Cannot add Google account

Do you have Safari Technology Preview installed?

I was just experiencing this same issue, and I discovered that if I launched the Safari Technology Preview app after the spinner was showing, after a slight delay it would open up the special private window to the Gmail login that was missing, and then things worked.

Safari, not Safari Technology Preview, is set as my default browser, so... apparently macOS is getting confused over which of them it should be using?

To elaborate on the above: If I set my default browser (in System Preference > General) to Safari Technology Preview, or to Chrome, the process works as intended and the login private browser window is automatically shown in the default browser.

But somehow the specific combination of "Safari is default browser" and "Safari Technology Preview is install" is currently broken, and Safari Technology Preview is somehow interfering with or intercepting the request from the Internet Account pane to open that private browser login window.

In case anyone from Apple is reading this, I've filed FB9845168 describing the issue.

Been having the same problem for AGES. Tried putting my default browser back to Safari (I always use Chrome), tried again and it opened Safari immediately so I could log in, then changed my default back to Chrome.

Seems like it's confused if you're using a different default browser than Safari.

Same issue here. Monterey 12.2.1. When trying to add my Gmail from Internet Accounts or from the Mail app, it would load a window that would just endlessly spin. I tried authenticating with Google in Safari, closing out of everything, trying again, same issue.

The only thing that fixed it (as other people have mentioned) was changing my default web browser (System Preferences > General) from Chrome to Safari. Repeated the process, authentication window actually loaded to a Google Sign-in screen, everything worked. Then changed default browser back to Chrome.

I solved it by going to Safari Preferences -> Websites -> Pop-up blocked -> Allow for Gmail and other related .

then restarted Safari. Then infinite spinner stoped spinning :)

OR

while spinner is spinning, I went to Safari and signed into the google account

Hi,

I had exactly the same problem. MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2021), MacOS 12.3.1 (21E258.

In my case the problem was that I had Google Chrome as default browser. I switched to Safari as default browser, and everything worked fine.

Quick answer: Try setting Safari as your default browser.

I had the same issue when trying to add an extra account to my mac.

The problem happened because I was using chrome as the default browser and already logged into my initial google account with chrome...

I had the same issue. I noticed that after trying to add my Google account, the infinite spinner window would pop up and it tried to open a new window in Chrome but for some reason it was not able to. I was using Chrome as my default web browser. Hence, for this step only I switched my default browser from Chrome to Safari and then I was able to perform the sign in to my Google account through Safari and grant my Mac access to mail, contacts, etc. Then the infinite spinner turned into a selector for things I wish to sync from my Google account. Hope this helps.

I had Google Chrome set as the default browser and was experiencing exactly the same issue.

What helped was to reset Safari as the default browser.

Then the "Open Browser" button actually opened a browser window for me to log into the Google account.

Once done, I set Chrome as the default again.

The solution is to temporarily change your default browser to Chome (System Preferences > General > Default Web Browser). Then try it again while having Chrome set as default. For some reason, Safari can have problems using google's mail portal in Apple Mail.

I had the same issue. The way how I fixed it was to install the Chrome Browser, set it as the default browser in System Preferences > General and then try to add the Google account trough System Preferences > Internet Accounts. 

I downloaded Chrome and set Chrome as my default browser. Then when I tried to add my Google calendar, it opened Chrome and not Safari. It opened right away and I did not have any "infinite spinning"!! Thank you "tmlrd" for the tip. It worked.

The browser authentication does work but you have to open Safari. I had Chrome as my default browser and it was not opening up. I launched Safari, and the Google login appeared right away. Hope that helps.

I had this issue too and realized that my default internet browser was set to Chrome. I changed it back to Safari and it is now working - so I would give that a try!

Don't know if this might be an OS bug - as the "browser" options were working for AOL and Yahoo, just not gmail.

Good luck!

I had exactly the same issue. Managed to solve it by changing the "User Agent" in Safari developer tools. Changed the User Agent to "Safari 15.2" as per the image below and restarted Safari.

After that, while adding internal accounts, clicking on "Open Browser" worked fine.

Hope this helps.

Aditya