Vivaldi Mail not connecting to Gmail ("rant")

[RDKist]

TL:DR: Had trouble getting Vivaldi Mail to work. Have given up.

Have used T'bird "forever" - since Eudora died - but it stopped picking up Gmail on Jan 1, 2025. So: search for alternative, hit upon Vivaldi (have been using the browser) and it seemed promising.
"Long Story Short" - Set up a Gmail <-> Vivaldi Mail account. VMail says all ok. Gmail provides PW to link to VMail.
Check for mail: "need to fetch 250 messages..."
Alas: "Error POP server did not reply to command RETR 112...."
After 2 days of fiddling with settings, and reading every "Help / FAQ" I could find, the story remains the same.

Today - Jan 9 - T'bird has Magically reconnected to Gmail - missing a few days of msgs, but I know they are on Gmail server so presumably can download. Upshot is that it is time to give up on Vivaldi Mail: it should not be this difficult to get it going.

Plan to continue to use the browser (rotate btwn Firefox, Vivaldi, Brave, Edge - and Sometimes Chrome & ARC...)

[Lunarie]

Gmail is indeed a pain to set up in email clients. Having tried in Vivaldi Mail and Thunderbird with emails not appearing. Since the problem is persistent I reckon Google just doesn't care about POP/IMAP mail at all.

[Ayespy]

@RDKist Are you using OAuth2? That's how I set up GMAil in Vivaldi Mail, and it just works. First time, every time, on every machine. It's not at all a "pain" to set up. It just works.

[RDKist]

@Lunarie
Gmail's documents do stress using IMAP over POP3, but also give conflicting information as to correct setup, stressing OAuth on some pages but not on others.
Have used POP3 for so long that am reluctant to switch to IMAP: only download email to a single desktop, but ACCESS it via web on multiple other devices (phone, tablet, laptop...), so leave all mail on the server, essentially using Gmail as a secondary back-up location.

Alas, I was over enthusiastic about T'bird's connection to Gmail: it filled in a Few Days worth of emails for several accounts (not all...), but then stopped, leaving 2 accounts 3 days behind, and 2 with more than a week's mail missing.
(Sigh...)

[edwardp]

This Google Support inquiry from 2019, indicates an app-specific password is required if the user wants to use POP3 with Gmail.

OAuth works with IMAP.

[RDKist]

@Ayespy said in Vivaldi Mail not connecting to Gmail ("rant"):

Are you using OAuth2?

Gmail's own "help" pages conflict on that point, but with T'bird: Yes, all accounts are set for "Authentication Method = OAuth2"

As for Vivaldi: Removed the 'test' account yesterday. Going back in to create it again:
Do not see an Authentication Option under Mail Accounts: simply "Connection Security" for Incoming and Outgoing, both of which default to SSL/TLS.
Vivaldi also fills in a Different Outgoing Server port than T'bird uses, but Vivaldi also shows "Verified" at the bottom of the Servers dialog.

Check the actual Mail page in Vivaldi: Well, I'll be D**ned: 250 Emails have Magically appeared for the account that I JUST set up (after deleting it yesterday...): It appears to be a RANDOM assortment of emails, ranging in date from 5/31/2017 to 1/03/2025.
That leaves the account a week behind (which is also true to T'bird at the moment). Triggering Vivaldi to Download more messages results in a message of fetching 252: downloads end on Tue (Jan 7) - apparently Vivaldi (or gmail?) only processes 250 or so at a time ( - ? - ).

This last group of 250 all seem to be recent. Will hope to find a way to "block" downloads of Very Old emails - don't need to clog up Vivaldi with emails that already exist in T'bird (and which are Indexed by Copernic as well as T'bird's on Search function).

Thanks for replying - will pursue the idea of "Date Limits" for downloads, AND muck around a bit with Vivaldi Mail features / functions (Filters? Indexing / Searching...).

[RDKist]

@edwardp said in Vivaldi Mail not connecting to Gmail ("rant"):

This Google Support inquiry from 2019, indicates an app-specific password is required if the user wants to use POP3 with Gmail.

My T'bird accounts (4) are all set up with POP3 and OAuth - and have worked fine until early this year (2025). Currently 2 of them do not appear to be connecting at all (well: T'bird shows a "working" graphic, but no emails are downloaded), while the other 2 have managed to get msgs dates past Jan1 - but are still missing about a week's worth of email.

(As noted in a separate reply, Vivaldi has "magically" connected to the gmail account I was using as a "test" - although the downloaded messages prior to Jan 1, 2025 appear to have been Randomly selected (and have not had time to compare Vivaldi's list to that on the server to ensure it has received ALL the Jan 1, 2025 & on emails).

Thanks for replying.

[Ayespy]

@RDKist My best recollection is that GMail (as of sometime this year) no longer accepts OAuth2 to authenticate POP3 mail. They only accept it for IMAP. All of my accounts are being used over IMAP.

[RDKist]

@Ayespy
Thanks again. Have tried moving Gmail to IMAP - T'bird, Outlook, eM Client and Vivaldi all still fail.
Even created a New Gmail email, and none of these clients is able to access it via POP or IMAP.
(New Gmail account is able to send & receive using Outlook, as well an existing Gmail account - but no luck with downloading emails.)

Suspect I must be missing Something Obvious, but have followed all of the Gmail Help articles (on Google) as well as the set up instructions (such as they are) for the various clients.

As of now, it looks like the only option is to start moving correspondents over to Outlook.com emails. Not thrilled about that - don't care for the interface & have some concerns about the "New Outlook" - but this has become an exercise in absurd frustration.

[Ayespy]

@RDKist Sounds as though the connection is being blocked by some kind of VPN, Proxy or other security software.

[RDKist]

@Ayespy
That was my thought, so gave email a try on my laptop - with both NordVPN and Norton defeated - but still no luck.

Received an odd-sounding idea today: to try changing my default browser. Firefox has been my default for years, even though I regularly use Vivaldi (daily - with Brave, Edge, Chrome, and even Arc every now and then....), and it is possible that it (Firefox) somehow interferes with Gmail's "authorization" process.
Seems "odd" on one hand, but have already experienced difficulties on certain web sites using Firefox, so not totally out of the question.
Plan to try setting Vivaldi as default & seeing whether that makes a difference.