Here’s why you can’t read the full version of some emails on your Apple Watch

BY Gautam Prabhu

Published 5 Jun 2015

Apple Watch - Mail

One of the handy features of the Apple Watch is the ability to read the emails on your wrist, so you don’t have to remove your iPhone from the pocket or bag. It is not ideal to read a long email on your Apple Watch, but perfect to read short emails.

You may have noticed that occasionally you cannot read the full version of the email. You get the message:

The full versions of this message isn’t available on Apple Watch. But you can read it on your iPhone.

Apple Watch - can't read full version

The reason you get this cryptic message is because it hasn’t been sent in multi-part MIME. Multi-part MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) includes a simplified plain text version of the email along with the HTML version of the email. It ensures that email clients that are not capable of rendering HTML email can at least display the text version of the email.

The only thing you can do is read the email on your iPhone. Thanks to the Handoff feature, you can swipe up on the Mail icon on your iPhone’s Lock screen, to quickly jump to the email on your iPhone, and read it.

You may have also come across a message informing you that “This message contains elements Apple Watch can’t display. You can read a text version below”.

Apple Watch - contains elements that can't be read

Apple Watch displays this message when it detects remote or linked images in an email. So if you’re a marketer then it means that your open tracking pixels which rely on a 1×1 tracking image loading in the subscriber’s Inbox won’t work, as they are not displayed or loaded.