Google has added a new feature to Gmail. This feature is Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP)! It will allow you to check your e-mail on Google’s server, rather than downloading them to your computer. This means that anytime you check your e-mail from your laptop, mobile phone and work computer, etc., your e-mail will appear as it did on either device. If you placed an e-mail in a specific folder, it will show up in that folder no matter which device you checked with! Same thing with marking e-mail as read.

I like this, because I have a laptop and a desktop computer. I had once setup a shared Outlook file between the two just so I wouldn’t have to read the same e-mails twice. IMAP is much simpler!

To find this new setting, login to Gmail and view the settings page and click on Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab. If you don’t see this tab, then you may not have this feature, yet. Help for setting this up in Thunderbird, Outlook and iPhone, etc. is also available underneath the option for turning it on. Watch this video for setting it up on the iPhone. Or even read How-to: Proper Gmail IMAP for iPhone & Apple Mail. Although the steps are specifically for the iPhone and Apple Mail, I’m sure you can figure out how to do this for other clients (e.g. Outlook or Windows Live Mail).

It appears that some people are seeing this new feature and some aren’t. So, if you check your settings in Gmail and don’t see it, don’t worry, it’s coming!

Thank you for IMAP, Google!