Microsoft drop support for Basic Authentication - Application password too - This will be a problem after 16th September 2024

Description

Like you can read here:

Microsoft will drop support for basic authentication
This question:

and the answer just after that message say that also app password will be removed, so there will be no way for MailSpring to add Outlook mail account.

To Reproduce…

Just try to connect to Outlook mail after 16th September 2024 (may be avoided if MailSpring will be updated to support oauth 2.0 authentication.

Steps to reproduce the behavior:
N/A

Expected Behavior

MailSpring support for Oauth 2.0

Screenshots

N/A

Setup

  • OS and Version: Windows 10
    • Installation Method: Installer
  • Mailspring Version: 1.13.3

Additional Context

3 days since I sent this. Is there someone still working on this? Is there any plan to support oauth 2 for microsoft account in mailspring?
16th September is not that far away, if you don’t want to work on it I understand but I need to know to transfer to thunderbird.
Can you say at least if you are working on it? Even if you will need more time I can go for a while with browser and fairmail but at some point I will need to decide if stay with this or change.

1 Like

No changes in Mailspring are needed, please read Outlook account keeps getting Authentication Error and Action Needed – You may lose access to some of your third-party mail and calendar apps for the required changes you need to make to your MS-Account and MailSpring Settings

That’s not true. App password that you are suggesting will not work after 16th September.
Read the above link

I quote:
“App passwords or Application passwords will be deprecated as part of the Basic Auth deprecation. You will need to use Modern Auth for all cases.”

1 Like

Why are you referencing a thread/solution that multiple users have reported that it doesn’t work?

I’ve been having this issue for almost 2 months now and will be changing to Thunderbird after Summer holidays… It’s a shame after pioneering this once very promising mail client for almost 3 years I see very little effort to address this issue for outlook/hotmail users

For everybody that’s using MailSpring as an outlook replacment:

Both microsoft and google are doing everything they can to destroy small open source alternative. Mailspring is a small open source application where the support for things will always be slow and right now both outlook accounts and gmail accounts are only temporary working (outlook with app password that microsoft is deprecating for no real reason since everybody even google and apple still support it, and google too since the oauth 2.0 login is not working and you can only use imap to log in).

FairEmail on Android is working great but there is no desktop version.

So I had to replace MailSpring with Thunderbird.

Thunderbird is still open source but so big that changes like the one made by google and microsoft are quick to be implemented.

The main problem of Thunderbird is the first configuration, it’s not easy at all if you got a lot to take care of like me.

So I suggest to change but gradually (not like I did in a day because it will take you all day).

I will post below a couples of problems-solutions that I had to face:

  1. Thunderbird support for exchange is not complete if you are not using owl (a paid extension). It is usually not a problem if you just want the emails since you can use imap with oauth 2.0 support but since Thunderbird will not suggest email addresses based on sent/inbox items you will need to export the contact list from outlook. You can do it from the web app of outlook only if your contact list is a regular contact list, if you are looking at shared contacts you first need to install outlook 365 (not the “new outlook”, the one that come with the office suite, that should not be a problem if your organization is using it since they will automatically use that license). From outlook 365 you need to go to the “person” tab and go on one of the shared contacts function (the one where you can organize, not the one where you can search), click on A: and select all, right click, add to contacts.

Once it will finish (it will take a while and it can freeze your pc) use outlook web to export the list in csv (the csv list from outlook 365 is broken and will not import properly). When you import take a momento to actually map name/surname/email properly since they can be different.

Once you got that right you can activate the “add automatically to address book function when you write to new email address” to keep the list updated. This was the most difficult thing to solve. Once everything is done you will not need outlook 365 on your pc anymore and, if you are not using it, you will be able to uninstall also the other office suite apps. Keep in mind that if you got a PC where outlook 365 is already installed for work you can use that to do the trick to import/export the contacts (I got a pc but the email is from a different company that’s why I had to do it like that).

  1. You can use HTML to make your signature and use images that will not be blocked too if you include them base64. The main difference is that mailspring offer a preview while thunderbird will not. Take this as an example:
Name LastName
What you do

you can use this website instead to preview:

  1. Thunderbird if you are not english will mistmatch a lot of folder (icloud will be a mess), just right click on the email account and subscribe… to the correct folders (make sure to have an example email in every folders). This was an easy fix but not something that I had to face anywhere else.

  2. Thunderbird will not start at startup and will not minimize by default. win+R->shell:startup->copy a shortcut of thunderbird there.

Install Minimize on startup extension, activate “When Thunderbird is minimized, move it to the tray” setting.

  1. Add “Dark Reader” extension for a dark mode inside the emails.

  2. Unified inbox is not on by default, right click on the top to activate menu bar->View->Folders->Unified Folders, you can put it on top too, just use the 3 dots.

  3. On first startup Outlook will open a “startup page”, you can deactivate it. Just remember that’s also the preview for mails. I closed it first and I was only able to open emails in another tab with double click… You can reopen it of course.

There are a lot of settings that you will have to learn again, take your time.

Once done thunderbird is not actually bad, but there is a lot to configure at the beginning compared to Mailspring, and the fact that does not suggest emails based on received/sent already existing emails is something that most other clients support and the reason why address books was not an easy task (that I did not had to do with Mailspring and FairEmail). The signature was difficult everywhere since only outlook/the old not supported mail for windows 10 support copy&paste from office for the images but once done is not difficult. The subscribe to the wrong folders is a problem with Thunderbird, but once corrected is a one time thing. Again the startup thing is a one time configuration, same deal with dark reader and the startup page and the unified inbox.

So basically there are a lot of basic configurations to make the first time and once done you should be able to use it without any issue.

If you want full exchange support (not sure who will need it) Thunderbird will support it in the future (Adventures In Rust: Bringing Exchange Support To Thunderbird you can see why mails already work and address book and calendar will be there soon) and the paid exension (10€ each year) offer it today.

In the end I’m still glad I switched but I did use the wrong program and I’m sorry to say I suggested the wrong program too… Mailspring is amazing and got an amazing interface but the support is not enough for a lot of people-.,

I think it’s pretty ridiculous that finally, when such an email client was created, we are faced with a situation where not a single team member has taken any action on making Outlook work. OUTLOOK!

It’s been weeks, no reaction, no updates, no comments in the threads. Come to think about it, even if they fix it now, it simply exposed their attitude and lack of engagement, and I don’t think I want to trust such a company anymore.

Well to be fair this is not a real company application (for what I understand this is like a side hustle)… but I still agree with you because they are still asking for money and since they decided to close github as a way to report bugs they should take the time to at least answer this kind of topic even if the answer would be “we cannot give an estimation for the solution to this” or “we will fix it by next year”.
I can understand if a side hustle open source project is not supported like Thunderbird (that got Mozilla company that support it with real money), to be fair Microsoft was really shady about this whole thing to push their new outlook shit that don’t even support unified view they decided to cut support for both their own older clients and alternative small clients like this one for “security reasons” (app password is something that everybody is still using because there is no way around it, the modern more secure authentication method like oauth 2.0 are great but they are not an easy task to implement and the implementation change a lot, I did it too in the past to add a save to one drive/google drive/dropbox function to a game and it was not easy at all and I had to update it after a few months because they decided to cut support for some stuff that where not even deprecated few months before that), what I cannot understand is why don’t they even take some minutes to just answer to people.
They should know by now that this is one of the few great open source clients out there, if I had the time I would make a fork to this one. But they decided to just basically semi-abandon it.
So I decided to just go with Thunderbird… not the best UI but once the first configuration is done is not that bad and got Mozilla under it and it is also open source. Maybe this was the solution from the start and I was just a fool to decide to use Mailspring just because the pretty UI was better.
I decided to write the above post to help people that will need to change Mailspring in a few months (because of both outlook and google (since their oauth 2.0 google implementation do not work either at least for the login side of things) I even know tecnically why… google in the docs tell the devs to ask only for permission actually needed by the app, they now force this (while before they just give everybody a warning), the solution should be easy, just read the docs and get the real scope this app need to function without everything that’s not necessary or ask to be verified

).

They instead suggest to use imap that’s just a workaround that only work for mail and only until google decide to drop app password support like microsoft.

Looks like they just put out a build to fix this issue: 1.14.0 · Foundry376/Mailspring@d036f39 (github.com)

Release 1.14.0 · Foundry376/Mailspring (github.com)

Too bad they did not said anything when I opened this topic.
I already migrated to Thunderbird.
It’s good to see this is still in development and that there is a good alternative, but they should really try to update bug report.
I cannot risk to use an application if I know it will stop working in a few months (they did not even said “we will have an update ready by the end of 2024”, I would organize to just use the webapp for outlook for a few months and since the update was out now it would be even better).
When they decided to not update this at all I had to find an alternative.
Not sure if they solved the gmail oauth 2 problem too.
In the end the only thing I can say is that I would have loved to continue to use mailspring but now that I configured thunderbird no way I will go back at least until it works as intended.

1 Like

I don’t blame you at all. It’s been on life support for several years now. Thunderbird has been decently supported. They’ve been more reactive than proactive on those fronts. On the Gmail OAuth issue, as of this comment/post, they haven’t fixed that…

Update on the Gmail OAuth. Looks like @bengotow is working on resolving that issue: Outlook OAuth2 login needed urgently! Password functionality is ending - #19 by bengotow