You don’t want to tick “Sent” because Gmail automatically keeps a copy of your sent messages and puts them in its ‘send mail folder’ so Apple mail does not need to. If you select this option all these draft emails get stored in your gmail Drafts folder and you end up with lots of clutter! You don’t want to tick “Drafts.” Every few minutes Apple mail makes a backup copy of your email as you are typing it. You pretty much need to set them to the opposite of the Apple default. Tick the ‘Junk’ and un-tick everything else like this: There are some settings you should change here. – You will be taken back to the Apple Mail preferences screen. It should say that the Account type is “Gmail IMAP” as follows: It will then verify that the email address and password are correct and then display a confirmation screen. Where it says ‘password’ enter your Gmail password from step 1 above.Where it says ’email address’ put in your Gmail email address from step 1 above including the at the end.Where it says ‘full name’ enter your name, this is not important but it will appear in the ‘ from’ field and can be anything.– Press the ‘+’ button – this means add a new account. From here you can manage your mail accounts. – Open Apple mail, and go to the “Mail’ menubar at the top of the screen and then select ‘Preferences’ from the menu. Enter your Gmail details into Apple mail on your iMac, Mac Mini or Macbook. Now it’s time to set up the Apple mail application on your computer.Ģ. – When you have finished you should get a verification page that says this at the bottom: – Fill in the details – you’ll need to pick a gmail email address and a password. (If you already have a Google Gmail account you can skip this step – but you will need to know your and it’s password) There is a newer article about this topic here (2018) but I have kept this older article (2013) for those who have an older version of OS X or an older version of Apple Mail. Here’s how to use Gmail from Apple’s mail app and also how to set up Gmail on your iPhone or iPad.

Apple mail is very nice to use and you can set it to use a Gmail account. But the Gmail web interface is a bit clunky.

Gmail is free and it has great spam protection.

Despite their differences, Apple and Google do work well together when it comes to email.

Clear apple mail preferences