How to setup icloud email account

[Antoine_Chalons]

Hi all,
Id’ like to be aavle to use my iCloud email acount (reading and sending mails) from my fairphone, I’ve searched the web and seen many blog post to explain how to do it but it’s just never working for me…
(here’s the link I used : http://www.androidcentral.com/how-set-your-icloud-email-account-android)

Has anyone managed to do this? What’s the trick?

[ben]

@Antoine_Chalons,

Have you checked the offical documentation by Apple?: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202304

I have two recommendations: Do not use the build in Email “App”, it is reported to be buggy, instead you can use the Gmail-App (if you upgraded to the latest version) or K9mail (F-Droid,Play Store). Then check the imap settings (link above) for you iCloud mail and configure the Account in either of these apps.

[Antoine_Chalons]

thanks for your help, i’ve been trying for a while but it just won’t work, when I try to validate the IMAP settings it keeps failing telling me my username and password are invalid.
this is so frustrating!

[ben]

Which Email-App are you using?

Edit: I just created an iCloud Account from my Mac and sent an email to myself. I can verify the settings from the support document are correct and i have successfully setup iCloud Mail with K9mail.

Some tips:

1. Make sure you use the full email-adress as username, not just your alias, forexample "myname@icloud.com" instead of “myname”.
2. Make sure to check “ssl required” or select “STARTTLS” for both incoming and outgoing mail…
3. Verify you used the server address “imap.mail.me.com”, not “imap.mail.icloud.com”!
4. For sure your entered the right port number, eg. 993 for imap (recieving) and 587 for smtp (sending)

[Antoine_Chalons]

i’ve tried with gmail and k9, the problem is the same i keep getting a failure in authentication, now I’m suspecting it could be because I enabled the 2 steps authentication on my icloud account, I will try to disable that crap.

EDIT : that was it, I just went to my icloud settings from my computer and disables the 2 steps authentication and now i works.

Thanks a lot for your help

[ben]

Ahh, ok!

Great you found the issue!

I would encourage you to re-enable two-factor-authorisation if you still have the nerves to do it and use iCloud app-specific passwords for Email Sync with K9mail. This can improve the security of your data and is easy enough to do, see the support document “Using app-specific passwords” by Apple.

This is the common procedure to support third-party apps while using two-factor-authorisation, Google for example uses the same approach. It works by generating single-purpose, per-app passwords to use with these apps. If you loose your device for example or suspect a breach of K9mail security, you can simply withdraw that password.

Usually that password cannot be used to login into Account Management, so even if that passwords somehow finds a way out of your hands, nobody could highjack your iCloud as easily as if the attacker hat your original account password.