Workaround to fix Google Blocking Windows 10 native Mail access to GMail as “less-secure app”

It seems many users are facing this issue now, as per tips received by us on Twitter and via mail. We have provided a temporary workaround below that may help. But in long run Microsoft and Google need to sort this out.

Is Google at it again? Windows Phone / Windows 10 Mobile users have suffered a lot because of Google’s tactics to either refuse to bring proper apps for its services like YouTube to the platform or worse it doesn’t allow Microsoft to do so. Windows 10 Mobile / PC native mail client can be used to configure and access “Google Mail or GMail” account and till now it had worked just fine. But seems Google has now started blocking new Google Mail account configuration on Windows 10 Mobile by marking Windows 10 Mail client as “Less secure app”.

How To Fix (Workaround):

After doing a hard reset on my device running the latest Windows 10 Mobile Build 14393, I faced issue while trying to configure the Google Mail account. It kept on throwing error when using “Google” option to add a new mail account so I decided to use “Other accounts” option to add new GMail account. Here are your steps to fix this issue temporarily unless Microsoft & Google fix it.

1. Go to Settings—>Accounts–>Email & App accounts–>Add an account
2. Select Other Accounts from available options
3. Fill in your GMail Id, password and sign in. It will create the GMail account on you phone but sync won’t work as Google will block it in background
4. Then check you GMail inbox for a mail from Google.
5. The mail informs about “Blocked Sign-in attempt for security reasons” and mentions the less secure app as the reason. It also gives you an option to override the setting and allow access to “Less secure apps”.

   

6. After changing the settings to allows less-secure apps you would be able to configure and use your Google Mail access.

But this brings us to the bigger question of whether Google is again using its might to make life of Windows 10 / Windows 10 Mobile users difficult? Do let us know if you have tried to configure Google Mail account on your Windows 10 Mobile device and faced this issue.