iPhone Mail Sending Replies to Me Instead of Them

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alasta

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#323320 18-Nov-2025 10:54

I have a very strange fault on my iPhone that I have been experiencing for at least a couple of years. It's pretty simple - when I reply to an email it sometimes sends the reply back to me instead of to the person who I am trying to reply to. It seems quite random, although I think it is only occurring within email threads with a bit of back and forth.

It is driving me nuts as I reply to someone, assume they've received my reply, then later I notice my reply in my own inbox, then have to copy and paste it and resend it.

Is anyone else experiencing this, and is there any known solution?

MrGadget

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#3435510 18-Nov-2025 11:03

Rather odd. All I can say is that it is normal for Apple mail to blind copy you in on responses (as well as the other person/people) by default. Are you sure the other person is not receiving the email (maybe going to their spam folder etc)?

auto BCC is in Mail Settings

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alasta

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#3435523 18-Nov-2025 12:19

No, that setting is turned off and the messages appear to be send with me in the 'to' field rather than 'bcc'.

coffeebaron

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#3435524 18-Nov-2025 12:23

Turn off the threaded email thing??

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Benjip

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#3435528 18-Nov-2025 12:39

Could it be that the other person (the sender) is changing the reply-to header of the email thread each time they send/reply to you?

See if you can find an example where you know it's happened, and check that email in the browser, where the headers (CC, Reply-to etc.) should hopefully be more obvious. It might have "To: alasta@alasta.com, Reply-to: alasta@alasta.com".

sqishy

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#3435550 18-Nov-2025 14:08

When I get issues I just remove and re-add the mail account.

xpd

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#3435563 18-Nov-2025 14:42

Try Outlook - does it happen with that ?

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Aucklandjafa

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#3435564 18-Nov-2025 14:44

I only stopped recently using the native app (only reason was because of its inability to push Gmail accounts) - have gotten use to the Gmail app.

Geektastic

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#3439781 3-Dec-2025 13:36

Yes my iOS device (15 Pro Max) does this periodically. It is extremely irritating!

Aaron2222

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#3439886 3-Dec-2025 17:54

I've found some email clients do this if you reply to an email in the thread you sent (e.g. you sent the last email in the thread and need to send a follow-up email). If this is what's happening, it explains why it only happens sometimes. Presumably the mail client's got simple logic that just sends to whoever's in the from field (which is you in this case).

alasta

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#3440110 4-Dec-2025 11:12

I think I have figured it out.

When you have a thread of emails you can view the entire thread (yellow arrow below) or an individual email (red arrows below). If you select an individual email (red arrow) and reply then it behaves as expected - there's no problem.

If you select the thread (yellow arrow) then any attempt to reply will result in that reply being sent to the person who was most recently active in the thread. In the example below I am attempting to reply to my friend Sara, but the system is insisting that the reply be sent to myself (Alastair) because I have already previously replied and hence my existing reply is the most recent action in the thread.

Someone else above suggested to try turning off the threaded view. I will try this as I suspect it will fix the problem, but may have unintended consequences in terms of how emails are arranged in my inbox.

This is terrible UI design for a product that is supposed to be targeted to general consumers rather than tech enthusiasts.

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#3440415 5-Dec-2025 13:46

I have to say that the latest version of iOS sucks. I have come across numerous faults such as the semi transparency obscuring things you need to read etc

Not impressed Apple!