Gmail is quietly eradicating a characteristic that might cease emails from reaching your inbox

On the subject of e mail suppliers, Google’s Gmail is likely one of the hottest all over the world. So when it instantly decides to shake up its companies, it could actually have an effect on lots of people. And to begin off the brand new 12 months, Google is doing precisely that.

Google has announced that it’ll finish help for POP3 on January 20, 2026. Meaning when you at the moment use POP3 to fetch emails from third-party accounts into your Gmail inbox, this setup will cease working.

“Gmail will now not help checking emails from third-party accounts by POP,” Google defined. “The choice to ‘Verify mail from different accounts’ will now not be obtainable in Gmail in your laptop.”

Google quietly shared the information in a support page update, the place the corporate additionally introduced “modifications” to Gmailify — a characteristic that lets third-party e mail accounts benefit from Gmail instruments like spam safety and inbox group. Nevertheless, the change Google is making right here is sort of drastic, because it’s merely shutting Gmailify down altogether, saying it “will now not present help” for the characteristic. Like POP3, Gmailify help will finish on January 20, 2026.

Why is Google doing this?

Google says resorting to its cellular app or computerized e mail forwarding are options

In its help web page put up, Google did not clarify why it determined to finish help for POP. That mentioned, one motive being speculated is safety (through TechRadar). The POP3 protocol requires sharing passwords in plain textual content, which is not precisely essentially the most safe strategy — particularly in 2026. Additionally, shutting down POP may simply be one other means Google is making an attempt to persuade customers emigrate to Gmail for all their e mail companies.

As for Gmailify, Google did not provide an official rationalization for shutting that down both. However because it was carefully tied to POP as a companion characteristic, it appears Google determined that with POP on the way in which out, Gmailify goes with it. Gmailify launched in 2016 to carry Gmail’s options to different e mail accounts customers nonetheless use, like Yahoo! Mail and Outlook, however 10 years later, it appears Google has determined that if individuals need Gmail options like spam safety, they’re going to have to migrate to the service fully.

Moreover, when you’ll now not be capable to fetch emails from third-party accounts into Gmail in your PC, Google says you may nonetheless use the Gmail mobile app on Android, iOS, and iPadOS to learn and ship emails from different accounts. These connections depend on IMAP, which is mostly thought-about safer than POP because it helps encryption.

For those who primarily use Gmail on a PC, the one answer Google recommends is establishing computerized e mail forwarding to proceed receiving messages from third-party accounts in your Gmail inbox as soon as POP help ends. Companies like Outlook and Yahoo! Mail help this.

Gmail’s help for POP and Gmailify ends on January 20, 2026, so when you depend on each options, you continue to have a while to search out an alternate earlier than Google absolutely pulls the plug.

In different Gmail information, Google has additionally been testing the power for customers to change their Gmail address, although the tech big hasn’t confirmed whether or not that characteristic will finally roll out to everybody.