A few months ago, Microsoft has make available the POP3 access to Hotmail. This means that Hotmail users can now receive/send their mails from their desktop clients. Apparently, Yahoo didn’t think this is a big problem. Until now, they still make the POP3 access exclusive to their premium users.
If you are a Mac and Yahoo user, a good news for you is that you can make use of MacFreePOPs to configure your desktop email client (particularly mail.app) to receive your Yahoo mail. You won’t be able to send mail though. (Windows and Linux users can use the popular YPOPs to configure their desktop clients to access Yahoo)
First download MacFreePop here.
Run MacFrePop. You should see the screen below:
If the update button is available, make sure you click it and update all the internal files. Failure to update the files might render this application useless.
Click on the Extra options to show a list of configuration options. Click on the freepopsd service tab.
Place a check in the first row of options and change the port to 2000 and the address to 127.0.0.1
Once that is done, click on the Start freepopsd service to start the server running.
Now open up your mail.app.
Go to Mail->Preferences and select on the Accounts tab. At the bottom, click on the ‘+’ to add a new mail account.
Enter your name, email address and the password. Leave the “Automatically set up account” option alone.
Click Continue.
Select POP from the dropdown option.
In the Incoming Mail Server field, enter “127.0.0.1“.
In the User Name field, enter the full email address (including the @yahoo.com). Click Continue.
MacFreePop does not allow you to send emails from your Yahoo account, but you can still configure it to send via third party email accounts (or your existing accounts).
At the Outgoing Mail Server dropdown option, choose a setting that you have previously configured. Click Continue.
You should be done with the new account setup. Back in the Account options screen, highlight the newly created account on the left pane and select the Advanced tab on the right pane.
In the Port field, change it to 2000.
Exit the Preferences window.
Back to your Inbox, click on Get Mail. Your mail.app will start to download all your Yahoo emails now.
Troubleshooting
Why can’t I receive emails?
- Make sure that you update all the internal files of MacFreePop by clicking the Update Available button.
- Make sure that you start the freepopsd server before you start to retrieve emails.
- Make sure that in the account setup section, you use ’127.0.0.1′ as the Incoming server.
- Make sure that you have changed the port to 2000 in the Account setup.
Tags: desktop email client, email client, macfreepops, yahoo
