Mail.app: connect to IMAP server with STARTTLS

Question

I have an IMAP account on a private server and they said me to configure my mail with a STARTTLS secure connection on the port 993 and authentication with standard password.

How can I set STARTTLS in Mail.app?

Answer 1

I haven't tested this combination, but you should be able to enable it by creating the account as normal (be sure to use IMAP for mailbox access), then going into the Mail application's preferences -> Accounts section -> your account in the list -> Advanced tab, then setting the "Port" entry to 993 and selecting the "Use SSL" checkbox.

A couple of notes may clarify what's going on here:

1. TLS is the new name for the SSL protocol (actually, for newer versions of the protocol); pretty much everywhere you see references to "SSL" they're really talking about TLS
2. There are two ways of initiating TLS (/SSL) for a connection: either connect to a special SSL port and initiate the TLS setup immediately (for example, "http://" URLs connect to port 80, but "https://" URLs connect to port 443 and go directly into TLS setup); or connect to a normal (non-TLS) port for the service and then use the "STARTTLS" command to upgrade the connection to TLS encryption.

The second point is the only worry I have here. Port 993 is normally the special port used for the "imaps" service, the go-straight-into-TLS version of imap. But in this case it sounds like the server provides plain-then-STARTTLS service on port 993, which might confuse Mail.app. I suspect it'll work fine, but I don't have a similar server to test with, so I can't be sure.