{"id":1491,"date":"2016-05-10T09:40:52","date_gmt":"2016-05-10T13:40:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.computeradvantage.us\/v3\/?p=1491"},"modified":"2016-05-06T14:57:25","modified_gmt":"2016-05-06T18:57:25","slug":"why-imap-is-better-than-pop-for-email","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.computeradvantage.us\/v3\/why-imap-is-better-than-pop-for-email\/","title":{"rendered":"Why IMAP Is Better than POP for Email"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u00a0When you read an email message on your iPhone and delete it, do you have to trash it again when you check mail on your Mac? Or is your email kept in sync such that if you delete a message on one system, it never even appears on the other?<\/div>\n
\n

If you fall into the first camp, your Internet service provider probably has you using an email technology called POP. Conversely, if you\u2019re in the second camp, you\u2019re probably using a different email technology called IMAP. Don\u2019t worry what POP and IMAP stand for\u2014they could be called Fred and Jane for all that it matters. What does matter is that if you\u2019re using POP to read email on more than one device, you\u2019re wasting time and effort.<\/p>\n

Put simply, POP was designed in 1984 so that every email message would be downloaded from your mail server and immediately deleted from the server, so the only copy would exist on your Mac. But that made it impossible to check email from more than one computer, so POP\u2019s designers made it possible for a message to be downloaded but not deleted, so it could be retrieved again by another computer. But the POP server has no way of knowing that the message was transferred multiple times, so each computer that gets it sees it as a fresh message, forcing you to delete or file it in each place.<\/p>\n

In contrast, IMAP, which came along just a couple of years later in 1986, was designed to keep all your email on the mail server itself so multiple computers could access the same set of messages. And, most important, anything you do to a message\u2014delete, file, or reply\u2014in your email app on one computer also happens on the IMAP server, so if you check email from another computer, your email collection reflects all those previous actions.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to today, where you might check email with your Mac at work, with your iPhone while at lunch, and on your iPad at home. If your Internet service provider is using IMAP, anything you do on any of your devices is reflected on all the rest. As an extra bonus, you can search through all your email at any time, from any device, which is great when you realize you need the address for today\u2019s meeting after you\u2019re in the car.<\/p>\n

But some ISPs still rely on POP, and for those of you who have had the same email account for many years, even if your ISP supports IMAP, they may not have switched you over. If your email is stuck in the POP past, call your ISP and bring your email into the 21st century. If they aren\u2019t willing to help, remember that you can always use your free iCloud email account instead or sign up for a free account with Gmail or Yahoo.<\/p>\n

For those who are shaking your heads because you don\u2019t want some IMAP server in the cloud to hold the only copy of your precious email, rest assured that it doesn\u2019t have to be that way. By default, Apple Mail downloads a copy of every message and keeps it locally on your Mac too, so even if something bad were to happen in the cloud, you\u2019d still have your local copy and your backups of it.<\/p>\n

Life is too short to waste time dealing with the same email messages on multiple devices. Computers and smartphones are supposed to make things easier, not harder, so if you\u2019re not already using IMAP for email, do yourself a favor and switch.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In today\u2019s multi-device world, where you might check email on your Mac at work, your iPhone while out and about, and your iPad in the evening, you shouldn\u2019t be trashing or filing each message on each device\u2014once is enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1495,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[39,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-tips"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.computeradvantage.us\/v3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/POP-IMAP-email-sculpture-1080x675.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6YLEm-o3","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":25932,"url":"http:\/\/www.computeradvantage.us\/v3\/reach-out-and-3d-touch-something\/","url_meta":{"origin":1491,"position":0},"title":"Reach Out and 3D Touch Something","author":"computeradv","date":"October 24, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"3D Touch seemed a bit gimmicky in iOS 9 and when only the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus supported it, but with the release of iOS 10 and the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, Apple and third-party developers are incorporating 3D Touch throughout the iPhone experience. 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