Refresh another app silently

Question

Is there anyway I could refresh the built-in Apple Mail based on an event in My App?

So,:

1. My App is not running on the user's phone.
2. It waits to receives a silent (without an alert) push notification.
3. It pulls data and based on certain conditions an event is triggered.
4. Refresh (not launch) the Mail app so it can receive its own push notifications itself.

So essentially everything happens in the background with Mail app eventually receiving the push notification of a new mail as it would receive or fetch or manual refresh.

I read the Inter-App Communication page but it doesn't answer my question so I'm wondering if its even possible.

Answer 1

Let me try to break down what you are asking:

1. My App receives a silent push notification, gets some information, and sends a request to a server (all in the background).

2. When the server receives that request, it sends out an email to the device.

3. You want that email to appear instantly.

Apple does not give developers explicit control to change a user's mail settings. As a developer you probably won't even know what mail accounts are on the device (or if the user even has the right account available). I would say that what you are asking is impossible with the current structure of Apple's APIs.

Push notifications in the Mail app do not work like other apps. Either mail is pushed to the device instantly (the Push switch is enabled), mail is fetched on an interval, or the user manually refreshes the mail every time they open the app. If the user has Fetch set to manual, they will not get your email.