I decided to type this up because I finally got this working to my liking. I personally do not enjoy the Gmail iOS app and would much prefer the stock Mail app, especially now that iOS 7 has launched. I did some reading and couldn't find a straightforward answer to see if there was any hope to bringing back push Gmail now that Google has killed off Exchange support. So, using a roundabout approach with some of Outlook.com's newest features, I was able to get a setup working very much to my liking.
You'll need:
Here we go:
So there's your strange way of making a Google service work on an Apple product using a Microsoft service. (Though to be fair emulating exchange support, the old solution, was not really any different). The shortcomings are that you can't change the send from address within the mail app, it uses whichever you set on Outlook.com. But its a good way to get push email without having to use the Gmail app!
If anyone has any ideas on how to improve upon this, let me know. Or if anything is particularly unclear I'll be happy to fix it.
UPDATE: This should work just fine with iCloud too, but iCloud doesn't have the send-as feature/simplicity that outlook.com has. You'll have to manually configure your smtp settings to use gmail's servers instead, but it should work.
You'll need:
- Gmail account
- Outlook.com account
- 10 minutes max
Here we go:
- Optional Step 0
From within your Outlook.com account, and merge your gmail account with both send and receive. This will sync all your backlogged email from the gmail account into Outlook.com. If you don't care about your backlogged Gmail contents, skip this. You will still need an outlook.com account though.
http://imgur.com/MyAEuW0
- Step 1
Within Gmail, go to your settings, then Forwarding POP/IMAP, then select the first option and forward your Gmail to your new alias. By doing it this way instead of having outlook.com treat the account as send and receive (which is just a standard POP access that checks at intervals, not push), the emails are forwarded as they are received with only a few seconds of delay compared to push email. Go through all the confirmation steps. Gmail will also mark forwarded emails as 'read' if you desire. Because of the way Gmail handles forwarding, your emails will still report as being sent to the gmail, and be from the original sender, not sent to your outlook and from your gmail, like you'd expect with a normal email forward.
http://imgur.com/4rEs1tn
- Step 2
Within outlook, go to Options > Rules for Sorting New Messages
Add a new rule for sorting that says:
To or CC line | Contains | YourGmail@gmail.com > Destination
It should look something like this:
http://imgur.com/pKiF1Bf
This step is only necessary if you want to sort your incoming gmail into another folder besides inbox. I prefer this because I have multiple gmail accounts this single outlook.com account will be handling.
- Step 3
- Step 4
Setup your Outlook.com account on your iOS device
http://imgur.com/SH4Xlgt
Make sure to enable push notifications for the newly created folders (Inbox is the only one enabled by default). Your final result should look something like this.
http://imgur.com/Y0zFxxt
So there's your strange way of making a Google service work on an Apple product using a Microsoft service. (Though to be fair emulating exchange support, the old solution, was not really any different). The shortcomings are that you can't change the send from address within the mail app, it uses whichever you set on Outlook.com. But its a good way to get push email without having to use the Gmail app!
If anyone has any ideas on how to improve upon this, let me know. Or if anything is particularly unclear I'll be happy to fix it.
UPDATE: This should work just fine with iCloud too, but iCloud doesn't have the send-as feature/simplicity that outlook.com has. You'll have to manually configure your smtp settings to use gmail's servers instead, but it should work.
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