Fixing Apple Mail When It’s Stuck on “Downloading Messages” Link to heading

I ran into one of those bugs that slowly drives you insane.

I had just formatted my Mac. Fresh install, clean setup, everything working great. I added my accounts to Mail.app, opened it, and it looked… perfect.

Folders were there. Inbox counts looked correct. It even said:

“Downloading messages… 5,379 new messages”

Nice.

Except… nothing showed up.

No emails. No progress. Just a spinner pretending to work.

🤨 Something Felt Off Link to heading

At first, I didn’t question it.

• Maybe Gmail is slow
• Maybe Apple servers are lagging
• Maybe it just needs time

So I waited.

Nothing.

Then I checked disk usage:

du -sh ~/Library/Mail

Output:

4.4M    ~/Library/Mail

That’s basically empty.

For thousands of emails, that folder should be huge.

That’s when it clicked:

Mail wasn’t downloading anything. It just thought it was.

🧠 First Suspect: Permissions (TCC Rabbit Hole) Link to heading

Since this was a fresh macOS install, I suspected permissions.

I tried listing the Mail directory:

ls ~/Library/Mail

Got:

Operation not permitted

That usually means macOS privacy (TCC) is blocking access.

So I:

• Gave my terminal Full Disk Access
• Retried → it worked

Then I thought:

Maybe Mail itself is stuck in a weird permission state?

So I reset its permissions:

tccutil reset All com.apple.mail

Restarted Mail…

Still stuck.

💡 Important realization Link to heading

This was a false lead.

• Terminal being blocked is normal without Full Disk Access
• Mail.app already has the permissions it needs

👉 So this didn’t explain the issue — it just helped rule things out

🔍 The Turning Point: Logs Link to heading

At this point, I stopped guessing and looked at logs:

log stream --style syslog \
--predicate '(process == "Mail") || (process == "accountsd") || (process == "cloudd")'

Triggered a sync and watched.

What I expected Link to heading

FETCH ...
BODY[]

That’s Mail actually downloading messages.

What I actually saw Link to heading

STATUS Inbox
STATUS Archive
Background fetch completed

No FETCH. No downloads.

🧠 What That Means Link to heading

Apple Mail works in phases:

1. Connect to server
2. Fetch mailbox metadata (STATUS)
3. Download messages (FETCH)

In my case:

• Connection: ✅
• Metadata (folders, counts): ✅
• Message download: ❌

🔑 Key insight Link to heading

You’ll often see:

• STATUS → mailbox counts
• IDLE → waiting for updates
• ❌ no FETCH

That means:

Mail knows messages exist, but never tries to download them

💥 The Real Problem Link to heading

At this point I ruled out:

• ❌ Network
• ❌ Authentication
• ❌ Permissions

Which leaves:

Broken IMAP sync state

More specifically:

• UID tracking got out of sync
• Mail believed everything was already downloaded
• Server disagreed
• Mail never issued FETCH requests

🛠️ Things I Tried (Didn’t Work) Link to heading

Before fixing it, I went through:

• Restarting Mail
• Restarting macOS
• Rebuilding mailboxes
• Resetting TCC permissions

None of these helped.

Because the problem wasn’t surface-level — it was internal sync state.

💣 The Fix That Actually Worked Link to heading

At this point I stopped trying to patch it and just reset Mail completely.

1. Quit Mail Link to heading

killall Mail

2. Backup & remove Mail state Link to heading

(Safer than deleting outright)

mv ~/Library/Mail ~/Desktop/Mail_backup
mv ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail ~/Desktop/com.apple.mail.backup
mv ~/Library/Group\ Containers/group.com.apple.mail ~/Desktop/group.com.apple.mail.backup

3. Restart background services Link to heading

killall accountsd
killall cloudd
killall bird

4. Re-add accounts Link to heading

Go to:

System Settings → Internet Accounts

• Remove your accounts
• Add them again

👉 This step is important — it resets sync + auth state

✅ What “Fixed” Looks Like Link to heading

Opened Mail again.

This time:

• Disk usage started increasing
• Emails actually appeared
• Logs showed:

FETCH
BODY[]

That’s the signal everything is finally working.

⚠️ Small Warning Link to heading

If you have:

• local-only mailboxes
• unsynced drafts

Back them up before resetting.

This process wipes Mail’s local state.

🚫 What This Is Not Link to heading

This bug is misleading.

It looks like:

• permissions
• network
• Gmail issue

But it’s none of those.

🧾 TL;DR Link to heading

If Mail says it’s downloading but nothing shows up:

• Check disk usage (~/Library/Mail)
• Check logs for missing FETCH
• Don’t get stuck on permissions
• Reset Mail state + re-add accounts

💭 Final Thought Link to heading

This is one of those bugs where everything looks fine:

• No errors
• No warnings
• No crashes

But one critical thing is missing.

In my case, it was a single word in the logs:

FETCH

And once you notice that, everything else makes sense.

Happy debugging 👨‍💻