Google Mail + Mail.app + IMAP not playing nicely since 10.5.6

Yes

I feel your pain. I have been posting about IMAP and Mac Mail issues for months now without much success, even before 10.5.6. I have invested in some plugins for Mail so I am reluctant to go to Thunderbird.

My primary issue is that email coming into the IMAP folders at the bottom of the Mailbox list is not reflected in the 'Inbox' at the top of the Mailboxes list.

Like you email will show up there after it has been 'read' another way, either through the gmail interface, or by iphone.

I find this issue with not only Gmail IMAP, but with 3 other email accounts using IMAP. Those other 3 are each from a different hosting provider. So, to me, the issue is not IMAP implementation on the servers, it is clearly Apple Mail implementation on handling IMAP.

With as many people using iPhones and Mail you would think that flawless IMAP implementation would be a priority. Alas, that does not seem to be the case.

Any tips or tricks you have tried and are willing so share would be great. Perhaps we can work together to troubleshoot.

Happy New Year!

I am having no problems at all. Not a thing has changed for me since I upgraded.

Gmail's IMAP implementation is HIGHLY nonstandard. I'm not surprised at issues between Mail and GMail. Seriously, there are tons of IMAP standards that Gmail doesn't support (you can't modify any folders from within Mail.app itself, as Gmail's folders on the server aren't in fact real folders, for one).

As far as other IMAP servers, I have been using Mail with a work IMAP account and with MobileMe for 6 years with few issues (I'd like to be able to subscribe/unsubscribe to folders, but that's a feature request, not an interop bug). However, both the IMAP servers I use are the same -- they are Sun's iPlanet (or whatever they call it these days). With a large number of IMAP servers, and many versions of each, there are definitely specific configurations where there are issues. Whether the issues are Apple's, or the IMAP server vendor's, I can't say. But it's not really true that Mail.app is just flat plain broken with IMAP. It has worked very well and very consistently for me for years.

Perhaps its just my install then? Problem is I have read about other users having very similar issues to my experience so I know I am not totally alone.

I have had multiple threads on the IMAP/Mail issue. Here is one of them:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1725685&tstart=0

I would just like the application to perform as it should and its not.

If you have any suggestions for troubleshooting ideas, I'm listening.

I am having the same problem. If any mail message is marked as read on either an iphone or on the gmail website, Apple Mail will not pick up the change and will not mark the message as read. However, if I quit Mail and relaunch it the message will be marked as read. I'm not sure if this is an apple or google issue. I'm thinking it is an Apple issue tho. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

This may seem like a silly question, but should those of us using any IMAP protocol be using the 'Inbox' at the top of 'mailboxes' listing, or should we be using the IMAP mailbox that shows up at the bottom of the listing of mailboxes/reminders/on my mac?

It is my understanding that the top 'Inbox' is where we should conduct email business, but those never reflect what is in the IMAP mailboxes at the bottom.

I know with gmail this is always the case.

Message was edited by: Berchman

It's not just GMail, either. For some reason, as of the last three days, Mail on my iMac and Mail on my iPhone just don't seem to be talking to each other. I'm using Mac Mail with a mac.com address.

If I read mail on the iMac, it doesn't show read on the phone and vice-versa.
If I delete it on the phone, it doesn't show deleted on the iMac.

Once I've deleted them by hand on both devices, my trash folder shows TWO copies of each deleted message.

Syncing manually doesn't solve the issue, nor does rebooting both devices. Everything worked fine until 2009.

I have to repeat: on 10.5.6, I am not having this problem; I have never had this problem.

To go over my settings:

- I have mail set to check for new mail every 5 minutes

- gmail imap account in mail.app is set to store drafts on server, not to store notes, not to store sent items (as recommended by Google), not to store junk on server, to move trash to the trash mailbox (though I rarely delete messages in mail.app), and not to store deleted messages on server (they are actually archived to "All Mail" anyway when you do this.) On the third page, I do have IDLE support turned on, though I think that Gmail does not support it anyway.

- In my Gmail IMAP settings, I have auto-expunge turned on (I see these settings because I have turned on advanced IMAP controls in the "Labs" section.) Because of the "advanced" settings, I am able to go into "Labels" and choose which labels show up in the IMAP section of my account in Mail.app. (And, no, I never manage e-mail there - I always read, etc. in the mali folders in my In Box at the top.)

i was about to make a new post but let me put it here...

i have configured gmail imap on my new macbook running leopard 10.5.6. when i go to activity manager mail is shown downloading messages from gmail server however the mail activity pane in the lower left corner shows no activity. any insight?

David Day wrote:
Please try doing this:
Open Apple Mail.app
Open a Gmail browser window and send yourself an email from this browser window.
Watch as Mail.app almost instantly indicates a new email dock badge.
Now from the open Gmail browser window READ the new email (do not delete)
Apple Mail.app will NOT show it as read until you quit Mail.app and restart.

Now try this...

Open Apple Mail.app
Open a Gmail browser window and send yourself an email from this browser window.
Watch as Mail.app almost instantly indicates a new email dock badge.
Now from the open Gmail browser window DELETE the new email.
Watch as Apple Mail.app almost instantly deletes the email (as you would expect)

Would love to hear other peoples findings with this.

Well, what do you know?

I am pretty sure that Gmail has a slightly nonstandard IMAP implementation; one other IMAP account passes both of your tests. I will say that it always worked before, and I am fairly sure that it was fine after I installed the 10.5.6 update.

Well, basically this does work, so long as you wait long enough. I did not exactly time it, but it was within, say, fifteen minutes. I mark a message read in Gmail's web interface, it does not register the status change in Mail.app right away (though deletions, as you noted, seem to work right away.) However, when I went back to Mail after I had been surfing for a while, it was marked read.

Doing a manual "get new mail" right away does not change the status; right-clicking the gmail inbox and choosing "synchronize" also does not.

One more thing that was different: I had closed the gmail tab in Safari (I did not log out, however). I do not know if that was the thing that made the difference. I'll keep playing around an see what I find.