gmail wont setup on iphone 5

In my case the problem was not related to the two-step verification, the cellular network provider was overwhelmed with new iphones getting activated and the problem was with the network.

Everything works fine now.

Yes! You are no alone. I can't get my work email through Exchange or my GMail thru the Apple Mail app. It just scans, saying Checking For Mail, but it keeps spinning and never loads or sends any mail. It's a huge problem. I've downloaded the GMail app as a workaround for now, but I can't deal without real Mail app integration.

Are we the only three having this problem with their iPhone 5? It seems like an Apple problem, not a Gmail problem since my Outlook mail can't come in either.

There are currentlyissues with gmail IMAP on all mobile devices. It's not just an iOS issue, and it's not just iOS6.

It's documented on the gmail help pages:

http://support.google.com/mail/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=known_issues.cs

"We are aware of an issue where users are receiving an error that '"imap.gmail.com" is not responding' when using IMAP on their computers, mobile devices, or tablets. We are currently working on resolving this issue.

In the meantime, you can sign in to Gmail through a web browser. For Android and iOS users, you can also download the Gmail application in the interim."

Mine works on my iPad, but not iPhone, even though settings are identical.

Hope it's resolved soon.

The iphone is not compatible with gmail's 2-step authentication process. You DO NOT need to turn it off, there is a section titled "Application Specific Passwords" under Account>Security in your google settings.

You go in there and have it generate a one time password, you use this generated password to put in the password field when setting up your gmail account on the iphone instead of your normal password associated with your gmail account.

This is a "work around" for applications that do not support the 2-step authentication process, without turning the added security off.

Hope this helps!

for google authenticator it seems the iphone app is not working properly on iOS6. Here is the sumitted bug list from google:

https://code.google.com/p/google-authenticator/issues/detail?id=212

they have not responded yet

I've finally fixed it:

Many of the reports I've found while trying to fix this problem mention problems with two-step verification. Since I didn't use two-step verification, I had been ignoring fixes for it. In desperation, I finally tried turning two-step on on my Google account, then using it to generate a device-specific password for my iPhone. I entered that in the Mail settings and voilà!

I had the same problem, couldn't manage to setup gmail con iphone 5. It didn't work even by deleting the account. Finally I went online, activated the two-step verification and it worked immediately. Thanks

I've actually found that the problem returns every few days, but once the device-specific password is set all you have to do to get it working again is to restart Mail:

- double-click the home button

- press and hold the Mail icon

- hit the 'close' icon

- reopen Mail

Or you can restart the entire phone, but who does that? 😝

Gmail on iPhone 5 wouldn't work, simply deleted account on iPhone and re-added it and then worked. Might have something to do with whether you set phone up new or installed from an encrypted iPhone 4 backup. I did and so far only Gmail migration did not work.

RoBuszek wrote:

Two step verification On/Off - in both cases gmail as exchange does not work. If I add as gmail account (6.1.2) in both cases work ok. But I wanna ad it as exchange account.

Google stopped supporting Exchange for free Gmail accounts as of 30 Jan 13.

Gmail set up perfectly on my iPad, but it would just crash out of settings, so I couldn't even set up gmail on my iPhone 5.

Decided to set it up manually, rather than through the "Gmail" option in settings. I followed the steps on this link http://www.wikihow.com/Setup-Gmail-on-an-iPhone and it is now set up and works perfectly on my iPhone 5.

I think there was a message during setup about the ssl, so after it was set up I went back into settings and saw that ssl was off - once I turned it on my gmail came through fine and I could change the Server selections for Drafts, Sent and Trash.

Hi, just had this issue with my new iPhone 5; now, I took a different route, no need to mess with Google settings, you just need to connect to a Wifi network and don't use you cellular data plan to add your Gmail account; it worked inmediately. I was also having problems with an outlook.com account, and it was solved after I used my Wifi network. Just don't use your data plan to connect to your Gmail account. By the way, as it was added, now the Gmail account works also with cellular data plan. Hope this helps.

Thank you so much!!

I had been trying to verify my Gmail account for weeks but eventually gave up and downloaded the Gmail App instead.

I had my company Gmail account working just fine with the Mail App, but my personal one just wouldn't verify.

I was okay with it until today when I wanted to email a picture to a friend of mine and just wouldn't do it through my work email. Your reply saved me!!

I used the Application-specific Password, spaces included, and it worked perfectly!

What a relief!!!

Per pacekm above,

"The iphone is not compatible with gmail's 2-step authentication process. You DO NOT need to turn it off, there is a section titled "Application Specific Passwords" under Account>Security in your google settings.

You go in there and have it generate a one time password, you use this generated password to put in the password field when setting up your gmail account on the iphone instead of your normal password associated with your gmail account.

This is a "work around" for applications that do not support the 2-step authentication process, without turning the added security off.

Hope this helps!"

This person is a genius. Such a small little work around, yet no where was this found in any support docs. IT totally worked. THANK YOU!

~Alex