Access Your Yahoo! Mail from Apple Mail Without Upgrading to Plus

There’s no direct way to use Apple’s Mail app for your free Yahoo! Mail. You’d need a paid Yahoo! Mail Plus account to get through that “Create New Account” screen. Sure, you can sign up with Gmail (it’s free), and that’s a good alternative, or have a MobileMe account (free for 60 days), but if you REALLY want that free Yahoo! Mail account because you’ve wrapped your whole entire digital life on it, I've got your back! Luckily, there is a way to POP your way for cheapskates and stubborn Yahoo users like I.

Just like a recipe, you’ll need the following:

• A free Gmail account
• A free Yahoo! Mail account
• MacFreePOPs
• A Terminal code

Don’t be daunted. Following this guide should help you get through.

First off, sign up for a Gmail account if you don’t already have one. For those who want to avoid having multiple accounts, we can set Gmail to auto-forward whatever it receives to your Yahoo! email account, which will be discussed more later.

We need the Gmail account to be able to send outgoing mails. Unfortunately, our free Yahoo! Mail accounts won’t allow us to send mail out using Apple's Mail program.

I’m sure you already have a free Yahoo! Mail. That’s why you’re reading this article! We'll need the login details for your Yahoo! account to set up the account in Apple’s Mail.

Download, install, and update MacFreePOPs. The link can be found via Apple’s downloads section. It will handle forwarding your emails from Yahoo! to your Apple Mail.

Once we’ve done all these preliminary “set up” steps, now we get to the nitty-gritty, sci-fi Mac OS X technical tinkering.

When you launch MacFreePOPs a window will pop-up and then quickly hide, that’s its normal behavior since it runs in the background, getting out of your way. Check for any updates by just right-clicking on the icon and click on Show MacFreePOPs Window and let it look for updates. I strongly suggest you to install them. Should there be no updates, you’re in luck so just hide the window away and make sure that the MacFreePOPs icon’s envelop is colored green - meaning it’s running in the background.

Launch Apple's Mail and be welcomed by the Welcome to Mail screen if no accounts have been set. Input your desired name, your full Yahoo! Mail address, and your password. Make sure to uncheck "Automatically set up account".

In the Incoming Mail Server window , leave the Account Type as POP. Change the Incoming Mail Server text to 127.0.0.1, username and password should be your full Yahoo! Mail address (including the “@yahoo.com” suffix) and your Yahoo! password. Click Continue (even if it says that the POP server “127.0.0.1” is not responding).

In the Incoming Mail Security window , make sure that “Use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)” is unchecked, and the Authentication is set to Password. Click Continue.

The Outgoing Mail Server ’s description should be set to localhost, and Outgoing Mail Server should be set to smtp.gmail.com. Check “Use only this server”. Check the Use Authentication box. Username and password should be your complete Gmail address (including the “@gmail.com” suffix) and your Gmail password.

Shortly thereafter, an Account Summary will display . Check “Take account online” then hit Create.