- Configuring iCloud Settings
- Setting Up Other Types of Accounts on Your iPhone
- Configuring Other Types of Online Accounts
- Setting How and When Your Accounts Are Updated
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Setting How and When Your Accounts Are Updated
The great thing about online accounts is that their information can be updated any time your iPhone can connect to the Internet. This means you have access to the latest information, such as new emails, changes to your calendars, and so on. There are three basic ways information gets updated:
- Push—When information is updated via Push, the server pushes (thus the name) updated information onto your iPhone whenever that information changes. For example, when you receive a new email, that email is immediately sent (or pushed) to your iPhone. Push provides you with the most current information all the time but uses a lot more battery than the other options.
- Fetch—When information is updated via fetch, your iPhone connects to the account and retrieves the updated information according to a schedule, such as every 15 minutes. Fetch doesn’t keep your information quite as current as push does, but it uses much less battery than Push does.
- Manual—You can cause an app’s information to be updated manually. This happens whenever you open or move into an app or by a manual refresh. For example, you can get new email by moving onto the Inboxes screen in the Mail app and swiping down from the top of the screen.
You can configure which method is used globally, and you can set the method for specific accounts. Some account types, such as iCloud and Exchange, support all three options while others might support only Fetch and Manual. The global option for updating is used unless you override it for individual accounts. For example, you might want your work account to be updated via Push so your information there is always current, while configuring Fetch on a personal account may frequently enough.
Configuring How New Data is Retrieved for Your Accounts
To configure how your information is updated, perform the following steps:
- Move to the Mail, Contacts, Calendars screen.
Tap Fetch New Data.
To enable data to be pushed to your iPhone, slide the Push switch to on (green). To disable push to extend battery life, set it to off (white). This setting is global, meaning that if you disable Push here, it is disabled for all accounts even though you can still configure Push to be used for individual accounts, for example, if an account is set to use Push but Push is globally disabled, the account’s setting is ignored and data is fetched instead.
To change how an account’s information is updated, tap it. The account’s screen displays. The options on this screen depend on the kind of account it is. You always have Fetch and Manual; Push is displayed only for accounts that support it.
- Tap the option you want to use for the account: Push, Fetch, or Manual. If you choose Manual, information is retrieved only when you manually start the process by opening the related app (such as Mail to fetch your email) or by using the refresh gesture, regardless of the global setting.
- If you choose the Push option, choose the mailboxes whose information you want to be pushed by tapping them so they have a check mark; to prevent a mailbox’s information from being pushed, tap it so that it doesn’t have a check mark.
Tap Back.
- Repeat steps 5-7 until you have set the update option for each account. (The current option is shown to the right of the account’s name.)
Tap the amount of time when you want the iPhone to fetch data when Push is turned off and for those accounts that don’t support Push; tap Manually if you want to manually check for information for fetch accounts or when Push is off. Information for your accounts is updated according to your settings.
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