[SOLVED] Evolution suddenly running very slow and rescanning gmail

mcloaked · 2026-01-24 14:25:21

Since yesterday I have had hour different machines that run Evolution email in Plasma, all rescanning folders on startup and taking tens of minutes without completing, where previously it was running without issue.

Has anyone else had this happen, and if so is there a workaround to get it working normally again? I did see that gmail has had some issues on the 20th January, so it could be due to changes on the gmail servers rather than any problematic package updates in the past couple of days.

Last edited by mcloaked (2026-01-25 10:00:53)

mcloaked · 2026-01-24 14:56:43

I am wondering if the recent changes to gmail including removal of several features such as pop3 (which I am not using) as well as bringing in Gemini, may be contributing to this or whether the configs need to be changed in Evolution for particular parameters of any gmail account need to be changed?

seth · 2026-01-24 15:50:52

Is it continuously slow (even after restarting evolution)?

gmail's imap support is rather theoretical and poor and I more often then never encounter mutt stalling on it (so I restart mutt) and sometimes the imap sync progresses rather slow but returns to normal after an inbox switch, but that's a loooooooong standing issue, no notable changes in the past days.

mcloaked · 2026-01-24 16:09:04

It has been running fine and quick without issue for years for me - just yesterday on all my machines as soon as evolution starts it seems to be re-scanning every gmail mail. I have a laptop doing it - and it has been running with status messages along the bottom of the evolution window with Refreshing/Filtering/Storing/Fetching summary.... that last one says 83% after an hour and a half. I have just set off a second machine to let Evolution run and it is now doing exactly the same as the first machine.

Even if I deleted the gmail account, and set it up from scratch it would then need some considerable time to sync the mail - so at the moment I will leave it running and see if it actually completes in a few hours! Certainly if has not behaved like this before yesterday. All my gmail accounts are set up as iMap in evolution with the latest Oauth authentication so I am not aware of having anything out of date that should be changed. I don't know if the current changes that Google has made to introduce AI processing within gmail are rolling out to individual accounts over an extended period or all at once, and whether the removal of some of the authentication protocols are again all at an instant, or rolling out to individual accounts over a period also.

This is the Google Blog about some of the changes from earlier in the month: https://blog.google/products-and-platfo … emini-era/

Accessing gmail on the webmail interface seems normal and familiar and it is just all my evolution setups on various machines that has exhibited the re-scanning behaviour since yesterday.

seth · 2026-01-24 16:36:19

Hmmm… I don't have a fancy AI inbox, but a couple of new ones (virtual, gmail seems to scan and tag mails)
If you're subscribed to all mailboxes instead of just inbox or so you might have multiple views on the same data, resolved as copies via imap resulting in an insanely huge amount of mails?

mcloaked · 2026-01-24 16:46:12

Yes I do have Inbox, Sent as well as All Mail - and you are right about duplicate data - but I am now concerned that gmail may be using AI to constantly alter the metadata, which presumably might trigger evolution to then download all the mail as 'changed'! I also saw that google is changing the use of labels in gmail - so I am not clear exactly how that relates to the various 'folders' in their new system - gmail labels are not the same as folders in the conventional sense - so I would like to have a clear picture of how google and evolution handle these concepts.

mcloaked · 2026-01-24 17:18:38

After three hours evolution seems to have completed its rescan - and has three new mails - clicking on the first,yes, it is taking some time to load....

Edit: After waiting some time Evo continued to grind away and the mails listed are not up to date, with the last few from the past hour not listed. Clicking on the latest it does have, it continued to grind and not load. Eventually after some minutes:

On the evo preview pane it eventually just says "unable to retrieve message Failed to authenticate. Socket I/O timed out.

So evolution is not in a good state now. I don't know if deleting the gmail account and starting from scratch will eventually just reach the same state as it is in now, or whether a from scratch setup will get it working properly again. I am suspicious that there are changes at the server end that evolution cannot handle, but I would like to know if I am the only arch user with this issue, or if others have seen the same behaviour.

If others using evolution with a gmail account set up, and seeing evolution not misbehaving, then I accept my setup is broken - so it would be valuable to know if others don't see the same problems using evolution with gmail as of today.

Edit2: I have just seen one UK newspaper online with a live article about Gmail being not accessible with thousands of users affected and the number affected increasing. So I will to see if this gets resolved. In the meantime I had deleted my gmail evolution account and set it up from scratch but it was spinning and not updating - so I will report back once Google gets the problem that us currently being reported, as resolved.

Edit3: Google status shows they are working on gmail current problems: https://www.google.com/appsstatus/dashb … 6annsfytjQ

Last edited by mcloaked (2026-01-24 19:11:01)

mcloaked · 2026-01-25 09:27:40

After checking the Gmail incident status page, it seems that Google took some hours to resolve the problems with Gmail yesterday, but the status is now showing the issue is resolved. Firing up Evolution this morning it is positively whizzing through the email re-syncing so if that completes normally today, and working as normal I will update the title to solved once that has completed.

mcloaked · 2026-01-25 10:00:15

Evolution behaviour has returned completely to normal and works as it always did before yesterday. So it seems that there were no problems at all with any Arch packages, or Evolution, and all the issues were entirely due to problems with the Gmail servers. So I will now mark this as solved.

Arch Linux

#1 2026-01-24 14:25:21

[SOLVED] Evolution suddenly running very slow and rescanning gmail

#2 2026-01-24 14:56:43

Re: [SOLVED] Evolution suddenly running very slow and rescanning gmail

#3 2026-01-24 15:50:52

Re: [SOLVED] Evolution suddenly running very slow and rescanning gmail

#4 2026-01-24 16:09:04

Re: [SOLVED] Evolution suddenly running very slow and rescanning gmail

#5 2026-01-24 16:36:19

Re: [SOLVED] Evolution suddenly running very slow and rescanning gmail

#6 2026-01-24 16:46:12

Re: [SOLVED] Evolution suddenly running very slow and rescanning gmail

#7 2026-01-24 17:18:38

Re: [SOLVED] Evolution suddenly running very slow and rescanning gmail

#8 2026-01-25 09:27:40

Re: [SOLVED] Evolution suddenly running very slow and rescanning gmail

#9 2026-01-25 10:00:15

Re: [SOLVED] Evolution suddenly running very slow and rescanning gmail

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