Q: Mail app won't save Gmail settings in OS X Mavericks

The correct way to use an Apple

Coat it with honey

Core out the centre and fill wil raisins

Put in microwave for 4 minutes

Eat with ice cream

Do nothing with Terminal !

There are some issues in the handling of gmail by Mail: a lot of articles in journals and papers and in the forum here and elsewhere.

I have no issue whatsoever with my gmail accounts, I have the same settings as in MountainLion/ Lion/ SnowLeopard.

So I can not help you.

This also has worked for me! I had the issue where my settings in Mail would revert to Save Draft On Server as checked every time I opened the app. Now for the last several times I have closed, restarted, re-opened it has worked. Thank you!

Crystalship

Thanks for a very clear and full description

Unfortunatly, It does not work for me, same problem, the box always reverts to being checked.

Welcome to the real world

Apple and Google are in a legitimate battle for supremacy, but that includes each making their web "Unique". Which means we loose.

Crystalchip explained perfectly. And it works.

You do something wrong:

The first series you do IN YOUR GMAIL ACCOUNT, via your browser.

The second series you do in your Mac.

This works as long as Gmail checkbox is ticked off from "Show in IMAP". As soon as this is switched on again, Apple restore the setting.

This is senseless as if I need to keep showing the draft folder to move items I need to save and pass through different computer while composing.

Unfortunately the fault is both from Apple and Google. The latter doesn't seem they have implemented an IMAP protocol that follow the standards, whereas Apple does refuse to follow users instruction reverting setting to what they believe it should be the best.

The reality is experienced and non experienced users that suffer the pain of two companies that are fighting against each other. This is blatantly stupid.

Apple took a year to release Maverick and nobody from the mail team spent a second looking through the Gmail suggested settings.

To be clear, I don't have anything against saving draft on the server, but because of this protocol discrepancy, when Apple Mail start saving draft they are not overwritten in the folder, but a delete command is sent for the previous draft. As a result of this, by looking at the Gmail message with the official Google app, loads of draft will appear too. There is a trick I found to remove them, but this is annoying as much as seeing all my messages have pending drafts.

Hope somebody of these two company decide to fix this issue in a way or another.     

Finally solved my problem for gmail/imap on macbook pro.  I don't use AOL to send but my AOL account is on my macbook/mac mail.  Thank you so much for the solution.  It was driving me crazy. 

Thanks for the great explaination!

It helped me alot

This solved my problem.  Thanks for finding the solution!

Great hack, good stuff.

This morning I spent an hour composing an email, so at ~2 autosaves per minute, I have about 130 drafts in the trash. It's ridiculous and should be a no-brainer to fix.

I can't help but feel that Apple doesn't truly care to support any email services that aren't iCloud. Seriously, who uses iCloud email?

Hi Brendon:

"Great hack, good stuff."

this is not a hack, just making sure that the settings are ok on both sides (server and user).

The setting has a negative though: when you have a brittle internet connection, after a short disconnect you have to redo the email(s) you were writing.

But since most people have a good sturdy internet connection, this is better.

Lex

It worked for me.  Thanks for posting a good clear solution.

This worked for me.  I was even allowed to go back and change back the label settings and the drafts are working as they should.

Apple needs to talk to google and end this email mess.  It is only driving users crazy.