Summary
- Gmail app for Android supports external email accounts, allowing easy mailbox switching.
- Widespread reports of app crashes due to external accounts led to Google acknowledging the issue.
- Users affected by crashes can try clearing the app cache, but Google has rolled out a fix. However, it doesn’t say the issue is fully resolved.
Gmail is pre-installed on most Android phones, and we usually don’t mind it either, because you need a Google account to set up an Android device anyway. A little-known feature of its Android app is support for external email accounts, like the one for your workplace or that old Yahoo address you created in college, making it one of our favorite apps too. Ideally, you can conveniently switch between mailboxes in a heartbeat. However, the Gmail app for Android is currently receiving a bit of digital CPR, since the external email accounts are causing crashes.
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If you don’t like switching between dedicated email apps from every provider, you can use one client for them all. You’ll find this setting in the Gmail app for Android under the Profile picture → Add another account. Once a non-Google email account is added, you simply switch between mailboxes with a few taps. However, users with Yahoo accounts added to the app this way recently reported that switching to the external inbox and opening any conversation made the app crash immediately.
Reports on Reddit were widespread, and the popular outage tracking platform, DownDetector, also recorded a spike at around 7:30 PM on January 24. Some affected users managed to restore normal operation by clearing the app cache and data, but it didn’t work for everyone, but it is a cumbersome task to set up your email account again once you clear the app data.
Google takes cognizance, fixes en route
No workarounds for now
Google’s Workspace Status Dashboard took cognizance of the matter at 9:03 PM EST on the same day, a couple of hours after user reports started piling in. The company confirmed there are no known workarounds and has maintained that stance.
Nearly 24 hours have passed since then, and at the time of writing, Google says it has rolled out a fix to mitigate the issue, and it is recording a decline in the app crash rate. However, the dashboard continues calling this a service disruption, and doesn’t say that normal operations have resumed for all affected users. We continue monitoring the situation and will update this article when Google confirms you can use external accounts normally again. The next update from Google was expected at 9:30 AM PST, but we haven’t heard since.
