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"Myth: I've heard two factor authentication doesn't work in IMAP and POP"

I've found this to be true - to a certain extent. I had two factor authentication turned on and found it to be a nightmare in OSX Mail. Failures to retrieve mail, asking for my password constantly, etc. I was resetting the application passwords every two days. I tried to research a fix, but in the end it became less of a hassle just to turn it off and have my email work 100% of the time.

It's probably a bug in Mail.app in Lion, but I can't say my experiences with two factor auth have been positive.



Definitely a bug in Mail.app, not 2FA. I had no problem with 2-way on IMAP on Lion, Mountain Lion, iOS 5 or iOS 6. But as I use Mail.app constantly I can assure you that it's desperately buggy. At times I had it laying around downloading gigabytes and gigabytes of Gmail mail again and again and again until I took pity and kill it.


Make sure you're using an application-specific password for any application that doesn't support two factor authentication - eg, Mail.app on Lion.

Thats what they're for.


I remember having to generate the 2 or 3 times, but it did eventually work for me, on several gmail accounts. That is with both Lion and Mountain Lion.




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