Push vs Fetch Email: How to Save Mobile Data on Your Phone

If you check your business email mainly on your phone, how your mail app syncs new messages can use a surprisingly large amount of mobile data each month. Email apps check for new mail in one of three ways: Push, Fetch, or Manual. Switching between them is one of the easiest ways to control how much data your email uses, without missing messages that matter.

Push, Fetch, and Manual: What's the Difference?

These three settings control how often your phone checks the mail server for new messages, which in turn affects how much background data it uses.

• Push: your phone keeps an open connection to the mail server, so new messages arrive the moment they're sent. This feels instant, but it means your phone is checking in constantly in the background.
• Fetch: your phone checks for new mail at set intervals, such as every 15, 30, or 60 minutes, instead of staying connected all the time. This uses less background data than Push, at the cost of a short delay before new mail appears.
• Manual: your phone only checks for new mail when you open the app and pull down to refresh. This uses the least data of the three, since nothing happens in the background at all.

Push and Fetch both eventually download the same messages. The difference is timing, not the size of each message. A large attachment uses the same amount of data no matter which setting you choose.

How to Change Your Email Sync Settings

On iPhone (iOS Mail)

1. Open Settings, then tap Mail.
2. Tap Accounts, then tap Fetch New Data.
3. Turn Push off at the top of the screen if you want to reduce background data use.
4. Further down, tap your email account under the account list and choose Fetch with an interval (such as every 15 or 30 minutes), or choose Manual to only check when you open the app.

On Android (Gmail App)

1. Open the Gmail app, tap the menu icon, then tap Settings.
2. Select the email account you want to adjust.
3. Tap Sync Gmail and review how many days of mail are kept synced on the device, since syncing a shorter range reduces background data use.
4. Tap Notifications to control how often the app checks for new mail if you don't need instant alerts.
5. For more control, go to your phone's own Settings, then Apps, then Gmail, then Mobile data usage, and turn off Background data so Gmail only syncs mail when you open it, ideally over Wi-Fi.

In the Outlook App

1. Open the Outlook app and tap your profile icon in the top-left corner.
2. Tap the gear icon for Settings.
3. Select the account you want to adjust, then look for Sync options or Mailbox sync settings.
4. Reduce how many days of mail are synced, and turn off syncing for folders you rarely check on your phone, such as newsletters or promotions.

Other Ways to Cut Email Data Usage

• Turn off automatic image loading in your mail app's display settings. Marketing emails are often data-heavy because of embedded images.
• Set attachments to download only when you tap them, rather than automatically.
• Limit sync to a shorter date range, such as the last 7 or 30 days, so your phone isn't constantly re-syncing your entire mailbox history.
• Use a Wi-Fi-only setting for attachments where your phone supports it, so mobile data only has to carry the message text.

If you're often away from Wi-Fi and want a balance between staying updated and saving data, Fetch set to every 30 or 60 minutes is usually a good middle ground.

If you're not sure whether your phone connects to your mailbox using IMAP or POP3, check IMAP vs POP3: Which Should You Use for Email on Your Phone? first, since that setting also affects how your phone stores and syncs mail.