Mojave 10.14.4 fails to Authenticate Gmail account

FWIW, as already noted by someone else- Spark works just fine. Outlook also works fine for accessing my Gmail accounts.

They really need to overhaul Mail and Internet Accounts. I love the integration of the native apps, but when they don't work with something as critical as Gmail- there is a big problem.

I had a number of Gmail accounts with this problem - although not all my Gmail accounts were affected. I got tired of waiting for a fix from Apple, so here's the workaround I used on all of them:

1) Quit out of the Mail app if it's running.

2) Completely remove (not just disable) the affected account(s) from System Preferences > Internet Accounts.

3) Log into https://accounts.google.com/signin/v2/identifier.

4) Click on Security, then click 2-Step Verification and make sure it's OFF (if you don't do this, the next step won't even be an option).

5) Set "less secure app access" ON.

6) Re-add the account(s) from System Preferences > Internet Accounts.

7) Launch the Mail app - the account(s) should sync.

The odd thing about this is the accounts that are currently working for me have "less secure app access" turned off, and the account that wasn't working had it turned on. I turned it off to match the working accounts, but to no avail.

It seems like different solutions are working for some people, but not everyone.

I don't have 2-factor turned on. I just tried your steps for the account and still have the same issue.

The three Gmail accounts that I have that are working don't have "less secure app access" turned on.

Oddly- the account that isn't working on my Mac is still working on my iPhone and iPad (so at least I got lucky there).

@Neowolfwitch Yeah, the accounts that were not working on the Mac were still working on the iPhone (which I also updated to the latest iOS) - at least until I made the mistake of removing one of the affected accounts on my iPhone then tried, and failed, to re-add it. The latter issue didn't go away until I did the steps I outlined. Wish I had something else to offer. Maybe in the mean time switch to another Mac email app?

I am having the same issue since the upgrade to 10.14.4. One of my gmail accounts will not authenticate. My personal gmail account works, but the one for my website domain does not. My domain is through GoDaddy and we have the GOOGLE app to manage mail. I'm trapped in an endless loop on my IMac (brand new as well) but I can see and use this account on the iPad and iPhone!

Some issue here.

Moving away from two-steps verification and allowing less secure apps is not an option to me. I do not want to weaken security to apply a workaround. Any suggestions to get a feedback/fix from Apple?

This bug is one of the most annoying I ever met on OSX.

Thanks for sending this through. I tried this, but for some reason I didn't receive the macOS notification to authenticate the account. Probably because I had already removed the e-mail account and re-added it.

Hi Mirsky,

that's too bad, it worked flawlessly for me for so many accounts. For some of the accounts, Mail still showed the lightning bolt next to the mailbox name after the procedure, but when I clicked it, it just disappeared. Also, when I ran 'Connection Doctor' (under the 'Window' menu) the account showed up as green.

I am sorry that this didn't work for you, I was so hopeful that it would be more general rather than working just for me...

@AndreD please read all the other posts, it’s possible you only have regular gmail accounts, those accounts still work. This does not work for GSuite gmail accounts. I wish people would stop posting the same stuff without reading the 19+ pages posted ahead of you. It’s redundant and not useful.

As already said, this affects the G-Suite gmail accounts. What chaps my hide, is that my Mac Mail is integrated with GPGTools and there are no other good options. I guess I have to wait and do everything manually.

@lowfreakwency, I have a mix of gsuite and gmail accounts, and both types were affected. The workaround I outlined previously worked for me, but others have found success - and failure - using the same steps.

My guess is that this is related to old GSuite accounts. Somehow my iPad started asking for a password as well and now I can't get Gmail to work with it. I removed the account, re-added it, etc. but no success. I removed a different gmail account and re-added that without a problem.

My GSuite account is an old grandfathered in free account which doesn't have all the features of the current accounts.

I wonder what changed on both iOS and macOS that caused this.

I too have this problem. I have lots of gmail accounts but only one had both a personal account and an organizational account. That singular account had this same exact problem. I didn't know if that was the issue but after googling, I figured out to resolve the conflict. I removed this gmail conflict so I would log in immediately through a web browser (rather than the "There are two existing Google Accounts for blah@example.com" interstitial). I tried oauth-ing again on my mac but no dice. Fix this please!!!

Thanks for all the posted workout arounds. I tried every single one of them and nothing worked for my Gsuite gmail account. I took my iPhone back to the prior iOS version and it now works and I installed Spark on two MacBook Pro computers for email. I have wasted hours trying to get things to work and sadly Apple has not even acknowledge the issue after four days now so I don't have any confidence they will fix things anytime soon and I need to move on. I turned off auto update on my Mac computers and will never trust them again to install an update without waiting for a few days and searching if people are having issues.

What is odd is that Spark seems to be using the same type of Google authenticator and has no problems.