A lot of people complain that their Gmail box doesn’t stay in sync across their devices, and the reason behind this is that Apple Mail, unlike the iPhone, uses POP3 by default instead of IMAP. It is very easy to get fooled, as Mail automatically configures your account for you, without entering any settings other than your username and password. So how do we get it to IMAP syncing then?
First things first, enable IMAP in your Gmail preferences. To do that, open Gmail in your browser, navigate to Settings » Forwarding and POP » Enable IMAP.
Once you are done there, open Apple Mail, and get to the Preferences. In the Accounts tab, click the + button at the bottom to add a new account.
In the following screen, add your email and password, but uncheck Automatically set up account.
In the Incoming Mail Server screen that follows, change the Account Type to IMAP, and the incoming mail server to imap.gmail.com. Enter your full Gmail address and password. Click Next.
In the Outgoing Mail Server screen, enter smtp.gmail.com in the outgoing mail server, and enter your full email ID into the username field.
Accept all the following screens and take your account online. Mail will then take a while to sync your emails. Now any changes your make in Mail will reflect online, on the iPhone and any other email client set up with IMAP. Once the sync is complete, go to your Preferences » Accounts and delete the POP account from there.
Additional Tip: You will notice that IMAP with Gmail adds a bunch of folders inside a [Gmail] folder in your sidebar. Inside this folder reside your Gmail folders like Sent Mail and Labels. Here’s an easy fix to put them in their respective places in the sidebar. Select the “Sent Mail” folder inside your [Gmail] folder, and from the menubar, select MailBox » Use This Mailbox For » Sent. You can’t set sync folders for your Labels or the All Mail folder, but this should help you get things better organised.
Any more tips you can share for Gmail Mail users, do let us know.
