- Tuta mail filed a DMA complaint against Apple on April 2, 2025, for having omitted to allow Tuta among default messaging applications on iOS
- The encrypted email supplier issued the complaint after allegedly expected months for a response from the major technological company
- The complaint was withdrawn less than 24 hours later as Apple finally contacted Tuta developers
Tuta Mail, an encrypted email service, filed a complaint against Apple on Wednesday April 2, 2025. The action was however withdrawn after less than 24 hours.
The German secure messaging provider has decided to file an official complaint against Apple for having failed to allow its service among the default messaging applications on iOS, as required by the law on the digital market. Tuta did it after allegedly waited for months for an answer to her request.
However, “after a journalist contacted Apple on the issue, Apple contacted us in a few hours,” the CEO of Tuta wrote Matthias PFAU, on April 3 in an official announcement. “For this reason, we will withdraw the complaint from the EU, and Apple does not have to fear the consequences.”
Why did Tuta emitted the complaint?
The law on the digital market, which entered into force last year, has introduced new obligations for large technological companies to prevent them from mistreating their dominant position on the market.
For Apple, this means, among other things, to give everyone using an iPhone or an iPad the choice to choose a third -party service as default email application.
To allow their users to do so, the developers of the application must follow the directives of the company and submit an official request. Tuta’s mail would have made on January 14, 2025, but there was no answer.
The team attempted to contact Apple by e-mail and x messages throughout March without much success.
Apple launched other default mail applications with the iOS 14 version in 2020, four years before the EMMA rules. The biggest competitors in Apple, Gmail and the popular Protonmail encrypted service are among the developers who have been successfully activated as default emailing since then.
Dear @apple @tim_cook, we would like our users to be able to choose Tuta Mail as default mail application on # ioswe contacted Apple developers as requested two months ago, sent a reminder, but so far – silence. Could you connect us with the right people? #Defaultmailapp #apple #apple #appleMarch 18, 2025
On April 2, Tuta then decided to file an official DMA complaint against Apple for, as Pfau said, “abusing his goalkeeper position against us”.
Less than 24 hours later, Tuta confirmed to Techradar that Apple was finally in contact with the team “after a journalist from PK Press Club wanted to go to the bottom of the issue with Apple,” said Tuta press officer Hanna Bozakov.
However, this was enough for Tuta to decide to withdraw her complaint against the great technology giant.
“The main problem here is that Apple will get away with this behavior. We are taking the complaint because it is useless to continue, but next time, Apple can act in the same way,” said Bozakov.
“We would like to see large technological companies to use their market power in a responsible manner, behave correctly and fairly and not only measures when threatened with poor publicity.”
Apple response
Techradar approached Apple to comment, and the company told us that Tuta’s request was incomplete because it lacked the “mailto”. This is an URL scheme necessary for the correct function of default messaging applications in iOS.
Apple also told Techradar that the company had contacted Tuta developers as quickly as possible to help them solve the problem.
Bozakov confirmed the error, but said that the team had only been informed today (April 3) on this subject. “I am almost sure that we would always wait for an answer if the journalist had not contacted them,” she added.
