iPhone 2.0, MobileMe and Push Gmail Working

In response to the frustration out there, I have happened upon a working configuration. Yes, that’s right!! I have push gmail on my iPhone. I’m not sure actually why I was so frustrated not to get my email in a split second vs. 15 min or so later…but push email is just cool. And after all, why should blackberry users be the only ones on email crack!?

So here’s what I did:

Sign up for MobileMe – yes, that’s right, it’ll cost you. (Of course yahoo push email is free, but I’m a gmail lover)
Follow usual setup instructions for MobileMe on your computer and iPhone
In gmail settings, forward all incoming mail to your new MobileMe email address, also choose to Archive messages after forwarding (up to you, really).
Make sure you also have your gmail account setup on your iPhone
On iPhone, change the smtp server in the Account settings for MobileMe, to be the smtp.gmail.com that is used by the gmail account. This is the important step: all outgoing email will have the reply-to info replaced by gmail’s smtp server to be your gmail address, not your mobileme address even though it came from there.

Go ahead, test it. Send an email to your gmail account and watch it push instantly to your iPhone! Beautiful, isn’t it.

Here’s another good thing: I was worred that all of my labels in Gmail would not be able to be used now if I’m reading everything and replying using my MobileMe inbox. Well, you can’t do this on your iPhone, but on your desktop, assuming you also have both gmail and mobileme accounts setup in your mail client via IMAP, then you can drag a message from your mobileme inbox to a gmail “folder” (label) and gmail knows how to handle it. In other words, no duplicates. The message is in the Archive (All Mail) and labeled with the new folder/label you dropped it into on the mail client. Nifty, huh?

Well, I just got this setup, so I’ll see how it works for a few days. You may want to try it out too!

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Tags: gmail,

July 15, 2008 - Posted by kmcital | iPhone | gmail, iPhone, mobileme, push email | 15 Comments

15 Comments »

It’d be a lot more cool if you didn’t have to sign up for MobileMe. I’m sure it’ll be a matter of time…

Comment by Matt | July 16, 2008
Matt, agreed. After all it’s Google we’re dealing with. For them not to be out with a cool push solution soon for iPhone would be surprising.

Comment by kmcital | July 16, 2008
I also have Free Push Gmail to the IPhone without having to pay $100.
I’m using mail2web.com Exchange server, is free.

Comment by Rafo | July 17, 2008
why do you bother sending gmail to mobileme? Just have your iphone use gmail with one acct and cal, contacts with another acct. In other words don’t change your IMAP/gmail/iPhone setup and just add cloud sync cal and contacts using mobileme. When/if mobileme can handle email the way you want then you can switch email over too and drop gmail (except for maybe the external address). Of course if google gets there first with cloud cal/contacts/etc that’s better mobileme and works good with iphone then drop mobileme.

Comment by activehawk | July 17, 2008
Isn’t it the actual iphone that doesn’t support imap (gmail) push properly, rather than google itself?

I’ve been trying to get it to work with my own imap mail server with no luck.

Comment by Matthew | July 18, 2008
Here’s what I think about Mobileme and .mac launch:

http://joesummerhays.wordpress.com/

Comment by jwsblog | July 21, 2008
I’m also using the same solution, but it’s still far from perfect.

One flaw is that if you have both accounts setup on your iphone your little red mail indicator will indicate that you have twice the number of mails than you actually have. You then have to go and mark them as read in both places (assuming your not using auto-archiving b/c that makes using gmail from a computer less ideal).

Also if you read the mail in your gmail from the computer it doesn’t mark the iphone version as read.

Comment by Ed | July 27, 2008
I wish I had 99 bucks burning a hole in my pocket.
I’d test this out.

Comment by Dave | July 31, 2008
Ed, you’re right, it is definitely a work around and not a perfect solution. I do have auto archiving turned on in gmail so no dups for me. On my computer I use mac mail and read inbox messages from mobileme inbox there too.

Comment by kmcital | August 3, 2008
For you cheap bastards like me…you don’t need to use mobileme

I’m using ymail for this very reason. I’m forwarding my gmail account to my ymail, but I setup filters to only forward email I want to know about on a “push” basis. I also set the filter to mark the forwarded email to “read” as to not show up as new mail on my gmail account when going into the general mail app. I can also send right from my ymail as it was coming from gmail. Works great and it’s free!

Here are the details of my setup on my blog:
http://whenwillapple.com/saywhy/2008/07/23/my-iphone-gmail-push-work-aroundthanks-ymail/

Comment by dizzy | August 7, 2008
[...] 12/21/08: I found an easier way to deal with this, and happily before I wrote about it I found that someone else already has. I don’t archive my Gmail copies, though; I leave them in my inbox so I can file them in [...]

Pingback by Trick your iPhone (and yourself) into Gmail push « Not Nurse Ratched, RN!! | December 21, 2008
I’m experimenting with a Mobileme trial period, and it works, except for one thing: IMAP.
I have this problem: using Mailpane (a sort of desktop GMail notifier, but cooler), when I’m with my MacBook I’m warned with a sound of the incoming emails. The thing is, Mailplane only warns me when an UNread email gets there. In order to avoid email duplication caused by the lack of IMAP in the “forwarding solution”, I set up GMail to automatically skip inbox by directly archiving incoming emails, thus not warning me on my desktop.
On the other hand, I’m too addicted to IMAP: as of now, just the thinking of me coming home and finding unread emails on my computer (that is to say: on my WEBmail) that I have already read on the phone, is bothering me.

Did you figure a way to: enable IMAP on this particular method of yours? Or letting Mailplane warn me even in archived/automatically mark as read incoming mails on desktop?

Comment by Francesco Minciotti | January 8, 2009
Francesco, I use IMAP everywhere (macbook Mail, iPhone) and everything is in sync.

Comment by kmcital | March 20, 2009
this is an old posting, but i just want to say it’s one of the most simple instructions on how to use mobile me w/ gmail and now i’m able to get push email (and sync my calendar) without any fuss. i love it! thanks

Comment by Lollipop Gomez | May 30, 2009
This is a simple and fantastic solution!

Comment by Giovanni | June 25, 2009