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Gmail (on Mail App) Issues on Cellular

A

airjay75

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 1, 2014
207
168
Maybe someone else has had this problem and/or knows how to fix it. iPhone Xs paired with Apple Watch S4 (w/cellular). I have a Gmail account and I use Apple's Mail app to access it on both my iPhone and AW. If I access the Mail app while my AW is connected to my iPhone, no problems accessing/updating my Gmail account. If my AW is not connected to my iPhone and I'm accessing Gmail/Mail over my cellular connection, I get the following error message: Cannot Get Mail, No connection available to retrieve messages for Gmail, Make sure to activate this account in "Apple Watch App" on your iPhone. Once I reconnect to my iPhone, no issues.

Maybe it's a Gmail issue, but not sure how to fix it.
 
I have a similar issue. Sometimes Gmail doesn’t update on my Apple Watch when away from my phone. but sometimes it does. If I reboot my watch it usually shows the latest emails. any suggestions?
 
In the Watch app on your iPhone check Mail>Accounts and see if there are any warnings or errors. It might need you to (re)authenticate Gmail account there.

Its basically a security thing with Gmail. It needs every device/app you use to access it to authenticate and receive a security token it would then use for access instead of just password. If you get your Watch to do it successfully you should see it appear as 'iOS' device in Google account security settings vs your iPhone that appears as 'iPhone' there.

When your Watch is connected to iPhone it would use iPhone access and its token but when its standalone it needs its own access token to work.
 
doing a search and u should able to find a lot of user facing the same problem and only apple email is working without the phone.
But then we shouldn’t be thinking cellular watch can working the same as iphone?!
 
On the Watch app on my phone it shows my Gmail account with no errors Or warning messages.

When I got my watch a couple weeks ago I did have to “authenticate it “ for Gmail.

In my Google account security settings it only shows my phone and an iPad. It does not show an iOS device.

Is there anyway to remove the email account from the watch and or re-authenticate it.

When I click on the Gmail account in the watch app on my phone nothing happens.
 
Are you actually getting any Mail errors at all like in that old OP ? If not then maybe everything is fine and its just not fetching from your Gmail often enough due to connectivity or whatever. You can try changing to fetch more often in iPhone Mail settings tho I'm not sure if its gonna affect the Watch. I cant try it bc my data plan is deactivated right now but when it was active I recall Gmail working just fine.
 
Hi.
Currently no error messages just “checking for mail” indefinitely on my watch.

With my previous watch it would sometimes give me errors but not with the current watch.

Update. If I put my watch on airplane mode then try to check the email on my watch I do get an error message about not being able to check Gmail. So it seems that the watch has to be connected to the phone and in range the phone to be able to get the Gmail. Seems to someone to feed the purpose of being able to get me on my watch especially when I’m not around my phone.

Any other suggestions on what can be done to remedy this or is it purely a limitation of the operating system or an issue from Google and with security?
 
I can stream music or podcasts, get imessages and phone calls.


Note: i did find that if I reboot my watch it shows new emails that had arrived in my inbox. But then the same thing happens again if I try to get new mail it just says checking mail and doesn’t update. i don’t know what to make of that.
 
So if you reboot it while away/disconnected from iPhone and it gets new messages once that means there are no connectivity or auth issues coz clearly it can connect over cellular and get those messages. It is really weird that it cannot update again afterwards and I dunno what to make of that either. Is your iPhone still switched on and online when you are away from it with the Watch ? Apple does all these optimisations where it might for example try to fetch email on iPhone then if there are new messages push them to Watch so thats the reason I ask. Of course only Apple knows how its implemented exactly so if this is a dead end you might wanna try filing a feedback report describing this problem. Its a long shot but maybe you can get some information back wrt whether its a bug or a 'feature' in their current implementation.
 
Update: I think it is working now. Or at least it did today. I did 2 things that may have helped. (of course I don't know which one was the one that helped)
1. I changed my mail setting to Push. This was for the main mail setting above all my accounts. It still says fetch next to gmail but the only other option is manual.
2. I sent an email from my watch while not connected to my phone and it sent correctly even though I could not retrieve mail at that time.
 
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