your app or notifications.
Headers contain email addresses and server details, so redact them before posting them publicly. Share them only with your provider's support or your IT administrator.
Fixing delays on your phone or computer
iPhone and iPad
- Open Settings and go to the Mail accounts area. Depending on your iOS version, this is under Mail > Accounts or Apps > Mail > Mail Accounts.
- Choose Fetch New Data. Turn Push on if your account supports it. Otherwise set Fetch to a short interval such as every 15 minutes.
- Check that Low Power Mode is off. It can pause background mail fetching.
- Make sure Background App Refresh and notifications are allowed for your mail app, and that a Focus mode isn't silencing alerts.
Android
- In your mail app, confirm that sync is turned on for the account. In the Gmail app, this is in the account's settings under Sync Gmail.
- In Android's app settings, open your mail app's battery options and allow unrestricted or unoptimized background activity. Menu names vary by manufacturer and Android version.
- Turn off Data Saver or Battery Saver for a test. If delays stop, add your mail app as an exception.
- Check that notifications are enabled for the app and the relevant mail category.
Outlook, Thunderbird, and other desktop apps
- In Outlook, check the Send/Receive tab and make sure Work Offline is not active.
- Look at your Outbox for messages stuck there, often because of a large attachment or a dropped connection.
- Check how often the app checks for mail. IMAP accounts can usually update quickly. POP accounts only check at set intervals, so lower the interval in the account or send/receive settings.
- If one account is slow, remove nothing yet. First try Send/Receive manually and note whether mail appears right away.
Fixing delays on the provider or sender side
Check your spam and filtering settings
Look in Spam, Junk, Quarantine, and any folders created by rules. Also review your filters and rules for anything that moves or labels mail unexpectedly. Don't turn off spam protection to test this. Instead, mark legitimate messages as not spam and add the sender to your contacts or safe list.
Check for fetched accounts
If Gmail pulls mail from another account using POP, it checks that account at intervals that Google controls, so delays are normal. Where possible, have the original account forward mail, or add the account directly to your phone's mail app instead.
Check storage and service status
A full mailbox can delay or reject incoming mail. Check your storage in your account settings and clear space if needed. Also check your provider's official status page, such as the Google Workspace Status Dashboard or Microsoft's service health page, for current incidents.
If you are the sender
- Check that the message left your Outbox or Sent folder.
- Look for a "delivery delayed" notice. These automated messages usually explain whether the recipient's server is rejecting or deferring the message.
- Try sending the message without large attachments. A shared cloud link often works better than a big file.
- If you send from your own domain, ask whoever manages it to check that SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records are set up correctly. Missing or wrong records can cause receiving servers to slow down or distrust your mail.
If you manage a work or school account
Administrators can trace individual messages, for example with message trace in Microsoft 365 or email log search in Google Workspace. If you're a regular user, send your IT team the sender, recipient, send time, and the redacted headers of one late message.
Late verification codes and password resets
Codes that arrive late are often useless because they expire. Request one code, then wait a couple of minutes rather than requesting several, since later codes may invalidate earlier ones. Check spam, then use a different delivery method such as an authenticator app or SMS if the service offers one. Never share a code with someone who contacts you asking for it.
How to confirm it's fixed
Send a test email from another account you control, such as a second webmail address, to the affected one. Compare the sent time with the arrival time in both the webmail and the app. Try again after an hour, because delays caused by battery restrictions or fetch intervals may only appear in the background. If notifications matter to you, leave the phone idle for a few minutes first.
What to do next
If the headers show the message arrived on time but your app showed it late, fix sync, battery, and notification settings. If the delay happened on a server, there's a limit to what you can fix yourself: whitelist the sender, free up storage, and check provider status. After that, contact your email provider or the sender's IT team with the headers from one delayed message. Those timestamps are what will let them find the cause.