Gmail's "Check Mail From Other Accounts" Not Working? Here's What's Going On

If Gmail has stopped pulling in mail from another account, or you've tried to add one under "Check mail from other accounts" and the setup won't go through, the most likely cause in 2026 is Google itself: the feature is being switched off. It's not the only possible cause though, and the fix depends on which problem you've actually got, so it's worth two minutes of checking before you change anything.

The background, briefly. Google is removing Gmail's ability to fetch mail from external POP3 accounts, along with Gmailify. Its support page says new setups stopped being supported after the first quarter of 2026, and that existing users keep the feature until January 2027.¹ Treat that January 2027 date as a ceiling rather than a promise, though. Google's own banner in Gmail warned the features would start going away in early January 2026, Gmailify shutdown warnings appeared in the Gmail app that month,² and people have been reporting fetch connections stopping ever since, with press coverage in January already describing accounts cut off.³ I've written up the full timeline separately. The one reassuring part, straight from Google's page: mail that's already been fetched into Gmail stays there.¹ Nothing you already have disappears.

First, check what Gmail is actually telling you

Open Gmail, then Settings, See all settings, Accounts and Import, and find "Check mail from other accounts", assuming the section still shows for you.⁴ Each account listed there has a "Check mail now" link and a line saying when mail was last checked.

Click "Check mail now" and watch what happens:

• If the last-checked time updates and no error appears, the fetch still works and your problem is elsewhere. Most often the other mailbox simply has no new mail, or the mail is arriving but being filtered; check Spam and All Mail.
• If you get an authentication or password error, the other provider has probably changed something, not Google. This has been common through 2025 and 2026: several ISPs have moved their mailboxes onto Yahoo's platform (Frontier in 2024, Cox through 2024 and 2025, Comcast in waves since June 2025),⁵ and once that happens your normal password stops working for POP3 and you need an app password generated in the account's security settings.⁶ AT&T addresses need a "secure mail key" for the same reason.⁷ Fix the credentials and the fetch can come back, at least until the shutdown reaches you.
• If you get a connection or "server not found" error, the provider may have moved or retired its POP3 server. Check their currently published settings rather than the ones you set up years ago.
• If clicking does nothing, or the account has quietly vanished from the list, that's most likely the shutdown itself. There's nothing to repair.

One warning before you try anything drastic: the old troubleshooting advice for a stuck fetch was to delete the account and add it back. Don't. New setups are blocked now, so if you delete a connection that still works, you won't be able to re-add it.¹

"But Google said January 2027"

That is still the official end date for people who already had it set up.¹ The rollout hasn't matched the page, though. Google's messaging has been inconsistent from the start (the in-Gmail banner said early January 2026, the support page says January 2027), and accounts have been losing the feature at different times in between. "Mine stopped in March" and "January 2027" are both true, just for different accounts. If yours has stopped, it isn't coming back, and there's no setting to re-enable it.

What to do instead

You need something else to bring that mail into Gmail. The realistic options: have the provider forward new mail to your Gmail address (free where it's supported, but it only covers new mail and forwarded messages sometimes trip Gmail's spam filter), add the account to the Gmail mobile app over IMAP (works, but only on your phone, not in the web inbox), use a desktop client like Thunderbird to pull an old mailbox across once, or use a service that logs into the POP3 account on a schedule and imports the mail into Gmail, which is the closest thing to what the built-in feature did. I've compared these properly in a separate post if you want the detail.

That last option is what I built PopRelay for. You give it the same POP3 details you'd given Gmail, it checks the account on a schedule and adds anything new to your Gmail using the Gmail API. It only asks Google for permission to add messages and labels, so it can't read or delete what's already in your account, and the POP3 password is encrypted before it's stored. If the account that's stopped fetching is one you'd like to keep reading in Gmail, you can set it up in a few minutes. And if forwarding covers your case, do that first, it's free.

Sources

1. Google, "Learn about upcoming changes to Gmailify & POP in Gmail", accessed 3 July 2026.
2. 9to5Google, "Google shutting down Gmailify after nearly 10 years", 23 January 2026.
3. Forbes, "Google Confirms Bad News For Gmail Users", 9 January 2026.
4. Google, "Check emails from other accounts", accessed 3 July 2026.
5. Xfinity, "Upgrade your Comcast.net email to Yahoo Mail"; Frontier, "Frontier email is now handled by Yahoo"; Cox, "Cox.net email transitioning to Yahoo". All accessed 3 July 2026.
6. Yahoo, "Generate and manage third-party app passwords", accessed 3 July 2026.
7. AT&T, "What is a secure mail key and how do I use it?", accessed 3 July 2026.