Change Gmail app specific password in Mail.app in macOS Ventura

December 1, 2023 11:36 AM

I recently changed my main google account password, which had a side effect of nuking my Gmail app-specific passwords, which I was using in macOS Ventura mail.app for IMAP & SMTP access to GMail.

In earlier versions of macOS this was easy, from Mail.app, choose Settings then Accounts, then click the GMail account, then click Server Settings, and change the password.

In macOS Ventura, under the Server Settings tab, there is no longer a Password field!

(This is true for my Gmail account only - I have other SMTP/IMAP accounts which still do show the password field).

Confused!

posted by soylent00FF00 to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

I would honestly simply delete and re-add the GMail account (this will not nuke the emails, FWIW). Apple Mail will walk you through whatever workflow Google is using nowadays.
posted by Alensin at 11:37 AM on December 1, 2023

Response by poster: Thanks, deleting and re-adding seems....severe, but will consider that if needed.

Oddly, on an iPhone running latest iOS, it's behaving as expected, with the mail app asking for the new password.

But on macOS Ventura, not so much.
posted by soylent00FF00 at 11:41 AM on December 1, 2023

Best answer: According to this page from Google, they are changing the way you sign in to GMail and not allowing you to use your username and any password.
posted by Alensin at 11:52 AM on December 1, 2023

Best answer: Interesting, sounds like the old "set up Gmail using imap/smtp and app-specific password" method is no longer viable?

I was able to find a workaround:
- in accounts.google.com go to Security then set up a new app-specific password
- on the mac, quit Mail.app
- open /Applications/Utilities/Keychain Access.app
- search for passwords for imap.gmail.com and smtp.gmail.com
- update the passwords here to the new app password
- open Mail.app and it should be working again
posted by soylent00FF00 at 12:01 PM on December 1, 2023

Best answer: Interesting, sounds like the old "set up Gmail using imap/smtp and app-specific password" method is no longer viable?

Yes, Apple changed the default in macOS many years ago to authenticate and download mail with Google accounts directly in Mail.app (with auth via a browser popup) rather than through a static-set password and IMAP/SMTP config in the Mail.app settings. It's not that the latter won't still technically work (and you found a viable workaround) but both Google and Apple want to move you away from setting static passwords in client applications, and towards automatic auth via OAuth or Passkeys, which they feel are (and very likely are) more secure. Doing Mail.app IMAP to GMail with an app-specific password is likely to either get less reliable or fully deprecated over time.

The next time this happens, or if you have some time, I would consider adding your Google account the standard way (System Settings -> Internet Accounts -> Google) and accessing mail directly through the standard macOS/Mail.app Google account configuration rather than trying to maintain Google app-specific passwords for IMAP in Mail.app, unless you have a particularly good reason to still be doing it that way.
posted by eschatfische at 12:17 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]