If you’ve had an Apple iPhone long enough, you’ve probably encountered the problem “cannot verify server identity” while using the mail apps on your phone. If you’re looking for a fix for this problem, you’ll be glad to know that this quick guide will show you a number of solutions that, hopefully, will allow you to once again send and receive emails without the dreaded error message appearing.
Before making numerous changes to your iPhone’s settings, keep in mind that they might appear to protect you from a fake mail server certificate. Your iPhone will ask for the server’s SSL certificate when establishing a connection to a mail server.
It will be marked as untrustworthy and your iPhone will display the cannot verify server identity error alerting you to the problem if it discovers that the certificate has expired, does not match the domain name for the email address, or has not been signed correctly.
Due to the volume of emails we send and receive nowadays, the majority of iPhone users will see this mistake at some point. Typically, the problem may show up when you attempt to set up a new email account. When you upgrade your iPhone, you may be moving your mail settings from one iPhone to another or the mail server certificates for all of them have expired. If you often get it, you might like to to fix the error a number of solutions are below.
Fix iPhone server identity errors
The first thing you should do to fix the cannot verify server identification problem is make sure your iPhone is showing the right time and date, and then you should force stop the Mail app on your phone. On the newest iPhones, you just need to swipe up from the bottom of your screen to achieve this. This will list every programme that is currently running on your computer. Allowing you to scroll from left to right through them. To force the iPhone Mail app to close, locate it and swipe upward. After closing it, verify that the time and date on your iPhone are accurate before reopening the Apple Mail program.
On older iPhone models equipped with a physical home button, simply go to the Home screen and swipe up, finding the application and close it as above. If you are using an iPhone 8 or earlier double click on the home button to view the most recently used apps, once again navigate to the Mail app and swipe up. A majority of the time, this is all that is needed to correct the issue, but if it persists, we have a few more things you can try.
Force restart your iPhone
To make sure everything is working properly and the operating system isn’t causing any problems, force restarting your iPhone, as described in our previous article, is a good idea before you tinker with any mail settings on your phone. When you force restart your iPhone, everything will load from scratch without any data loss, just like when you restart your computer.
Update your carrier Settings
Update your iPhone carrier settings, which we have also covered in this helpful guide, to address any issues you may encounter with your iPhone. This is another helpful maintenance tip. It is also important to make sure that your phone’s operating system is current by downloading Apple’s most recent iOS update. Simply navigate to Settings > General > Software Update to accomplish this. Turning on Automatic Updates will help your device keep up-to-date in the future automatically.
Reset your phone’s network settings
Your iPhone’s network settings are another area that can be problematic, but you can quickly update them by following the directions below. Any Wi-Fi networks and passwords, cellular settings, and previously used VPN and APN settings will all be reset after completing this operation.
- Open your iPhone’s Settings app.
- Next, select “General.”
- Select “Transfer or Reset iPhone” from the menu at the bottom of the General screen.
- Click “Reset” at the screen’s bottom.
- Click “Reset Network Settings.”
Tap Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings if you’re running iOS or iPadOS version 14 or earlier.
Remove the email account
It might be worthwhile to delete and remove the mail account and set it up again from scratch on your iPhone if, after following the above instructions, you are still getting the cannot verify server identity error on your iPhone. Simply follow the directions for the most recent iOS release below to accomplish this.
- Go to your iPhone’s Settings app.
- Tap the “Mail” app settings when you reach them by scrolling down to the bottom.
- With Mail, tap the “Accounts” column. Your iPhone 4’s current email accounts will be listed here.
- Tap to enter the settings for the problematic Mail account after choosing it.
- To delete the mail account, click the “Delete Account” option at the bottom. If you have downloaded any emails locally to your iPhone before doing this, be careful to backup all of your emails. Your emails will be securely saved on the server while you wait to connect if the host supports IMAP, which many servers do.
- Tap “Delete from My iPhone” to confirm that you want to remove the email account from your iPhone.
- Navigate back to Settings > Mail > Accounts and click “Add Account.”
- After choosing your email provider, follow Apple’s instructions to input the information for your email account.
Unfortunately, you might have to destroy everything and start again if you have many email accounts that are all displaying the same cannot verify server identification issue. Once you have done so, set up each individual email account.