IMAP timing out in Apple Mail in Big Sur

Hi,

I have been experiencing the same issue on my 2019 iMac.

O/S: Big Sur (11.0.1)

Anti-virus: Avast Security 14.6

Network monitor: Radio Silence 3.0 (Beta)

I have done some research and found the following page (Avast forums) which provides detailed explanations:

https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=239798.0

Running the command in Terminal (as instructed) did return both Radio Silence and Avast Antivirus as a source of issues.

Avast has reported the issue to Apple and I do hope they will address it in the upcoming 11.1 release. Avast is also working on some fix in the upcoming 14.7 release.

Meanwhile I have followed Avast's recommendation and disabled their Web Shield for now. Mail is back to normal while Radio Silence (currently in a beta release that is compatible with Big Sur) is running fine.

(@sketchywizard : You may want to restart your computer to test whether Avast + Little Snitch operate normally once Web Shield is disabled, that is exactly what I did and it did fix the issue. Maybe worth a try.)

Hope this helps.

Hi all, I'm getting this problem and not running little snitch or Avast (or any other anti virus).

The connection to IMAP servers (for hotmail.com and iCloud accounts) times out for me but oddly, its fine when my wife is logged in as using her log in and connects to her hotmail.co.uk account???

email working fine on iPhones, iPads etc.

any suggestions please?

(MBP 2016 running Big Sur 11.0.1)

quick update - I run Microsoft outlook on my Mac (for work email account) but thought I'd try adding the hotmail account to that and it added and connected first time.

Would much rather have the hotmail account back onto apple mail (to keep separate from work!) and to get the iCloud emails connecting again in apple mail too! any help would be appreciated!

cheers

Same problem here a couple of weeks later on Big Sur 11.0.1. Eternal beachball on sending gmail on both Mail and Mimestream. No problems sending via the Gmail web interface. Disabling Bitdefender protection seems to have caused this problem to go away, but that's not ideal.

I finally got my resolved yesterday with an Applecare advisor. Basically we went in, deleted the SMTP out server and then added it back in making sure that SSL was checked and that it was NOT "automatically managed". You'll need to know what port numbers to use for Hotmail. For GoDaddy the combo that worked for OUTGOING was:

Port: 465

Uncheck Automatically manage connection settings

Check Use TLS/SSL

Authentication: Password

Hope this helps.

@amackey3: Thank you. This may have fixed my problem with Gmail smtp. I'll know better after my next reboot. Meanwhile, I can send via Gmail using Mail and Mimestream even with Bitdefender re-enabled.

Yes, same here!

So who has to improve the service? AVG or Apple?

I wrote AVG already and they seem to be aware of the issue.

I had also problems to get connection to the internet with the AVG VPN Client.

Switched that off and it works fine again!

Little Snitch, after updating is no problem anymore!

Sounds similar to my problem. Since updating my iMac to Big Sur, I am not receiving all my emails. I get them on my Galaxy S20 ok and it's a good job I am. I need a GMAIL UK contact. Another human being I can actually talk to about this. Someone to talk me through my settings.

I am so tempted to sack Google right now.

Hi All,

have the same issue on my MacBook 12". Big Sure latest. AVG Internet Security.

Tried everything you suggested.

Finally I totally deleted AVG, but nothing has changed.

Don't know what to do, because it still does not work...getting fed up with this.

I had the same problem with the mail app not connecting to gmail after the big sur install. I rebooted, that did nothing. I deleted the gmail accounts from the mail app and then reinstalled them, that did nothing. Then I uninstall Avast virus scanning and restarted - mail app now fine and connecting to gmail again nd receiving emails!

Someone has suggested they installed AVAST virus scanner to correct Gmail's Problem with Big Sur OS. You should never install any kind of Anti Virus software on an iMac. The user may think they have uninstalled it but chances are, they haven't completely.

Really, will there be any solution for that by Apple or not? I tried everything, but the synching still does not work. The connection between smtp and imap servers are ok. The AVG is deleted and I do not find any hidden AVG files. What else I can do?

Seems to be a Big Sur Firewall issue. I have Apple Mail, Google (IMAP), and Comcast (IMAP). All incoming works fine, but outgoing SMTP for Google and Comcast would fail. I turned off the built-in Firewall and everything works fine now. I went back and turned Firewall back on and added an entry for Mail.app to allow all incoming connections - seems to work.

After uninstall AVG totally, after turn off built-in firewall (which was irrelevant so I turned again on), after I moved all my IMAP folders from icloud to an other supplier now it seems like it works.

But there is a BUT: not all the IMAP folders are synchronized so I can now just laugh. There was no problem before big sur, and after installing it I have to try almost one week? Really? Pfffff.