Gmail adds tweaks to IMAP

Those of us who rely on gmail for our everyday communications have a few little gripes when it comes to mobile access — and one big one.

That whopper namely comes in gmail's finicky IMAP (wikipedia def) support in that it uses "labels" instead of true folders like the rest of the civilized world. It's not that the labels are evil, it's just that they don't play well outside the Google sandbox.

Google has, however, recently implemented some new settings that allow you to pick and choose which labels are synced over IMAP. This should have different results depending on what you're using to pull (or push) in your gmail, so YMMV. We're still waiting on true push e-mail from the Big G, but we'll take any improvements we can get in the meantime.

Give it a shot, and let us know in the comments how it works for you.

Gmail Blog: Advanced IMAP Controls