Apple Seeds Fifth Beta of macOS Mojave 10.14.5 Update to Developers [Update: Public Beta Available]

Hate to be that guy, but do these betas fix the issue with Gmail & Apple's Mail app? Not sure why they broke it and haven't issued a supplemental update to correct it yet?

Gmail works... It will ask you to approve macOS and that’s it.

This has been stated multiple times on multiple threads about this issue. Many people, including myself, have been through this and other attempts to fix the problem without success. It is good you are not experiencing the problem. Others are not as lucky. 10.14.3 mail works. 10.14.4 mail has the problem. A few hearty souls have gone through gymnastics to install 10.14.3 mail on 10.14.4 and that fixes it but is not a long term solution.

The problem as commonly reported is that mail takes the gmail account(s) offline after some period, roughly an hour to a few hours. It won't work again until you quit mail and then restart it, after which the cycle repeats.

Not sure why they broke it and haven't issued a supplemental update to correct it yet?

It is a mystery. They have a working version. They have a broken version. It is a major application using a major service. So far, silence from Apple.

This issue has been resolved.

I really want this to be the case. I've seen so many people incorrectly declare it "fixed" (if you just jump through ineffective hoops x, y, or z) that I'm skeptical. Have you seen anything from a credible source that indicates Apple even acknowledges the problem? Or, were you personally experiencing the problem and see it corrected in the beta?

Thanks to Nathaniel_Wu ('https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-seeds-fifth-beta-of-macos-mojave-10-14-5-update-to-developers-update-public-beta-available.2180498/members/nathaniel_wu.1093709/') for linking to the thread with Jose's observations. It's not a fix, but it is the best clue so far.

No problem. I don't want to sync my calendar/contacts to google either, so I've been testing leaving-window-on trick myself. I left it on a separate desktop, 12 hours now and everything is still online. This must be it.

You are correct. The problem in its current state does not occur if you start and immediately quit the mail app each time you check for new mail.

Always having my phone I only use desktop mail to open links on the big screen. I’ve been following this in a few subs at Reddit as well.
Definitely can reproduce it by leaving mail open. Looks to be around 90 minutes for me.
Interesting thing is it doesn’t reproduce under parallels. So my guess is an issue with WebKit. But I’m outside my comfort zone on this.
I did file a bug with feedback for it. And full steps to reproduce.
Load mail. Close to dock. Ignore mail for 90 minutes + etc...
thanks for posting More thoroughly. This really was the first time I saw someone say they left it open.
My suggestion to all here is anyone running the beta report a bug and clearly state how LONG mail was open.
Bet guess from me is something to do with a dormant port tripping an error or security setting, either on the user end (mail) or at gmail. But I simply don’t know enough on my own.

I left it on a separate desktop, 12 hours now and everything is still online. This must be it.

I tried the title bar double-click to minimize workaround Jose identified. That required making a change to the title bar double-click behavior in the dock settings. He was right. I've gone all day without a connection failure that required restarting mail. Before that always happened in one to two hours. I previously used Cmd-H to hide mail when not in use.

I have seen a couple of "offline" symbols, but clicking the get new mail button always takes it back online and gets the mail. I have been sleeping the machine with mail running too. It's beyond me why Jose's workaround changes the mail app behavior with regard to gmail connections but it does.

Now mail is tolerable to use again. Whatever change Apple made to 10.14.4 mail had an inscrutable side effect that continues to plague a significant number of gmail users. Given these weird symptoms it must be very difficult for Apple to identify.

I'm going to try leaving the mail window open and not sleeping the system to see how long it lasts.

Finally, a suggestion that actually affects the bug behavior! After 3 and a half hours, it is still working. This is by far the longest it has gone for me. I'll continue the test but I think Jose Amich stumbled upon the key feature of this bug: it is related to closing/minimizing windows. How obscure is that? Window behavior affecting connections to a mail server (and only for gmail)? I would not have guessed that in a million years.

Thanks to Nathaniel_Wu ('https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-seeds-fifth-beta-of-macos-mojave-10-14-5-update-to-developers-update-public-beta-available.2180498/members/nathaniel_wu.1093709/') for linking to the thread with Jose's observations. It's not a fix, but it is the best clue so far.

Edit: Now 8.5 hours and still working. It sounds crazy, but if you are experiencing the 10.14.4 mail/gmail connection failures run mail without minimizing/hiding/closing. I have not tried Jose's workaround of minimizing by double clicking the title bar yet.