Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP • Hacker News Board

Re: Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP

#361

Post by latexr » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 9:15 AM UTC

hluska wrote: post #336

latexr wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The page you linked to lists both ’ and ', in that order . There’s no point in being (wrongly) pedantic about either, both have strengths and weaknesses (explained in the Wikipedia pages). The point is that if someone cares to use proper typographic characters not immediately visible in the keyboard (which the person I replied to seems to), they probably care to use the right ones. Both ’ and ' are correct, but ‘ is…

It’s interesting that you say there’s no point in being pedantic but this entire boring subthread started because you were pedantic about punctuation. A character really doesn’t matter.

Please don’t engage in bad faith. My post was very clear about its goal. It’s one thing to wrongly “correct” someone (as the poster above me did) and quite another to notice that someone is taking the care to do something but is making a mistake, and politely point them in the right direction.

Just because you don’t care about something doesn’t make it worthless or boring. If I didn’t think the OP cared I wouldn’t have pointed it out. Above all my point was constructive and took the other person’s interests into account, it was not a pedantic critique.

If you find the matter boring, I encourage you to move along. Prolonging it seems counterproductive.

Re: Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP

#362

Post by paffdragon » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 12:16 PM UTC

mijoharas wrote: post #345

paffdragon wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one machine I have offlineimap.py[1] (with mutt), on the other laptop Evolution[2] that archives my mail locally that I can also export and back up regularly. [1]: https://www.offlineimap.org/ [2]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evolution/-/wikis/home

Ok, interesting. I checked the docs of offlineimap (thanks, I hadn't found that one when googling!) and it looks like I could use the `maxage` option for the incremental option (I think I want to create a folder for each week, back it up , and delete it after a while). Do you have anything set up with evolution to handle things automatically?

Sorry, my laptop where I had evolution got a new OS installed and I haven't configured it yet and just started mutt, but my original setup had a local archive folder, with sub-folders per year (I think, I even had a higher level grouping of 5 or 10 years). Unfortunately, I don't have setup right now to check, but I think it was semi-manual, like Evolution was archiving to a local folder automatically, then every new year I just moved the mails from the previous year into a folder).

Re offlineimap, just looked into isync/mbsync suggested here by others, it seems better from the description, I'm probably going to try it when I have some time: https://people.kernel.org/mcgrof/replacing-offlineimap-with-...

Re: Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP

#363

Post by paffdragon » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 12:28 PM UTC

Vinnl wrote: post #240

paffdragon wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have an old Gmail account that I don't use directly anymore. Instead of POP, I set it up to forward everything to my mailbox.org account. It works for me this way for several years now. The only issue is that I don't get the spam forwarded, so you can't see if there are false positives. You can still see it in Gmail if you occasionally log in. For me, since this is a rarely used account, the spam I get is usua…

Cool thanks, I might set that up as well. And did you just set it up as an alias so you can send email from it as well? (I don't actually know how often I send email from that address, so maybe I don't even need that, but just in case.)

For sending in Mailbox.org webmail there is a thing called alternative senders where I can add email addresses to send from. I have something similar on my Android K9 app, where it's under Manage identities where I can also add the allowed senders.

I set it up a long time ago this way and I'm unsure of I had to somehow configure Gmail to be able to send from my other account. But I have the same also for @live.com and @zoho.com as I was trying different providers. This allows me to easily reply to forwarded emails with the old email addresses.

Edit: I think you got with the alias, didn't know this is what is called in Google https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22370?hl=en#zippy=%2C...

Re: Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP

#364

Post by carlosjobim » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 1:06 PM UTC

mijoharas wrote: post #356

carlosjobim wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E-Mails don't take up that much space for it to be any issue to me. Every five years or so I clean out some of the old ones and leave them only in backups.

I don't use a local mail client. Is there one you'd recommend?

The stock Mac Mail app has been excellent for me. For Windows, I remember that Postbox ( https://www.postbox-inc.com/download ) worked very well.

eM Client might also be worth a look: https://www.emclient.com

Re: Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP

#365

Post by mempko » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 3:38 PM UTC

ndiddy wrote: post #245

paride5745 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that Google is harming paying customers, and as a paying customer Proton respects me more and it is based in Europe, which is a big plus for me.

> Looks like Google wants to force people to use the WebUI instead of email clients (no google ads on IMAP/POP). I think that’s a valid criticism, but Protonmail also doesn’t allow people to use a standard email client. I agree with the parent commenter that it’s strange that you’re suggesting it as an alternative, especially when there’s services like Fastmail and Purelymail that both have accessible human support a…

Proton has an official bridge software which sets up a local imap/smtp server. I then can use a 3rd party email client. The reason they don't support it directly from their servers is it allows them to not have to decrypt emails in their servers. Only the client can decrypt emails as everything in proton is encrypted so that proton cannot see your emails

Re: Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP

#366

Post by mempko » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 3:38 PM UTC

kelvinjps10 wrote: post #225

paride5745 wrote: post #220

I already started to move most of my communications to ProtonMail. Looks like Google wants to force people to use the WebUI instead of email clients (no google ads on IMAP/POP). What's annoying is that they are impacting paying customers as well, which is quite bad.

But Proton doesn't offer good third-party access either; actually, Gmail is better

Yes it does, they have an official software called the bridge which allows you to connect a 3rd party email client.

Re: Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP

#367

Post by tracker1 » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 4:31 PM UTC

I've been experimenting with a few different email options, still relying heavily on my gmail account... but I can say, I'd look into a dedicated host running mailu which is pretty much a docker compose file and configuration that lets you spin up a mail server really quickly and relatively easily. You have to configure a bunch of DNS records accordingly but it tends to work well enough. I've had delivery issues with outlook.com email, but not hotmail or office465, and delivery to gmail has also worked without issue.

I need to get off my ass and just create an inbox on my mail server to use instead of the blind/wildcard mail forwarding I currently have. It was a useful feature before google domains set off, and I setup my domains on cloudflare for it, bit really should just self-host it all with a good hourly backup/rsync out.

Re: Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP

#368

Post by tracker1 » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 4:49 PM UTC

mikaraento wrote: post #123

cracki wrote: post #80

There are two "Gmail" things here: the actual service with a web site (mail.google.com), and an android app on your phone that is called "Gmail". They are axing the "pull" path of the actual service. That path only supported POP for pulling those mails. There never was an IMAP pull path. They are telling you to read your mails of the "other" account by configuring your Gmail app to access it via IMAP. That obviously…

Heads-up to people trying this: Gmail will often put forwarded email into spam. Be careful especially in the beginning to check your spam folder. They may also reject the mail as spam, esp if your volume is large. IIUC it’s hard to make forwarding to play nicely with DKIM and spf. There’s some disagreement on how to handle it. (I’m being purposefully vague as I did interact with folks handling this on the google side…

free email forwarding was one of the most useful features of Google Domains before selling... since the selloff, I've configured the domains to use Cloudflare which offers the same feature relatively transparently. I haven't seen too many issues with non-spam going into my spam, even relayed mail.

Aside: I do have a dedicated ip/vm for mailu setup, and will likely switch to using a vanity email as my catch-all instead of gmail soon enough. It's kind of sad how generally bad email has become at this point. Will also likely start playing with a few different self-hosted webmail clients, I'd considered and played with Nextcloud, just not sure how much I care for it or not.

Re: Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP

#369

Post by tracker1 » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 4:55 PM UTC

chrisfinazzo wrote: post #296

Why are people surprised by this? (No, really) IMAP "defeated" POP long ago if you wanted to use a third-party client but still access mail from anywhere. By definition, this doesn't work in a POP environment, but that's increasingly an outdated mindset. For historical reasons (intertia, and being early enough that I was able to acquire a "firstname.lastname" address), I don't plan to leave Gmail unless things really…

This is about importing email from your non-gmail account INTO your gmail account. POP is simply the easiest way to do this, and just from GMail's own IMAP interface, it's pretty clear that IMAP is NOT reliable for this task...

The details in TFA are that you can add an external IMAP account to the gmail client app in Android. This does nothing for the gmail web ui, meaning you need something else for your external email.

Wouldn't mind exploring something akin to a web-based, self-hosted Thunderbird mail client giving a server hosted web UI for multiple email and nntp services. If if synced to desktop/mobile apps and/or had a decent mobile web UX, that would be gravy.

Re: Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP

#370

Post by tracker1 » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 4:58 PM UTC

xdanger wrote: post #165

Oh no, I have to go and setup my family's emails again. We have a domain and I used to forward to some gmail accounts (few don't want to use multiple email programs/accounts), but so much mail got lost (not even in spam folder) that I just had to switch everyone to pop3 fetch to gmail.com. Now at least email get's there, even if it's 30-60mins late (really annoying for logins/verifications/etc.). Maybe it's time to s…

I've been using mail forwarding with my cloudflare domains without issue in gmail since google domains sold... you may want to consider that, delivery has been very good. As another alternative, if you self-host an MTA, you can relay through SendGrid, which also has had really good outbound deliverability, I've used this for a hobby site/app that has a built in MTA.