Does Alpine no longer work with Gmail IMAP?

Question

I'm trying to setup alpine (formerly PINE) on OSX and GMAIL keeps bouncing my login attempts by saying alpine is not a secure client / to use the web client instead.

I'm not using 2FA (so no app passwords) - so has anyone gotten alpine & gmail to cooperate recently?

Answer 1

On Gmail you need to enable the setting at:

https://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps

These apps are no less secure, see:

http://www.fetchmail.info/fetchmail-FAQ.html#I9

(edit): Accounts with two-step verification don't allow the 'less secure' setting. Use app specific passwords instead. See separate answer for alpine configuration under this scheme.