Mac Mail - Stagger / batch download emails from gmail over imap

Question

Ive got several gmail accounts and google apps for business (depreciated free version) accounts. One of the my google apps for business accounts is 25gb.

I want to add it to mail on my MBP (osx - 10.10.5).

Is there a mode where i can stagger the downloading of the emails as trying to download 25gb of emails over imap will trigger a temporary imap freeze on my account on gmails end (the freeze lasts about 24 hours). To get around this is there a setting where i can download either in batches or or donwload up to the last years data, then i can donwload then next years etc

Answer 1

Assuming you are using Mail.app included with OS X, there is no built-in way within the application itself.

There are other approaches.

Lower Your Internet Speed

However, you could artificially limit the speed of your Internet connection while the initial synchronisation takes place.

You can limit your Internet connection using Apple's Network Link Conditioner. See the NSHipster article about how to get and set up this useful developer tool:

Using this approach will allow you to run Mail continuously without risking your IMAP access being limited.

Manually Enable and Disable the Account

You could add the mail account, then manually enable and disable the account as desired.

Mail.app > Mail (menu) > Preferences > Accounts > Enable Account (checkbox)

You can measure the network traffic using Activity Monitor.app's Network view; see Sent Bytes and Rcvd Bytes.

Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor.app

This would allow you to watch the initial synchronisation traffic climb to a reasonable level before disabling the account.

Answer 2

A semi automation solution i just thought of would be to create an automator script to open mail.app at 20:00 and close it at 222:00 every night, that way it would only download for 2 hours, thus not triggering the block on the gmail account (values would have to be tweaked but my gut is 2 hours worth of emails wouldnt cause the account to block - subject to your internet speed)

Only caveat i can see is that you'd have to leave the machine open (if its a laptop) for the automator script to run