Even in the past couple of months I’ve heard more than one person dismiss IMAP using arguments that reflect basic misunderstandings. IMAP - I’ve been extolling the virtues of IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) for well over a decade, and although this protocol has become much more popular during that time, it’s clear that a lot of people still don’t understand what it is and why it’s superior to POP (Post Office Protocol). Feel free to skip the background stuff and jump ahead to “How to Configure Everything for Maximum Happiness,” but even highly knowledgeable users may find this material enlightening. In order to provide context for the actual steps to take, I’m going to begin with detailed background information about IMAP generally and the somewhat nonstandard ways Mail and Gmail handle it. That warning aside, I’m going to – eventually – explain how I do what I do in what I hope is a clear, systematic way. So I don’t presume to say this system will work for everyone, or that it doesn’t have limitations. Email management is a matter of, among other things, habit and taste. In particular, if you expect Mail (or any IMAP client) to work just like Gmail’s Web interface in the way it handles archiving, some of what I describe here may disappoint you. If you’re accustomed to using or thinking about email in a much different way, your mileage may vary – and you may find my setup unworkable. I want to be clear about one thing right up front: my method works well for me because it matches the way I use, and think about, email. Which is to save myself from having to explain this information repeatedly in email messages! But I do hope you’ll find it interesting and helpful if you’ve ever struggled with the combination of IMAP, Gmail, and Mail. (That means it’s quite long, and somewhat opinionated – fair warning!) And, I admit it: I’ve written it for a largely selfish reason, So, what I thought would be a straightforward article has turned into a manifesto. The more I wrote, the more I realized how many aspects of the IMAP/Gmail/Mail universe are unclear or confusing, as evidenced by the many email messages I’ve received on those subjects, and as feedback to my books (“ Take Control of Apple Mail in Leopard” and “ Take Control of Spam with Apple Mail“) and my Macworld articles on the topic. Well, that’s what I intended to do, anyway. For those who have had less-than-satisfactory experiences with their email providers and software (especially Gmail and Apple Mail, respectively), I’d like to share how I achieved my personal state of email satisfaction. However, as I discovered through a considerable amount of trial and error, the recipe needed to combine all these ingredients into anĮdible dish was anything but obvious. The ingredients I now rely on – Google’s Gmail (via Google Apps Standard Edition, which lets me use my own domain name), IMAP, and Apple Mail – provide the sweet spot that best suits my needs. I won’t say it’s perfect, but it’s way better than it has been in the past – much better even than when I was running my own mail server on my own Xserve, a setup that I would have thought offered me the ultimate in flexibility and power. In fact, you’ll now get the best results in Mail if you leave most of Gmail’s settings at their defaults!įor information on even further changes to Mail and Gmail with the release of OS X 10.9.2, see “ Mail Improvements in OS X 10.9.2,” 25 February 2014.]įor the past few months, I’ve been unusually happy with my overall email situation. Be that as it may, the way Mail in Mavericks handles Gmail accounts is so much different from Mail in earlier versions of Mac OS X that, for all practical purposes, those 21 steps to “bliss” are now irrelevant. In later updates, Apple fixed a number of bugs so that people who had changed their Gmail settings in the way I suggested wouldn’t suffer (much). When Mavericks was first released, Mail had some appalling bugs that made Gmail almost completely unusable for anyone who had followed (which, remember, were previously the way to prevent misbehavior). If you’re running Mavericks, please do not follow these instructions! My latest advice for dealing with Gmail in Mail can be found in “ Take Control of Apple Mail.” Quoting from that book: [Note: With the release of OS X 10.9 Mavericks, this article is completely out of date. #1648: iPhone passcode thefts, Center Cam improves webcam eye contact, APFS Uncertainty Principle.#1649: More LastPass breach details and 1Password switch, macOS screen saver problem, tvOS 16.3.3 fixes Siri Remote bug.#1650: Cloud storage changes for Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive quirky printing problem.
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