How can I achive Gmail zen across my Mac and iPhone?

January 4, 2009 4:15 PM

How can I achive Gmail zen across my Mac and iPhone? Details follow.

I currently use Gmail for all of my email needs. All of my other accounts are forwarded to my Gmail address and are set up so I can send from them in Gmail. I am using Mailplane on my Mac and I just use the mobile Gmail website on my iPhone. Is there a way to set everything up so I can check my Gmail account and send from all my address in both Mail.app and Mail on the iPhone while still keeping everything stored on the Gmail servers?

posted by stevechemist to computers & internet (11 answers total)

I don't know the details of either mail.app and mail on the iphone.. but do either support IMAP?

That keeps all your stuff on gmail, and locally it can download all, or just the headers until you click on the message...
posted by defcom1 at 4:32 PM on January 4, 2009

If you set up your gmail account in Mail.app (ensuring that your Gmail account allows IMAP access) and then sync your iphone, your gmail account will just be another address you can send from with the iphone. I do this now. It's very nice. I've never had a conflict switching between the iphone, mail.app, and gmail interfaces.
posted by about_time at 4:34 PM on January 4, 2009

If I understand your question correctly, your options are:

(1) Use POP with Gmail and instruct Mail.app/MobileMail to leave messages on the server, this way if you delete messages on the Mac or the iPhone it will leave them on the Gmail server unchanged
(2) Enable IMAP in your Gmail account's settings and follow the instructions to set up IMAP access to Gmail in Mail.app/MobileMail (you can find instructions for both in the Gmail help docs; the iPhone will even do the MobileMail config for you if you choose to add a new Gmail account from the new account menu.) Your Gmail labels will show up as folders in Mail.app/MobileMail.

With regard to sending from other addresses... I'm not sure how to do that. Do these other addresses have their own respective servers with inboxes, etc., or are they just aliases pointing to Gmail?
posted by Kosh at 4:36 PM on January 4, 2009

Overview

For the iPhone:
I'd set up Gmail as an IMAP account on the iPhone (first make the change in Gmail; then on your iPhone, do: Settings > Mail > Add Account > Gmail and enter the appropriate information); you'll be able to send from your @gmail.com address at least, but not the others, and interact with Gmail as a native iPhone email account.

On your Mac:
Once you have your Gmail account set up to allow IMAP, just add it to Mail.app as an IMAP account (Preferences > Accounts and hit the "+"; instructions for Mail 2.0 and 3.0).

Everything stored on Gmail's servers, accessible in native mail apps.
posted by The Michael The at 4:40 PM on January 4, 2009

IMAP is it. If you're using Mailplane, you don't need to worry about this, since that's just a specialized web browser. If you're using Mail.app, you want to be using IMAP for your connection to Gmail (as opposed to POP). So your "incoming mail server" should be picking up your e-mail from "imap.gmail.com".

On your iPhone, look under Settings:Mail:[your gmail account]. On your Mac, in Mail.app, look under Preferences: Accounts.

IMAP syncs e-mail between the local client and the Gmail server. If you delete it from one, you delete it from the other. In Mail.app, it is possible to archive a message locally so that it gets removed from the server. One of the downsides of this is that syncing can be kind of slow. Also, as I understand it, Mail.app's IMAP implementation isn't the best. I actually use POP at home, which may be sub-optimal, since I also use an iPhone.
posted by adamrice at 4:43 PM on January 4, 2009

A few good tricks for using Gmail IMAP with the Mac:

1. on both your Mac and your iPhone, set your IMAP Path Prefix (on the Advanced pane of the Accounts settings) to [Gmail] and you will then have all your Gmail tags appear as Mail folders without the annoying enclosing "[Gmail]" parent folder

2. select the "Drafts" folder among your IMAP account's folders, and select "Use This Mailbox For > Drafts" from the Mailbox menu. Then repeat with Sent Mail, Trash, and Spam (Use For > Junk)

3. in Gmail Settings, select Labs, then enable the "Advanced IMAP Controls" feature. Then under Labels you'll have a "Show in IMAP" checkbox for each label, which you can turn off for the annoying "All Mail" and "Starred" labels so you won't see them in Mail - which makes search results much neater too.
posted by nicwolff at 5:32 PM on January 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

I understand how IMAP works with Gmail, however, my concerns lie with still being able to send emails from all my address on both systems (like I can do through the Gmail web interface). I have thought of just setting up each email server on both systems, but I like the ability to keep all sent mail in my Gmail sent mail folder as well as retaining the ability to use the Gmail web interface on any computer.
posted by stevechemist at 7:31 PM on January 4, 2009

Here are some instructions for sending from multiple email addresses from the iPhone using gmail. It basically means setting up the accounts with empty information and making them send through smtp.gmail.com, which means the messages will end up in your Sent gmail folder. What I don't know yet is how you choose the account when composing / replying.

I will be setting this up for my dad later this month, so let me know if it works for you.
posted by shinynewnick at 8:57 PM on January 4, 2009

Do you think the same will work in Mail.app?
posted by stevechemist at 9:02 PM on January 4, 2009

Possibly, it depends on how picky mail.app is about not checking email from that fake account (You set the account to not check automatically on the iPhone so it doesn't throw an error every time it checks), and if it will send it correctly through gmail's smtp server. One important step is that the email addresses have to be set up already in gmail (as yours are, if you already send from them). Otherwise, it should work fine.
posted by shinynewnick at 9:12 PM on January 4, 2009

As long as you have told your Gmail account it's allowed to send mail from your alternate addresses (which you need to do in order to do that from the web interface), it will happily pass those From: addresses through on mails sent via smtp.gmail.com (if you haven't told Gmail about your extra accounts, smtp.gmail.com will rewrite the From: so it's coming from your Gmail account).

Checking your mail clients' help for "multiple identities support" should give you the missing puzzle piece.
posted by flabdablet at 11:28 PM on January 4, 2009