How to Access Your Gmail Account With Apple Mail

Having multiple email accounts is just a fact of life these days. Accessing Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, your ISP’s email, and possibly even your own domain’s email sometimes entails visiting several websites, as well as using an email program on your computer. Thankfully, Gmail and most other web-based email providers give you the option to use POP (Post Office Protocol) to download and read your mail with an email program. Here’s how to access your Gmail account with Apple Mail included in Mac OS X.

Things You’ll Need:

* Apple Macintosh Computer Running Mac OS X (10.2+)
* Gmail Account
* Mail.app (aka Apple Mail - v. 3.0+)

How to Set Up Gmail for POP Download

Step 1:
Sign up for a Gmail account if you haven’t already.

Step 2:
Log in and go to your Gmail Settings page. The link is at the top right of the page next to your email address.

Step 3:
Select the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” link at the top of the Settings page.

Step 4:
Select “Enable POP” for all mail (even mail that’s already been downloaded) or “Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on” in the “POP Download” section. If you have a lot of mail in your Gmail account and check the first option, Apple Mail will download every last email and will probably take a while to do so.

Step 5:
Choose how you want Gmail to handle the mail after it’s been downloaded in the “When messages are accessed with POP” drop-down box. Your options are “Archive Gmail’s copy,” “Keep Gmail’s copy in the inbox” and “Delete Gmail’s copy.” If you’re only accessing your Gmail account through Apple Mail and don’t intend to ever check it on the web, select “Archive Gmail’s copy.” If you decide you want to occasionally check the web site for your mail when you’re away from your computer, select “Keep Gmail’s copy in the inbox.” It’s not recommended to select “Delete Gmail’s copy” since you will not have a backup of your mail if your computer decides to crash one day.

Step 6:
Click the “Save Changes” button.