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Gmail Push Notifcations and Alerts

S

SR71

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 12, 2011
1,606
373
Boston, MA
Okay, so I setup my Gmail to Push emails to my iPhone by following THIS guide. All was working well, except for one thing... I wasn't getting any notifications that I had unread mail. My phone would make a sound or vibrate, but notification alert's to tell me that I had received an email did not work. I then tried removing my Gmail account and then re-adding it and now push email doesn't work at all. My emails aren't getting pushed to me unless I go into the mail app and refresh them myself.

How can I fix this? Please help! Thanks in advance. :)
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Native email notifications don't popup with a message; just sound, vibrate and badges.

Thank you for your call...
 
Well, you had it right the first time. You must have messed something up the second time. Do it again and make sure you have push turned on.

Then, just get pop-up notifications, get the free app named 'Boxcar.' Sign into it using your g-mail account and then hide it in some folder. You don't need to open Boxcar, it just puts up a pop-up message when you get an e-mail.
 
Gmail has been iffy at best on the iPhone. I had nothing but issues with it the first month I switched back to the iPhone. And it's sad you have to install an app to get push notification for gmail.

It's not a coincidence that gmail works to perfection on the android OS, but has issues on the iOS. The main reason why I switched to Hotmail. It was a PITA to switch over to Hotmail, email, contacts and all, but well worth it in the end.

I still use gmail, it's just not my main email account. And Hotmail has worked to perfection since I made the change.
 
Gmail has been pefect for me on iOS ... And with os5 you get those notifications you're looking for. Set it up with exchange active sync which is native in ios and you get live push.. My iPhone always buzzes half a second before my nexus S when a new email arrives.

@theXfactor, what do you mean iffy at best??
 
profets said:
Gmail has been pefect for me on iOS ... And with os5 you get those notifications you're looking for. Set it up with exchange active sync which is native in ios and you get live push.. My iPhone always buzzes half a second before my nexus S when a new email arrives.

@theXfactor, what do you mean iffy at best??
Click to expand...

I switched back to the iPhone in March. I had been using gmail for over a year with android with no issues. After setting up gmail on the iPhone using exchange, emails were not being pushed to my device, I did not get instant push notification. Most often than not, email push notification was delayed 15-20 minutes.

The only way to get gmail email was to go directly into the iPhone email app. I did some searching over at the gmail support site, other sites and found this issue. It appears that there were quite a few users who experienced this problem. It didn't matter what you did as the end user (delete account, recreate the account, etc.), the issue persisted. Some users reported that the when they tried to logged in or were logged in the password was incorrect. Nobody was certain whether it was an iOS issue or a gmail problem.

I don't know how wide spread the problem is or was. What I do know is for that time period listed above, gmail wasn't working for me. I signed up for hotmail during this time, since hotmail now supports exchange. About a week after that, gmail started working again.

So the basic problem was that there was no push. Emails sent to gmail weren't coming thru unless you did a manual refresh. That link in the first post about how to setup gmail on your iOS device seemed to be the only answer, but most everyone had it setup like that to begin with.


Many people had no issues at all or didn't know they did or didn't setup gmail thru exchange or had gmail setup thru the stock email app using IMAP. Who the hell knows.

I could list links to google that show the problem, but it's pointless. It';s working again for me. But when I see posts like this, it doesn't surprise me.
 
Last edited:
profets said:
Gmail has been pefect for me on iOS ... And with os5 you get those notifications you're looking for. Set it up with exchange active sync which is native in ios and you get live push.. My iPhone always buzzes half a second before my nexus S when a new email arrives.

@theXfactor, what do you mean iffy at best??
Click to expand...
I'm using gmail through exchange (so are a bunch of my coworkers and friends) on iOS and it works perfectly for me. Often times I'm notified of new email more quickly on the iphone than on my desktop notifier. This has been true (for us at least) for well over a year now. This doesn't mean that it works or will work for everyone (though it really should), but it does work for me. It's relatively easy to setup and seems to work without interruption.
 
TheXFactor said:
I switched back to the iPhone in March. I had been using gmail for over a year with android with no issues. After setting up gmail on the iPhone using exchange, emails were not being pushed to my device, I did not get instant push notification. Most often than not, email push notification was delayed 15-20 minutes.

The only way to get gmail email was to go directly into the iPhone email app. I did some searching over at the gmail support site, other sites and found this issue. It appears that there were quite a few users who experienced this problem. It didn't matter what you did as the end user (delete account, recreate the account, etc.), the issue persisted. Some users reported that the when they tried to logged in or were logged in the password was incorrect. Nobody was certain whether it was an iOS issue or a gmail problem.

I don't know how wide spread the problem is or was. What I do know is for that time period listed above, gmail wasn't working for me. I signed up for hotmail during this time, since hotmail not supports exchange. About a week after that, gmail started working again.

So the basic problem was that there was no push. Emails sent to gmail weren't coming thru unless you did a manual refresh. That link in the first post about how to setup gmail on your iOS device seemed to be the only answer, but most everyone had it setup like that to begin with.


Many people had no issues at all or didn't know they did or didn't setup gmail thru exchange or had gmail setup thru the stock email app using IMAP. Who the hell knows.

I could list links to google that show the problem, but it's pointless. It';s working again for me. But when I see posts like this, it doesn't surprise me.
Click to expand...

I have this issue too, hotmail works fine tho.
 
^^Thats brutal if it randomly doesn't work for some people. Happy I've never had to experience that.

Gmail will obviously be nicer to use on Android as its an actual Gmail client on that OS. But for months when I have an iOS device and Android device side by side on my desk and I always hear the iOS device beep half a second before the Android one, like clockwork.
 
Why doesn't the regular Gmail account push Gmail? Why do you have to set it up to pick "exchange" instead when setting up email?
 
kleinias said:
I'm using gmail through exchange (so are a bunch of my coworkers and friends) on iOS and it works perfectly for me. Often times I'm notified of new email more quickly on the iphone than on my desktop notifier. This has been true (for us at least) for well over a year now. This doesn't mean that it works or will work for everyone (though it really should), but it does work for me. It's relatively easy to setup and seems to work without interruption.
Click to expand...

Agree 100% regarding your statement.
 
onthecouchagain said:
Why doesn't the regular Gmail account push Gmail? Why do you have to set it up to pick "exchange" instead when setting up email?
Click to expand...

The pre-configured Gmail option in iOS uses the IMAP protocol - Gmail does work with push over IMAP, but Apple has not enabled the necessary function for push over IMAP (I think its called IMAP_IDLE).
 
profets said:
The pre-configured Gmail option in iOS uses the IMAP protocol - Gmail does work with push over IMAP, but Apple has not enabled the necessary function for push over IMAP (I think its called IMAP_IDLE).
Click to expand...

I see. Thanks for the explanation. Interesting.
 
profets said:
The pre-configured Gmail option in iOS uses the IMAP protocol - Gmail does work with push over IMAP, but Apple has not enabled the necessary function for push over IMAP (I think its called IMAP_IDLE).
Click to expand...

That's a real pain. It's strange though that MobileMe uses IMAP on the iPhone and that pushes.
 
Well here's the kicker. All of a sudden, out of the blue, gmail starting working just fine, a few months back. I don't know the reason. I don't think anyone does except google.
 
Another question: If I wanted to use Gmail through Exchange, would I have to undo or sign out of the native preinstalled Gmail app? If I don't, will I get two notifications for one email?

I'm going to switch to Exchange so I can get push.
 
TheXFactor said:
Well here's the kicker. All of a sudden, out of the blue, gmail starting working just fine, a few months back. I don't know the reason. I don't think anyone does except google.
Click to expand...

Geez, that's weird. Must be something that google was doing then..

onthecouchagain said:
Another question: If I wanted to use Gmail through Exchange, would I have to undo or sign out of the native preinstalled Gmail app? If I don't, will I get two notifications for one email?

I'm going to switch to Exchange so I can get push.
Click to expand...

Yeah, you'd get two notifications for one email since it is setup as two accounts. Give it a try though, doesn't hurt to see how it works when setup as exchange.
 
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