I can't see mail sent from iOS Mail app in Roundcube

When I send mail from iOS I don’t see it in my Sent folder in Roundcube. How do I fix this?

The Sent folder is actually not a server function, and is made more confusing by services like Gmail that have made it a server function (by using in-house software that no one else can use, it’s only theirs). Your email client actually writes the sent messages back to the server in a folder of it’s choice. Sometimes, two email clients will have a different default choice for what that folder is. For example, some might write it to a subfolder of inbox like INBOX/Sent. Some might write it to just Sent. Others still, like iOS, might write to Sent Messages.

If you go into our Roundcube email, you can find 3 vertical dots around the top left, just to the right of where it says your email address. Click that and then Manage Folders. You might see here that Apple Mail wrote sent messages to a different folder, and with that you might be able to click the switch to the right of it so that it turns blue, allowing you to see that folder in Roundcube.

With iOS Mail app, it defaults to Sent Messages, while our Roundcube instance defaults to Sent. You can change them if you want, or just do like I do and have different sent folders from both clients because they just default that way and I just don’t care how it looks for my personal usage.

In Roundcube if you go into Settings and then Special Folders, you can change which folders are used by Roundcube for Drafts, Sent, Junk, Trash, and Archive.

In iOS you can change which folders are used for these purposes by going to Settings > Passwords & Accounts > The email account in question > Account (top option) > Advanced. You’ll see it there.

Sadly there are no sane defaults. The defaults Roundcube uses match up with most email clients, but then iOS throws a curve ball by choosing “Sent Messages” unlike all others. So if we change defaults in Roundcube to “Sent Messages” we’re just going to get other people saying “I can’t see messages I send in Roundcube in my Sent folder on Thunderbird” or something like that. So long as email software clients refuse to agree on a standard, these variations will continue to exist.

Edited to add: Some applications may also not write sent email to any folder. Be that the case, we wouldn’t have a copy of it or a feature to write it for you.