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Gmail keeps going offline in Apple Mail

Since upgrading to Mojave 10.14.4, Gmail continuously goes offline in Apple Mail. Only solution so far is to close Mail and restart. After restarting, Gmail appears to be working normally. Has something changed in the way Mail works with Gmail or has Google changed something?



MacBook Pro Retina

Posted on Apr 9, 2019 12:30 PM

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Question marked as Best answer

Did you look in the hidden ~Library folder? That com.apple.mail-shared file is in the Library that pops up when you press the Option key while looking in the "Go" menu of Finder.app.


UPDATE: Most of the day the fix worked for me. I did catch it once after it was hidden for a few hours, where all 6 of my gmail accounts were offline. So, the 4 step approach is an improvement but still needs some work for me.

Posted on May 2, 2019 6:01 PM

52 replies
Question marked as Helpful

May 1, 2019 1:12 PM in response to dillonfromCStat

POSSIBLE FIX!

So today I got really annoyed by this, again... So I called Apple support and I think they might of helped to me get rid of this.


Here's what I did:

1 Remove all Gmail accounts from Mail

2 Add a new network location and then renew the DHCP lease

3 Delete "com.apple.mail-shared" in Library/Preferences/

4 Restart and add my Gmail accounts


I can't really tell which of these is the actual fix, but I'm now 7h later and did not experienced this at all. Fingers crossed!


May 2, 2019 6:45 AM in response to d18ge

I have been experiencing the same issue as d18ge for the past month or more and just grunting and bearing it. I have 6 gmail accounts plus my icloud email account in Mac OSX Mail. I can click on the offline indicator and fire them all back up each time I unhide the app, but it is annoying (as someone posted earlier). I'm running OSX 10.14.4 on a Macbook Air 13" Mid 2012. Great patience being demonstrated in this thread. I am about to try alxxhrvth's possible fix since I have half a gallon of coffee and a couple of hours free to play two-step with Google.

May 2, 2019 8:44 AM in response to alxxhrvth

POSSIBLE FIX - UPDATE.

Thank you very much for posting your discussion and possible solution. Here is my update after trying it out. Looking through the list of steps I was puzzling over item #2. I wasn't quite sure about adding a new network location. I finally realized you meant creating a new Location entry under the Network item in System Preferences. I had never really utilized this function in the past and had my Location defaulting to Automatic. I added a new entry and after turning off Wi-Fi and then turning it back on to force it to hit my router for an IP address, Gmail appears to be keeping the connection to the SMTP server. The interesting thing is I was going to go through all the steps listed but, so far, just adding a the new Network entry seems to have worked. This may be because I was using the Automatic. I will continue to see if this is the case but so far has been about 15 hours. One other item of note, I did see the connection icons flash briefly for my Gmail account but they just as quickly turned off.


I will keep monitoring this and post any updates.


Thanks alxxhvrth


May 2, 2019 9:05 AM in response to d18ge

I finished playing two-step about an hour ago. I followed alxxhrvth's 4 step program and am seeing good results so far. I reinitialized about 6 gmail acounts back into Mail.app when I got to step 4. I have only seen the offline indicator on 1 of those accounts so far and am seeing that as an outlier to our current problem. When I was deleting the accounts in step 1, I noticed that the check boxes for mail, accounts etc. were not all in the same configuration. I had them adjusted mostly to be just 'Mail' having a check mark. I had messed with those checkboxes at some point after the initial setup of the accounts some years ago. I am suspecting the preference file as the culprit (Step 3). I'll update how many more offline symbols I may or may not see over this day and this night.


Before hitting Post, I did a quick check on the mailbox and everything is online.

May 2, 2019 5:53 PM in response to d18ge

POSSIBLE FIX - UPDATE #2

Well, I thought this was going to work after creating a new network location (step #2) but this afternoon the dreaded dropped connection reappeared. Started to go through the entire four steps but could not located any file named com.apple.mail-shared. Has anyone else trying the four step fix run into this problem? I did delete my Gmail account, create a new location, restart and recreate the Gmail account. Now waiting to see if this solves anything.

Question marked as Best answer

May 2, 2019 6:01 PM in response to d18ge

Did you look in the hidden ~Library folder? That com.apple.mail-shared file is in the Library that pops up when you press the Option key while looking in the "Go" menu of Finder.app.


UPDATE: Most of the day the fix worked for me. I did catch it once after it was hidden for a few hours, where all 6 of my gmail accounts were offline. So, the 4 step approach is an improvement but still needs some work for me.

Question marked as Helpful

May 4, 2019 1:44 PM in response to d18ge

Sure no problem d18ge.


FINAL UPDATE: After doing alxxhrvth's 4 steps a couple of days ago (as I posted about a few replies ago), I still ended up getting the offline indicator for 5 of the 6 gmail accounts that I re-added to Mac Mail. It would happen after Mail.app was hidden for approximately 2 or more hours. So, why not the 6th gmail account? That question I had gave me an idea. Well, if you go to the menu bar in Mail-->Accounts you can adjust 4 checkboxes for each gmail account. They are Mail, Contacts, Calendars and Notes (M, Co, Ca, N). When you setup a gmail account it defaults with all 4 checked. That is probably why alxxhrvth's 4 step program works for the majority. Because it makes us setup an account back to default. But, some of us uncheck the boxes right away. When I was doing alxxhrvth's 4th step the other day, I had left one of the 6 gmail accounts, let's name it Eureka@gmail.com, with the dafault 4 boxes checked. On the other 5, I had unchecked the Co, Ca, N so that only Mail was checked. Yesterday, I checked my inbox and Eureka@gmail didn't have an offline indicator and the other 5 did. So, I messed with the 4 checkboxes on 4 of the 5 troubled gmail accounts. I did different combinations of checkboxes and then I let it run for the last 24 hours. Today, when I went to my inbox after it hiding for more than a couple of hours, they were all online except the one that I left with only mail checked. It didn't seem to matter if I checked M and N, or M and Ca, or M, N, and Ca. Just as long as M (obviously) and one of the other 4 boxes is checked.


CONCLUSION: Make sure that another of the four boxes besides Mail is checked in Mail-->Accounts-->youremail@gmail.com

May 4, 2019 5:35 PM in response to mojotreetop

Well done! When I set up my new MacBook I unchecked all the boxes except Mail because I noticed checking Calendar put a LOT of extra "empty" calendars on view when I use the Calendar app. I just checked ONLY the "contacts" box for all my accounts and when I opened Mail, all the little "offline" symbols one by one disappeared! YAY!


I'm glad we (really Y'all) figured this out, but I can't help thinking this is still something Apple should fix.

Gmail keeps going offline in Apple Mail

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