How to Enable or Disable POP in Gmail

Quick and easy-to-follow guide for Gmail users

You can enable or disable POP access to your Gmail account and control how POP works.

What is POP

  • POP works by contacting your email service and downloading all your new messages.
  • Once downloaded onto your device, emails usually get deleted from the email service. When this is the case, you can only access them using the same device.
  • With POP, sent mail gets stored locally on your device, not on the email server.

When to enable or disable POP

  • Enable it when you want to add your Gmail account to other services, such as Outlook.
  • Disable it to prevent third-party applications from using POP to access your account.

How to manage your POP settings in Gmail step-by-step with images

Step 1

How To Enable Or Disable POP In Gmail - Step 1

Open Gmail https://gmail.com and click the Settings gear icon in the top right.

Step 2

How To Enable Or Disable POP In Gmail - Step 2

Select See all settings.

Step 3

How To Enable Or Disable POP In Gmail - Step 3

Select Forwarding and POP/IMAP.

Step 4

How To Enable Or Disable POP In Gmail - Step 4

Next to POP download, there are two settings.

Turn POP on or off

​1. Status: lets you enable or disable POP. 

You can also choose to only Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on. 

For example, this may be useful if you set up the Check mail from other accounts feature. By default, it works by importing all your past and future mail perpetually. So if you don’t want to import all your past mail, set POP to Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on.

Choose what happens with emails accessed with POP

2. When messages are accessed with POP lets you control POP better. When you access emails with POP:

  • Keep the original copy in the original mailbox (recommended)
  • Mark the original copy as read
  • Archive the original copy
  • Delete the original copy


Make sure to click the Save Changes button at the bottom after any updates.

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