13
votes
Accessing a Google account without attaching to the phone on Android
Ok so I have a Google account for an organization. But when I have that account logged in on my phone some of the security restrictions impact all accounts on my phone. I have a pixel 7a with Android 16 if it matters.
I would love to have access to this gmail account, with notifications, on my phone without forwarding the emails to one of my personal accounts. Any way to do that within the Gmail app itself, or if I need a different app, any recommendations?
In my perfect world I'd have OneDrive access too, but I can use a browser window there if needed.
If you just want email, you could use a third party email client and then use that to check your work email. But if you're saying you want it to have complete access to that Google account without logging in, you are kind of out of luck. Google really wants you to log in.
You could try using the profiles feature of Android and just have a separate sandbox for work and personal. It basically divides your phone into two sections that can't see or talk to one another. I am not sure if the organizational level security features would apply across sandboxes though.
My perfect world would be everything but I'm realistic that email is what I need. This is not for my work, though, but a professional org I'm on leadership for, so I don't need it all the time, I just would like notifications when I get a new email, and I don't think the profile is going to be particularly useful for that reason.
If you're just looking for Gmail, I would look into setting up your work account with a third party email client that supports IMAP (pretty much all of them should).
This was what I was figuring if nothing else worked, is there a better client? I haven't used anything but outlook and Gmail since smart phones basically.
K-9 Mail and Thunderbird are functionally identical apps, and I can also recommend FairEmail.
I don't think it's possible without some complications as adding the email will add it as a Google account to the device, with all the sync stuff. You can set up work profiles in Android to segregate this stuff which should create a copy of the Gmail app and apply the restrictions to just that copy / work profile.
Shelter can provide this functionality too though I've not used it personally. I've got a Samsung which has a Secure Folder setup that lets you have copies of apps with their own data.
I think Shelter is much more robust than I'm looking for. I mentioned elsewhere I don't use this account often as it's not my work email, but would like to be able to check the emails when new ones show up. Thanks for the advice!
What about using the GMail app, but adding the account as an IMAP account rather than a Google account?
Hadn't considered using the same app, if it keeps the notification functionality.... I'll check it out!
Yeah. I'm all for "single pane of glass", personally. I greatly prefer using one app for one purpose over multiple apps for one purpose.
I use the GMail app with IMAP configuration for my FastMail account, it works as effortlessly as my Google Account in the same app, as well. Only complaint is you have to rely on task scheduler instead of push for new mail. So new messages may be up to 15 minutes late, instead of real time. But that will be true of any IMAP client.
I don't need urgent notifications from this account just to get them, I just didn't think about using Gmail in the app but as the IMAP
I'm probably going to try this first!
This is what I came to suggest. If you run into trouble with this approach you might have do the actual imap setup in your phone settings "Passwords and accounts" area rather than straight from the Gmail app.
The K9 mail app used to have a way to contain and limit the admin restrictions within the app specifically, but I'm not sure if that app still does since it has been bought by Mozilla and converted into Thunderbird. But it might be worth looking into.
Is Thunderbird any good? K9Mail also still looks available?
I used Thunderbird ages ago when juggling a school email, Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL and baby Gmail account was a thing. But I haven't used any on mobile but Outlook and Gmail itself.
I haven't used the mobile version in a number of years. I used to use it to partition off my work email and limit the restrictions on my personal phone, but I haven't needed that in a long time so I can't give a good review of it anymore.
I keep edge on my phone just to open Google in desktop versions of the site so I can login with alternate organizations credentials. You can access most any Google service of you switch edge to a default desktop display. For Gmail, you mostly need to remember that you have to open messages separately as it isn't combined on the mobile desktop version.
You can also enable new mail notifications for Gmail in edge, though I haven't tested those much. Edge being edge, doesn't want you all in on Google, so logging in there doesn't bleed over to other phone settings. Then I just leave certain edge tabs open to switch to the different Google services like drive and mail.
Thanks, that seems like a viable possible alternative if the notifications are consistent. I'll test it out!