How to setup IMAP for Gmail? - Part 1

Your Gmail everywhere and anytime

Checking e-mail has become a part of everyone’s daily routine. Gmail came as blessing for many giving users a free no-nonsense e-mail service with loads of free mailbox space. There have many innovative features that have been built around the e-mail service itself. One of the last few improvements was the inclusion of IMAP which seemed to have gone somewhat unnoticed.

What is IMAP?

We’re all used to POP3 and Google has already given us that for free as well, so why should anyone now move to IMAP? IMAp does many things that POP3 doesn’t, and a lot of these features make management of mailboxes much simpler. IMAP allows mails and their statuses to be synchronized with the server all the time. This means you can have multiple clients from different locations getting an update of the mails.

Enabling the IMAP feature on GMail

Before you start with setting up Gmail’s IMAP on any of your devices, you need a Gmail ID if you don’t already have one. Login to your account and click on the settings link on the top. Click on the forwarding and POP/IMAP tab to change the setting. Click on the enable IMAP checkbox on the bottom and click on the save changes button. With this done, Gmail is ready to provide you with its IMAP service.