Google Adds IMAP Support To GMail
Eureka! GMail has gained IMAP support, one of the most requested features for Google’s web-based e-mail service. More than storage space or other features, free web-based IMAP access pushes GMail over the top when compared to offerings from Yahoo, Microsoft and most other web-based e-mail services.
If you log into your GMail account and head to “settings,” the tab for “Forwarding and POP” should now read “Forwarding and POP/IMAP.” If it doesn’t, be patient, Google will be rolling out the new IMAP features across the service over the next few days.
If you’re not familiar with IMAP, it’s like POP access, but allows your changes to live on the server rather than just your e-mail client. For instance, if you move a message in Thunderbird via POP, the movement isn’t mirrored in GMail, but with IMAP it is.
With IMAP you can access your mail via your desktop client, read mail, make changes and have those changes mirrored by any other client accessing the account. If you access your mail from multiple machines, IMAP allows them all to stay in sync. If you don’t access your mail with a desktop client, then IMAP support won’t change the way you interact with GMail.
To enable IMAP in GMail just head to the settings page and change your access from POP to IMAP. Then you need to configure your desktop client to connect via IMAP rather than POP — be sure to backup your client’s mail store before making changes.
The Google help center has more details on configuring IMAP settings in both GMail and on the client side. Google has also released this video which shows how to use GMail’s new IMAP support in conjunction with an iPhone.
[Update: For more info and a hands-on look at the new IMAP access in GMail, check out the full review.
]
[via Download Squad]
