Gmail Connection
After the most recent Thunderbird update, the connection with my Gmail account has become inconsistent, sometimes taking more than a day for Gmail messages to appear in my Thunderbird Inbox. What has changed, and how do I fix the problem?
Wšykne wótegrona (3)
How many devices do you have connecting to gmail?
3: Win10 desktop PC running Thunderbird, iPhone6 Mail app, and occasionally Android tablet running a mail app. This usage pattern has not changed in years. The only change is the latest update to Thunderbird (and maybe the most recent update to Win10).
The problem now appears to be related to a recent change (unannounced, as far as I know) in the way Gmail deals with VPNs. For many years I've used Thunderbird to pull messages from several Gmail accounts, and for many years I've used the Surfshark VPN. Apparently now, all of a sudden, Google no longer allows access to those accounts while the VPN is activated. Each time I want to get messages, I have to deactivate the VPN for a few minutes. Quite annoying! I've tried to get around the problem by setting Surfshark's bypass function to suspend the VPN only for Gmail, but that doesn't seem to work. In fact, if anything, it may be suspending the VPN for all of Google *except* Gmail. I use Brave as my browser rather than Google Chrome, so I can only hope that these short suspensions of the VPN are not exposing me to hackers....