Gmail is ending POP fetching, Gmailify and "Send as" for other accounts: what to do before January 2027

Gmail has two long-standing features for people with more than one email address. Check mail from other accounts fetches mail from another mailbox by POP, so an old Yahoo, Outlook.com or internet provider address lands in your Gmail inbox. Gmailify does the same for some providers while adding Gmail’s spam filter and categories. A third, Send as, lets you reply from that other address without leaving Gmail.

Google is removing all three for addresses not hosted by Google. The first announcement, early in 2026, covered POP and Gmailify and was widely reported as ending in January 2026. Google has since changed the timeline and added Send as. This article is based on Google’s current help pages, read on 4 November 2026.

What Google has confirmed

Google’s page on the changes to Gmailify and POP now says: “After the first quarter of 2026, this feature no longer supports new users. Existing users can still use the feature until January 2027.”

A second page, on changes to third-party email account support, adds Send as and gives the full timeline:

So if you already use these features, they still work today, and you have until January 2027. If you try to set up POP fetching or Gmailify now, the option may not be there. Google gives no exact day in January, so treat the start of the month as the deadline.

“Third-party” means any address not hosted by Google: Yahoo, Outlook.com and Hotmail, internet providers’ mailboxes, and business addresses at a web host. Google says “Gmail-to-Gmail aliases and Google Workspace ‘Send as’ functionality is not affected”, so sending as another Gmail address, or as an alias in a Google Workspace account, carries on.

What keeps working

• Mail already fetched stays in Gmail. Google: “All messages synced before the deprecation stay in Gmail.”
• The Gmail phone app. On Android, iPhone and iPad you can still add a Yahoo, Outlook or other account and read and send from it. The app connects to that account directly by IMAP, so the mail stays in the other mailbox; it is not copied into your Gmail.
• Forwarding into Gmail. You can still set the other provider to forward incoming mail to your Gmail address.
• One-time import. Gmail on the web can still import mail and contacts from another account, but “this is a one-time import, and messages do not sync continuously.”
• Other apps reading Gmail. Outlook, Thunderbird or Apple Mail can still connect to your Gmail account by IMAP or POP. Only Gmail fetching from others is ending.

Gmailify users also lose what Gmailify added to the other account: Google lists spam protection, better notifications on mobile, inbox categories and faster search with advanced operators.

Forwarding is not a full replacement

Google’s suggested replacement for POP fetching is automatic forwarding from the other provider. It covers one thing POP did, new mail arriving in Gmail, but not the rest:

• It only sends new mail. Nothing already in the old mailbox is copied, and if POP fetching stopped working before you set up forwarding, mail that arrived in between stays behind.
• It does not include what you sent. Your Sent folder in the old account is not forwarded.
• You cannot reply as the old address from Gmail on the web after January 2027. That was Send as. Replies will come from your Gmail address unless you use the old provider’s own site, the Gmail phone app, or a desktop mail app.
• Not every provider offers it free. Yahoo’s forwarding help page starts: “Upgrade to Yahoo Mail Plus to use the email forwarding feature in your Settings”, and says it is not available everywhere. Outlook.com has forwarding in its settings. For an internet provider’s or web host’s mailbox, look in its webmail settings or ask the provider.

Before January 2027: keep a full copy of the old account

Most people who used POP fetching treated Gmail as the place where the old address’s mail lived. That works for mail already fetched, but the old mailbox may hold more: mail from before you set up fetching, the Sent folder, folders you sorted mail into, and anything a POP setting left on the server. When the feature goes, it is worth taking one complete copy of the old mailbox while you still have the password and the account still exists.

Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live. Microsoft’s page on exporting an Outlook.com mailbox says you can export it “to a .pst file using new Outlook for Windows or classic Outlook for Windows”, and that classic Outlook can do it “in Reduced Functionality Mode without a Microsoft 365 subscription”. The PST includes “email, contacts, and calendar up to the date you created the file.” Our guide to exporting Outlook to PST covers the steps.

Yahoo. Yahoo runs a separate server for downloading a whole mailbox into a mail app: export.imap.mail.yahoo.com, port 993, with SSL. Yahoo’s instructions include three warnings worth reading before you start:

• If your app asks whether to “keep mail on the server”, choose yes, “or your email will be deleted from your account when it’s downloaded.”
• Some apps download only a preview of each email until you open it; set the app to download full messages for offline use.
• “Folders containing upwards of 100 thousand or more emails may have issues downloading all the messages”, and a large mailbox can take several days.

An internet provider or web host mailbox. Add the account to a desktop mail app (Outlook, Thunderbird or Apple Mail) using IMAP, not POP, so you see every folder, and let it download everything. Then export from the app: classic Outlook exports to PST; Thunderbird and Apple Mail store each folder as MBOX.

The mail already in Gmail. If you want a copy of that too, Google Takeout exports your Gmail as one MBOX file. Google’s Takeout help notes that labels are kept only in “a special X-Gmail-Labels header”, so they do not become folders in other apps. Our guide to Gmail Takeout in Outlook shows what to do about that.

Whichever route you use, check the copy before relying on it: compare the folder counts with the old account and open a few old messages with attachments. Our article on checking that a conversion is complete goes through how.

To look through the result without installing anything, Mailtria’s PST Viewer and MBOX Viewer open the files in your browser, with search and attachments, without uploading them. If you would rather keep everything in one Outlook file, MBOX to PST converts a Takeout or Thunderbird mailbox into a PST.

Choosing what to do next

• The old address is dead or rarely used. Take a full copy, set up forwarding if the provider offers it, and tell your contacts your Gmail address. After January 2027, log in to the old provider occasionally so it does not close the account for inactivity.
• You still need to send as the old address. Use the old provider’s own app or website, add the account to the Gmail phone app, or use a desktop mail app that holds both accounts. Google’s page suggests the same three options. It also warns that third-party services offering to replace Send as “often require access to your email credentials or OAuth tokens”, and recommends against them.
• It is your business address on your own domain. Gmail fetching a business mailbox from a web host is a common setup for small businesses, and Send as was what made it work. The long-term fix is to host the domain’s email somewhere that handles both sending and receiving: Google Workspace (whose Send as is not affected), Microsoft 365, or the web host’s own mailbox in a mail app. If you send from your domain through any service, your domain’s SPF, DKIM and DMARC records need to allow it; our article on the Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook.com sender rules explains what they must say.
• It is a work or school account. Google notes that your administrator “can help migrate your email data into Google Workspace”. Ask before exporting anything yourself; your organisation may have rules about copies of work mail.

What is still unclear

Google has not given an exact day in January 2027. Its pages do not say whether Google Workspace accounts, as opposed to personal Gmail accounts, lose POP fetching and Gmailify on the same dates; Workspace administrators should check the Admin console and Google’s Workspace announcements. Earlier coverage that gives January 2026 as the end date reflects Google’s first announcement, not the current timeline.

Sources

• Google Gmail Help: Learn about upcoming changes to Gmailify & POP in Gmail, Learn about changes to third-party email account support in Gmail, Send emails from a different address or alias.
• Google Account Help: How to download your Google data.
• Microsoft Support: Export your Outlook.com mailbox, Turn on or off automatic forwarding in Outlook.com.
• Yahoo Help: Download your email from Yahoo Mail with IMAP, Enable automatic email forwarding in New Yahoo Mail.