I'm having a frustrating problem with my email, and I'm not sure if it's Mail.app or Gmail. Basically, I have to Force Quit Mail.app quite frequently because it won't download any new messages from my Gmail account. I have everything set up properly (I think) because it works well after restarting Mail.app, but after a while, it won't register any new emails. What can I do to fix this?
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Mail.app and Gmail IMAP
- Thread starter sebascrub
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I have the same problem. It doesn't download in a timely fashion. At first I thought it was Gmail, but then I setup my account using thunderbird and I don't have the same problem. I'm using mail 3.2 in 10.5.2. I've looked all over the web and haven't found too many people with the same problem. At this point I'm sure it's Mail and I have filed a bug report with Apple.
it sounds like you haven't set it up right, i have the exact same setup, mac mail with gmail imap. never had this problem
Perhaps, but even Google is recognizing the problem. I have my mail setup with Thunderbird and no problems at all, so I'll stick with that until I see a fix.
Apparently from what Google has said, some accounts are experiencing delays. Perhaps it's because I have a lot of labels and filters and several accounts rolled into one. But these delays are only being seen with certain mail clients and one of those is Apple's Mail.
No, there's lots of documented problems with Mail.app and Gmail.
This same force-quit problem happens to my wife, but never happens to me (I setup all the accounts, they're all configured properly). However, my problem is that Mail.app never updates the "read" flag after it downloads the message once. It acts like it's setup as POP, not IMAP. It will only update the "read" status if I quit and re-open Mail; then all the messages will be marked correctly. I posted about this problem several months ago both here and on Apple's support forums (where I found other people experiencing the same issue) but there has been no resolution yet.
There's just lots of bugs with Mail.app/GMail IMAP, and the best we can hope for is that Apple gets it together and actually fixes some of them. However, after two full point updates to Leopard and still no fix, I'm not holding my breath.
You could try Thunderbird like I have. It works well with IMAP and you can have multiple identities. I setup Thunderbird to have all the folders which have label and rules as favorites and it's very streamlined. I also have Plaxo installed in address book and Thunderbird and it keeps all my contacts in sync. It's been a hassle, but now I have a nicely working IMAP client on my computer. I'd prefer to use mail nonetheless.