[Users] Using Claws mail and Gmail

[Dustin Miller]

On Wed, 15 Jun 2022 17:46:43 +0200
meator <meator.dev at gmail.com> wrote:

> I am trying to use Claws mail with my Gmail account. ... I have tried
> to follow https://www.claws-mail.org/faq/index.php/Oauth2. One part
> of the article is a little disturbing:
> 
> > This results in the status changing to ‘In Production’ and a new
> > section ‘Verification Status’ showing with a ‘Needs verification’
> > status, which can be safely ignored.  
> 
> When I try to do this, I am requested to provide:
> 
DM: Hi, meator. I'm not clear on whether you are just trying to get it
to work or whether you are uncomfortable using it in a 'Needs
verification' status. If you're just trying to get it to work, then
(unless things have changed on Google's end recently), you should be
able to just click on the 'Confirm' button (in the window mentioning
the list of things you need for verification) and continue on, as
mentioned in Note 3 of the OAuth2 FAQ. (If that doesn't work for some
reason, then it would be helpful to edit the FAQ accordingly. However,
I'm guessing it will work, since I'm still using this status without
any problems.) If you are uncomfortable with using it with this status,
then I don't know of any other way to use OAuth2 with Gmail in Claws,
and you'll likely want to go with 2FA and an app password. My
understanding is that the 'Needs verification' status is just a Google
thing, rather than indicating some sort of security issue. If you are
comfortable using Google / Gmail and Claws Mail, then you should be
able to just click on 'Confirm' and continue / complete the setup to
get it working.

DM: Also, note that (because of recent changes on Google's side) there
isn't yet a current official Claws release that will work for setting
this up with 'In Production' status, so you will need to go with the git
(development) version for now if you want to use that setup.
> 
> 1. An official link to your app's Privacy Policy
> 2. A YouTube video showing how you plan to use the Google user data
> you get from scopes
> 3. A written explanation telling Google why you need access to
> sensitive and/or restricted user data
> 4. All your domains verified in Google Search Console
> 
> I am not willing to make a YouTube video showing how I plan to login
> to Claws mail, nor to do the other things. This solution doesn't seem
> to be usable for a single user, but please correct me if there is
> another solution to this.
> 
> This means that the only way to authenticate to Gmail is to keep the
> project in 'Testing' status. This would mean that I have to recreate
> the project every seven days. I don't think this is a suitable
> approach.
> 
> Based on these facts, I assume that Claws mail doesn't support using
> Gmail accounts. Is that correct?
> 
DM: As Paul mentioned, this is not correct. There are hoops you need to
jump through and Google will 'complain' along the way, but Claws Mail
does support this. ---Dustin