Q: Annoying imap.gmail.com is not responding.

guys! iphone/ipad MAIL is a app. i had the same problems did every thing and ended up in square 1. if you have noticed our gmail accounts has a 2-step verification. under application-specific passwords. i added "mail" and it generated a random password. in gmail.com website, we would enter our email and password. but in the mail/add account app we would NEED to enter our email then the random password generated by the application-specific password. i guess it's security reason in google's part since a lot of apps do have a keylogger these days. these step worked for me so hopefully this will work for the others that still have imap.gmail.com issues :$

This resolved for me by logging into gmail through their website.  I went there intending to check out security settings but noticed that as soon as I had logged in the exclamation mark next to my mail accounts went away.  The problem seems to be resolved.  I've sent and received test messages. 

Hi i have this proble with iPad but my iphone works fine wirelesssly.

What can i do to rectify it as very annoying and need to access gmail messages.

cheers

MRCGD

This has been annoying me for the past few months. Even the Genius Bar could not figure it out. After reading a few of these posts I figured out what was wrong (for me). A few solutions were suggested.

I tried:

Changing passwords, rebooting, restoring without success. I did have the gmail app which was ok, but I hate having more than one app doing the same thing.

Then I realised I had a two step verification which was working fine until the new iOS came in a few months ago. After disabling the verification step everything worked again! YES!!! OMG finally!!!!

Cheers!

TThe best way to get your gmail is to go to google chrome and access gmail.

this works on iMac and iPad .

If you have 2-step verification set up, you need to set up an Application-Specific password in your GMail account. Works a treat - just did it myself after reading this thread and putting 2 and 2 together.

I've been having the annoying imap not responding message all day.

Everything was working fine yesterday.

I just tried the 2-step verification, generating a new Application-Specific password for my iphone 5s.

That didn't work.

I've tried re-booting the phone.

I can access my gmail just fine on my laptop.

I have another gmail account that's picking up my messages via Mailclient just fine on my phone.

I am stumped.

Any suggestions?

None of these suggestions worked for me. I installed the gmail app for gmail and it works fine, I still use the iOS mail app for mac mail.

I have been having problems with IMAP access to gmail for the last two days now, having used it successfully with multiple devices and computers for years.  I thought I had fixed the problem today when suddenly everything other than browser access stopped working - my iPhone, iPad, Outlook for Mac, Mac Mail, Outlook on a PC - all were unable to access my main work Gmail account.  A different personal Gmail account continued to be accessible from these clients, however. I disabled 2-step verification on the work account but still no luck.  I am able to access the problem account using a browser, and now with the gmail app.  Hopefully the problem will fix itself soon, but I have wasted many hours trying to sort this out.

Just change your default email account to some other account besides Gmail and you'll be fine.

Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Default Account

Is anyone still struggling with this, or suggest any other solutions.

My config has been working for many months on iPhone 5, iOS 6 and then 7 - up to a few days ago when I got the imap.gmail.com not responding error. To the best of my knowledge nothing changed on the phone.

Recently set up the same config on my iPad and that continues to work OK. Have compared the settings between the two devices and can see no difference. (for the record, using WiFi or Cellular connections also makes no difference)

Have tried resetting the device specific password - if I deliberately enter the wrong password then I do get an error saying that the username/password is incorrect. Enter the correct password and it seems to pass validation but I get the server error again.

Have tried setting the default account to something other than the gmail account and no-change.

Anyone have any other suggestions?

cheers

Same issue here. Multiple Gmail accounts. all working except one. My mail work account. All devices stopped working gradually since yesterday am.  By 2 AM this morning none of them work, I have restared everything, disable and reinabled imap on GMail, changed pass words, changed servers, deleted the account and resetup the account. But I can send just can't recieve.  Gmail app and online works just fine though.  Very strange Nothing seems to work.  Help????

Update:

Deleted the gmail account on the iPhone, rebooted the iPhone and then recreated the gmail account using the 'other' account type and now seems to be working. (Don't use gmail for sending though so can't comment if this fixed SMTP issues)

I am still having this problem after trying all of the suggestions above. I am thinking it is a Gmail problem as I installed SeedMail and still cannot access my Gmail account. Google support has been useless as have their forums.

Has anyone else found a solution that works for IMAP and SMTP?

Google never supported IMAP and no longer supports MS Exchange servers.  The only reiiable way to get and send google mail is to use their app.  They designed their mail servers to draw you into their app and ecosystem.