macOS Mail app stuck after Gmail password change

Quick answer

Go to System Settings > Internet Accounts, select your Gmail account, turn off Mail, wait 10 seconds, turn Mail back on. That forces a fresh OAuth handshake. No password re-entry needed.

What’s actually happening here

You changed your Gmail password in a browser. macOS Mail doesn't care about your password directly — it authenticates through OAuth 2.0, which uses a refresh token stored in the system keychain. That token is still valid until it expires or gets revoked. The problem is that after a password change, Google sometimes invalidates the refresh token tied to the old session. Mail keeps trying to use the stale token, fails silently, and shows no visible error — just an empty inbox or a spinning beach ball.

This is not a password mismatch. Typing your new password into Mail’s preferences won't help because there's no password field in modern macOS Mail for Gmail. What you're actually doing when you re-enter credentials in the pop-up is re-authorizing the app via OAuth again. But the pop-up often never appears because Mail thinks the old token is still valid.

Fix steps

1. Open System Settings (or System Preferences on Monterey and earlier) > Internet Accounts.
2. Select your Gmail account from the list on the left.
3. Find the toggle for Mail. Turn it off. Wait at least 10 seconds.
4. Turn Mail back on. A browser window will pop up asking you to sign in to Google. Complete the sign-in.
5. Open Mail app. It should start syncing within 30 seconds.

The reason step 3 works is that disabling Mail revokes the OAuth token scope for that service. Re-enabling it triggers a fresh authorization request, which gets a new token from Google. The keychain stores the new token, and everything resumes.

Alternative fixes if the main one fails

Remove and re-add the account

1. In Internet Accounts, select the Gmail account and click Delete Account (or the minus sign).
2. Restart your Mac.
3. Add the account again via Add Account > Google. Sign in and enable Mail.

This nukes the entire token set and starts from scratch. It’s heavier but always works.

Clear the old token from Keychain Access

1. Open Keychain Access (from Applications > Utilities).
2. Search for Gmail or Google.
3. Look for items named like Google OAuth or Gmail OAuth Token. Delete them.
4. Relaunch Mail. It will prompt for a new sign-in.

I only recommend this if you're comfortable poking around the keychain — accidentally deleting the wrong cert can break other services.

Check date and time

This one sounds dumb but catches people: if your Mac's clock is more than a few minutes off, OAuth handshakes fail silently. Go to System Settings > General > Date & Time. Make sure Set time and date automatically is on and pointing to time.apple.com.

Prevention tip

Before changing your Gmail password, revoke the old tokens manually. In a browser, go to Google Account Security, scroll to Third-party apps with account access, click Manage third-party access, find macOS Mail, and remove it. Then change your password. After that, re-add the account on your Mac. This avoids the stale token problem entirely.

If you use an app-specific password for Gmail (usually for older devices), note that macOS Mail on Ventura and later does not support app-specific passwords — it requires OAuth. If you're stuck on an older macOS, you can generate an app password in Google’s security settings and paste it into Mail’s password field. But for Monterey and newer, the OAuth toggle method above is the only way.