Mac mail Gmail times out

Question

Mac mail Gmail times out

I'm using Mac Mail with imap to access my institutional e-mail account, which is managed by Google. Very, very frequently, when I bring up my Mac Mail window, there will be a small triangle with an exclamation point inside it next to the icon for my "in" box. If I click on it, I get a dialog box with a message indicating that the connection with the Gmail server has timed out. Usually this takes care of itself in ten minutes or so, but it's quite annoying, and I wonder if there's anything I can do about it. We do have a very slow Internet DSL connection, but it's a lot more reliable than this frequent timeout problem would suggest.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11), Airport Extreme, Airport Express

Posted on May 28, 2016 8:02 AM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

685,299 points

May 28, 2016 8:51 AM in response to William Williams

Some suggestions you can try.

Mail (El Capitan): Mail troubleshooting

Mail (El Capitan): If you can’t receive messages

Mail not sending or receiving messages after updating OS X

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Answer 2

May 28, 2016 9:29 AM in response to Eric Root

Thanks, Eric. I've already tried most of what you suggested, but the problem seems to be one of timing, rather than any kind of solid barrier. It's not a matter of "cannot connect," it's more like, "cannot connect just now..." Next time it happens I'll try to catch the Connection-Doctor log and see if there's anything there of interest. Naturally when I tried it just now it all connected normally...😕

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Answer 3

Jun 1, 2016 5:18 AM in response to William Williams

If anyone happens to be reading this, here are some more symptoms:

When I use “Connection Doctor,” I generally get an immediate green light from Gmail SMTP, but the IMAP connection *always* takes several seconds to a couple of minutes of saying “Connecting to server…” before it turns green and says it’s connected, and about a third of the time it never makes it, displaying instead a message to the effect that it could not connect to this IMAP server.

My wife doesn’t seem to have this problem at all. She’s still running Yosemite, and she’s got a MacBook Air instead of my brandy-new MacBook Pro running El Capitan, but the setups are otherwise identical. In particular, we have the same ISP and same Airport network, suggesting that any unreliabilities there are not the cause of my problems.

Another peculiarity, perhaps related, is that messages that I have already read frequently pop up again as “unread,” sometimes after several hours. I’m guessing that this is because a series of timeouts prevented their “read” status from being properly communicated to Gmail. Once again, this does not seem to happen with my wife’s account.

-Here’s a sample of the IMAP synch activity log:

Jun 1 08:05:18 Mail[13085] <Debug>: [Gmail] Stopping because account went offline

Jun 1 08:05:18 Mail[13085] <Debug>: [Gmail - Inbox] <Sync> Stopping because account went offline

Jun 1 08:05:18 Mail[13085] <Debug>: [Gmail - Inbox] <Sync> Mailbox sync task finished

Jun 1 08:05:18 Mail[13085] <Debug>: [Gmail - Sent] <Sync> Stopping because account went offline

Jun 1 08:05:18 Mail[13085] <Debug>: [Gmail - Sent] <Sync> Mailbox sync task finished

Jun 1 08:07:18 Mail[13085] <Debug>: [Gmail - Inbox] <Sync> Created mailbox sync task

Jun 1 08:07:18 Mail[13085] <Debug>: [Gmail - Inbox] <Sync> Recalculated priorities - network: 22, persistence: 0

Jun 1 08:07:18 Mail[13085] <Debug>: [Gmail - Sent] <Sync> Created mailbox sync task

Jun 1 08:07:18 Mail[13085] <Debug>: [Gmail - Sent] <Sync> Recalculated priorities - network: 22, persistence: 0

Jun 1 08:07:18 Mail[13085] <Debug>: [Gmail] Creating account sync task, 8 mailboxes needing status

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Answer 4

notcloudy

Level 4

1,258 points

Jun 3, 2016 5:14 PM in response to William Williams

William Williams wrote:

My wife doesn’t seem to have this problem at all. She’s still running Yosemite, and she’s got a MacBook Air instead of my brandy-new MacBook Pro running El Capitan, but the setups are otherwise identical. In particular, we have the same ISP and same Airport network, suggesting that any unreliabilities there are not the cause of my problems.

Compare system preferences between your wife's macbook & yours -- see if there are any differences.

Open Activity monitor and in Active processes see if any updates are being downloaded -- in order to bring your El Capitan or any other software up to current levels - - that can have an impact on mail and browsing.

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Answer 5

Eric Root

Level 10

685,299 points

Jun 1, 2016 10:04 AM in response to William Williams

You are welcome.

Try a restart.

Do a backup, using either Time Machine or a cloning program, to ensure files/data can be recovered. Two backups are better than one.

Try setting up another admin user account to see if the same problem continues. If Back-to-My Mac is selected in System Preferences, the Guest account will not work. The intent is to see if it is specific to one account or a system wide problem. This account can be deleted later.

Isolating an issue by using another user account

If the problem is still there, try booting into the Safe Mode using your normal account. Disconnect all peripherals except those needed for the test. Shut down the computer and then power it back up after waiting 10 seconds. Immediately after hearing the startup chime, hold down the shift key and continue to hold it until the gray Apple icon and a progress bar appear. The boot up is significantly slower than normal. This will reset some caches, forces a directory check, and disables all startup and login items, among other things. When you reboot normally, the initial reboot may be slower than normal. If the system operates normally, there may be 3rd party applications which are causing a problem. Try deleting/disabling the third party applications after a restart by using the application un-installer. For each disable/delete, you will need to restart if you don't do them all at once.

Safe Mode - About

Safe Mode - Yosemite

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Answer 6

Jun 3, 2016 5:21 PM in response to notcloudy

Bingo, notcloudy. Perhaps an obvious thing to try, but thanks anyway. The difference turned out to be in authentication ("Advanced" under Mail preferences -> Gmail). I had selected "External (TLS Client Certificate)," while she had selected simply "password." Switching to password seems to have solved the problem. If someone can point me to a description these two methods of authentication and what other implications this change might have, I'd be grateful.

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