Google appears to be dropping support for IMAP Thunderbird

[johnwhelan]

Any suggestions for a replacement?

Thanks John

 

[edh6]

Any suggestions for a replacement?

Thanks John

Where did you find this out? I can't find any reference to it.

 

[johnwhelan]

Where did you find this out? I can't find any reference to it.

When I tried to pick my mail up with thunderbird I got invalid password, looking at a google link they have dropped imap support for thunderbird as being insecure. Mozilla say version 38 should work but even after upgrading it didn't. Postbox seems to work though. I usually use the web interface but I like to keep a local backup of some emails which is what I was using thunderbird for. Postbox seems to work and accepts paypal and can import my old offline Thunderbird messages so I think I'll go that way.

Cheerio John

 

[edh6]

Thunderbird and gmail is working fine for me on version 38.7.2

It's upgrading to 45 at the moment though, so I'll see what happens with that...

 

[clam1952]

Imap GMail and Thunderbird 45.0 working as normal here.
Had a look at the fixed bugs list at bugzilla
OAuth2 does not work with imap.gmail after upgrade - fixed in version 40
GMail OAuth scope should be https:// not http:// - fixed in version 40

Presume these are internal builds.

 

[nawlins]

I updated to version 45 without problems. A couple of addons were disabled until they have been made capable of running on this latest version.

Cheers

 

[wilts747]

I think there is some misunderstanding here. IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) and POP3 (Post Office Protocol) as there name suggests are messaging protocols. Thunderbird, Outlook and a hundred others similar programs are email clients. Google, Yahoo, your own ISP and many other, provide access to internet services including mail.

Should Google drop IMAP, it wouldn't stop Thunderbird and all the other email clients from receiving IMAP messages from those providers of Internet mail who still supported IMAP. Conversely should Thunderbird drop IMAP there are a hundred other email clients who would likely be grateful for you to install their software.

I personally cannot imagine Google or any other of the big players dropping IMAP because while POP3 is likely the more popular protocol for home use and frequently set up by defauly, IMAP is very much the preferred protocol for business use and I'm not sure such providers would actively encoarage their users to start look elsewhere. Peter

 

[johnwhelan]

I think there is some misunderstanding here. IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) and POP3 (Post Office Protocol) as there name suggests are messaging protocols. Thunderbird, Outlook and a hundred others similar programs are email clients. Google, Yahoo, your own ISP and many other, provide access to internet services including mail.

Should Google drop IMAP, it wouldn't stop Thunderbird and all the other email clients from receiving IMAP messages from those providers of Internet mail who still supported IMAP. Conversely should Thunderbird drop IMAP there are a hundred other email clients who would likely be grateful for you to install their software.

I personally cannot imagine Google or any other of the big players dropping IMAP because while POP3 is likely the more popular protocol for home use and frequently set up by defauly, IMAP is very much the preferred protocol for business use and I'm not sure such providers would actively encoarage their users to start look elsewhere. Peter

Version 31 of thunderbird which I was using is now unable to access IMAP at google. The Google error message mentions that it no longer allows IMAP connections with Thunderbird because of security considerations. Mozilla has updated Thunderbird to 45 and specifically says that version 38+ is required for IMAP with Google. So something is going on. If Chris and Malc are now able to access Gmail through IMAP it would appear that Thunderbird has been updated.

I actually have a little bit of knowledge of email systems, being part of the email ISO working group in Canada and parts of Microsoft current email system external character conversions came about from my input.

Cheerio John

 

[johnwhelan]

Postbox was created by some of the members of the thunderdbird development team. It's nice, does everything that Thunderbird did plus a few more tricks and it seems much faster.

Cheerio John