GMail FINALLY Supports IMAP
Posted in Tech by Dan at 10:14 pm
Yes, you read right. Google is secretly enabling IMAP support on all GMail user accounts, as evidenced by IMAP configuration instructions as well as evident in my GMail account.
No word if GMail will support the PUSH/IDLE command and they also make note that the IMAP server settings are not compatible with VersaMail on the Palm OS.
Does this excite anyone?
I’m super excited but I’m frustrated because the settings aren’t showing up in my Gmail account. Grrrrrr….
It’s about F’ing time! Maybe I can finally quit the web interface for something a little faster.
It’s not working atm but I hope it’ll work soon… I don’t see “Enabling IMAP” under my gmail settings yet. But, FINALLY…. something worth using… kudos to Google
Of course I´m excited because with IMAP support now I can have push-gmail in my Treo using Chatteremail.
bout damn time… only took them what… 4 years? Just shy of a half decade?!
You’d think a multibillion dollar company with some of the best and brightest at the reigns would have gotten shit pushed out in … oh I dunno… at least 05′
whatever though, I’m cynical … hooray for IMAP *FINALLY*
Well – it makes me extremely excited.
I think it took them so long because they needed to anwer two questions first:
* How to serve ads over IMAP?
* How to map their whole label system to the “classic” folder system that IMAP supports?
Since I can’t switch to IMAP yet – how did they do it?
Great news!… hope to use it soon on my Google Apps
I’m a little slow with the acronyms and technology, but what does this mean for me? I have been using gmail through my “Mail” app on Mac OSX for a year now, and I can check and reply to all my messages without using google’s web interface. I guess that’s POP? What do I get differently if I set up email with IMAP?
@Michael
IMAP supports a two way connection between the mail server and your mail client. Thus with IMAP, messages read on your client (whether it’s Outlook, Thunderbird, or iPhone) are also marked as read on the server (so you don’t have to reread the message again on gmail.com via web browser).
POP typically either downloads (and deletes the original copy) or duplicates e-mail on the client and the server. In the first scenario of deleting the original copy, it defeats the purpose of Gmail’s excessive storage space (and their claim to never have to delete e-mails again). And in the second scenario, this would mean that even after you read/archive a e-mail on your client, you’d have to do it again on the server via the web browser.
IMAP seeks to eliminate this. Which is quite nice.
Thanks CHI! That makes sense now; it will be nice to read a message on Mail and then see it marked as “read” on my web app.
Thanks for the concise answer!
This is exciting news. Why arent all gmail accounts getting this? Ive had a gmail for years now… It still has only POP…
Are they rolling it out in phases?