AT&T Email Not Showing Up in Gmail? Secure Mail Keys, and What Replaces the Fetcher

If your att.net mail has stopped showing up in Gmail, or Gmail rejects your password when you try to add the address, there are two separate things going on. AT&T won't let a mail program sign in with your normal AT&T password, only with a secure mail key generated in your AT&T account. And Google is removing "Check mail from other accounts", the Gmail setting that collected the mail in the first place. Both end up looking the same from Gmail's side, a mailbox that quietly stops being checked, so it helps to know which one you've hit.

This applies to every AT&T consumer address, not just att.net. AT&T's settings page lists twelve domains: ameritech.net, att.net, bellsouth.net, currently.com, flash.net, nvbell.net, pacbell.net, prodigy.net, sbcglobal.net, snet.net, swbell.net and wans.net.¹ Yahoo's own announcement adds a thirteenth, worldnet.att.net.² If your address ends in any of those, everything below is for you.

The POP settings

AT&T's settings for any program that collects mail over POP3:¹ ³

For sending, AT&T gives outbound.att.net on port 465 with SSL, again with the secure mail key as the password.³

The secure mail key

This is where most AT&T setups fail. AT&T splits mail apps into two kinds. Apps that send you to AT&T's own sign-in page (the Gmail app on Android, Apple Mail, Outlook Mobile and a few others) use your normal password and nothing changes. Apps that just ask for a username and password need a secure mail key in place of the password.⁴ Gmail's "Check mail from other accounts" is the second kind, and so is anything else that fetches over POP. Your regular AT&T password won't work there however carefully you type it.

To make a key, per AT&T's instructions as of February 2026:⁵

1. Go to your AT&T account profile and sign in.
2. Choose Settings, and check it's showing the email account you want (use Switch if you have more than one).
3. Select "Add secure mail key", give it a nickname, and select Create.
4. Copy the key and paste it where the app asks for your password.

The key is 16 characters. You need a separate one for each AT&T address and subaccount, and AT&T expects one per device or app, so a key you made for Thunderbird years ago isn't the one to reuse.⁵ Keys don't expire, and making one doesn't change your normal password. If you're following an older guide that says Profile, then Sign-in info, then "Manage secure mail key", that's the old layout; the menu has moved, but it's the same thing.

One catch that isn't obvious: AT&T deletes all your secure mail keys whenever it has to lock or block your account.⁵ If a fetch that had been working for years suddenly starts failing on the password, and you remember AT&T making you reset something, that's probably why. Make a new key and update whatever was using the old one.

If you've read my Yahoo post this will sound familiar, and there's a reason. AT&T's mailboxes have run on Yahoo's platform for years, and between June and August 2025 the mail routing for all thirteen domains moved directly onto Yahoo's servers.² ⁶ But AT&T still has its own servers and its own credential: use inbound.att.net and a secure mail key from AT&T, not pop.mail.yahoo.com and a Yahoo app password.

The other half: Gmail's fetcher is going away

Even with a working key, Gmail is closing the door from its side. Google's support page says "Check mail from other accounts" stopped accepting new setups after the first quarter of 2026, and existing users keep it until January 2027.⁷ Mail already fetched stays in Gmail; only the fetching stops. Connections have been switching off in waves since early 2026, so treat January 2027 as the latest it could happen. The full timeline has the detail, and if you're not sure whether it's the fetcher or the key, here's how to tell.

AT&T hasn't said anything about this. I couldn't find a single AT&T page that mentions Google's change, and there's nowhere left to ask: AT&T closed its community forums in June 2024, and forums.att.com now just redirects to a notice saying so.⁸ ⁹

Don't let the mailbox go idle

This one matters more for AT&T than for most. AT&T's policy, updated in June 2026, is that a mailbox not used for 12 months is treated as inactive, and "the mailbox and its contents will be deleted". You can get the address back within three years by signing in, but not the mail or the settings.¹⁰ Plenty of people only ever read their att.net mail through Gmail, and AT&T doesn't say whether a mail program collecting it counts as using it. Whatever you set up, sign in to AT&T Mail on the web now and then so the address doesn't quietly go away.

Keeping AT&T mail in Gmail

Forwarding is less straightforward than it should be. AT&T's own page for Yahoo Mail Plus, the $5-a-month upgrade, lists automatic forwarding as a Mail Plus feature, not part of free AT&T Mail.¹¹ Yahoo's AT&T help pages describe the forwarding steps without mentioning a fee, so check your own settings, but don't count on it being free. If it is available on your account, it only covers mail that arrives from then on, and forwarded messages sometimes land in Gmail's spam folder.

The Gmail app on Android can add an AT&T address using AT&T's own sign-in, so it doesn't need a key at all.⁴ That's fine for reading on your phone, but the mail stays in the AT&T mailbox and never reaches the Gmail web inbox. A desktop client like Thunderbird (with a key) will pull the whole mailbox across as a one-off. I've compared these in more detail.

If you want the old behaviour back, mail from your AT&T address landing in your Gmail inbox on a schedule, that's what I built PopRelay for. You give it the settings in the table above and a secure mail key (make a fresh one just for it, so you can delete that key later without breaking anything else), choose how often to check, and it pulls anything new and adds it to your Gmail through the Gmail API. Nothing is forwarded, so there's no spam-folder problem, and since Gmail's "Send mail as" isn't part of what Google is removing, you can still reply from your AT&T address through outbound.att.net. PopRelay only asks Google for permission to add messages and labels, so it can't read or delete what's already in your inbox, and the key is encrypted before it's stored. It's from the same people behind 33mail.com, running since 2011.

If that fits, you can set it up in a few minutes. Whichever way you go, sort it out before the fetcher reaches its end date, and keep signing in to AT&T Mail now and then so the 12-month rule never catches you.

Sources

1. AT&T, "Get AT&T email server settings", accessed 20 October 2026.
2. Yahoo Postmaster, "Changes to AT&T Mail Routing", 24 June 2025, accessed 20 October 2026.
3. AT&T, "Set up AT&T Mail settings for Microsoft Outlook 2016", accessed 20 October 2026.
4. AT&T, "Use OAuth or a secure mail key for email apps", accessed 20 October 2026.
5. AT&T, "Create a secure mail key", updated 23 February 2026, accessed 20 October 2026.
6. Spam Resource, "ATT to Yahoo transition completed", 1 August 2025, accessed 20 October 2026.
7. Google, "Learn about upcoming changes to Gmailify & POP in Gmail", accessed 20 October 2026.
8. AT&T, "Community Forums has sunset", accessed 20 October 2026.
9. Light Reading, "AT&T kills community forum website amid price hikes", 18 June 2024, accessed 20 October 2026.
10. AT&T, "Check your AT&T Mail", updated 19 June 2026, accessed 20 October 2026.
11. AT&T, "Learn about Yahoo! Mail Plus in partnership with AT&T", accessed 20 October 2026.