I spent a little bit of time this afternoon investigating why a colleague with exactly the same network/proxy settings as me couldn’t use Google Notifier for Mac on our network even though I was able to use it fine. We’re both using the newest version 1.9.97. When attempting to sign-in he was seeing either of the following messages:
User Verification Required for Sign-In, or
Can’t Sign In. See Preferences: Fetch -2
After much rooting around in preferences files and keychain access I determined that the cause of the problem is that Google Notifier needs access to a https keychain item for the proxy we use here. This didn’t exist for my colleague as the keychain item seems to be created by Safari when visiting a https site for the first time. If you instead use Camino then it never seems to create a https keychain item for the proxy and seems to just use the http keychain for the same proxy for https sites.
Probably Google Notifier should prompt for the https proxy username and password if it can’t find an existing keychain item.
The fix is to open Safari, visit a https site (such as https://www.google.com), enter your login details for the proxy and tell keychain to remember them. Then, restart Google Notifier, and it should ask for access to this keychain item. This has sucessfully fixed this problem for me on three separate Macs.
hi. I’m having the same trouble, with google notifier.
im not sure what i need to do, as far as logging in with the proxy, etc.
would you mind walking me through it?
thanks so much
niko
Niko, just visit https://www.google.com in Safari. It should ask you to enter your username and password for the proxy. Just check the box that says to store this information in the keychain when you do this.
I’ve been in contact with a couple of the Google guys working on the notifier, they are now able to reproduce this problem and hope to have a proper fix in the next version of the Notifier soon.
Hey Michael. I’ve tried visiting google, signing in (with the “remember me on this computer” box checked) and this still does no fix my problem. Do I have to do something with the Keychain Access application? Am I doing something wrong?
thanks,
danny
Danny, no but you have to visit the secure http site, and then restart Google notifier for it to notice the keychain item.
I’ve seen an updated version of the Notifier from the Google people that asks you for your proxy sign in details and solves these problems. Hopefully they will officially release this version soon.
I was experiencing the same problems and your fix worked fine (thanks heaps) – I suspect that people who use Firefox as their default browser (like me) will hit this.
Around the same time as I started having proxy trouble with Google Notifier (I had been cleaning up my locations/proxy setups, grrr…), I also started having problems with iTunes and proxies for downloading podcasts. I suspect they are related, but the ‘Safari fix’ does not seem to have fixed iTunes – when you do a refresh, a random(?) selection of podcasts get marked with a ! and the message says “There was a problem downloading … Please log into your proxy server”. I also cannot connect to the iTunes Store.
Sorted out the iTunes issue – it goes back to the old issue of iTunes for Mac not supporting proxy servers that need authentication. This has been an issue for ages and I cannot understand why it hasn’t been fixed up (Safari works fine in this scenrio). Grrr…
Hi, I am having a similar problem….I am using a Mac, and Firefox as my default browser, When a notification pops up telling me I have a new email, and I say “Go to Inbox”, it automatically opens my inbox without asking for a password. I don’t like this, as I wouldn’t want anyone to open my inbox if I am away from my desk. At home, on my pc, when I click “Go to Inbox” from my gmail notifier, it takes me to the signin page where i enter my information, then gain access to the inbox.. How do I configure my mac at work to operate this way, so that I have to sign in to gmail to check the inbox every time. Is that possible?
thanks
Denise
I am having a similar problem. I get an exclamation mark on the Google notifier icon and get the message “Can’t Sign In. See Preferences”. When I mouse over the icon it says “Failed to fetch mail. Can’t Sign In. See Preferences”
I tried logging on the google in Safari. Then quitting Safari, firefox and notifier. When I restart notifier I get the same icon………
I have the latest version of Notifier 1.9.97
This has only started to happen recently….maybe since I installed the new version of Safari….
I forgot to mention that I am not using any form of proxy.
It worked for me!
Thanks for the tip!!!
Regards
My google notifier always crashes when I’m behind my school’s proxy. Any ideas what is wrong?
Thank you Michael.
I was having the same problem as above.
But followed you instruction and it is now up and running.
Thanks again.
i found another way to get rid of the Fetch -2 problem.
all you have to do is open up google updater and go to my software drop down menu and then uninstall gmail notifier and then reinstall it an it works brand new again. ; )
Uninstalled and reinstalled. Still does not work.
Hi, I had the same problem with google notifier (unable to sign in:check preferences fetch-2 ) after I ran a mainteinance software (mainmenu), tried everything I found over the internet but nothing worked. So I did the following and it solved the problem: uninstalled notifier, get rid of the preferences and the googlenotifier certificates in the keychains/ system.keychain, cleaned all the browsers’ cache (I use firefox but sometimes safari too, and safari was not even able to access my account’s page after the fetch-2 error appeared), run the mainteinance software again (mainmenu: repair disk permissions,run all cron mainteinance scripts,update prebindings,clean user cache,force empty trash,clean archived logs), rebooted, reinstalled google notifier, went to gmail.com via firefox (v3), manually put in name and password, accessed to my account, then ran google notifier (with firefox open and logged into my account) and suddenly it worked. I know that this does not make any sense, but it worked for me (I think I have tried everything and this combination of actions is quite random, but still…). Hope this helps someone.
Hey– I am a Mac user and trying to use google notifier with firefox. everytime i click on the link to go to my inbox, it opens in safari. is there a way to make it use Firefox instead?
Shannon, you can make it use Firefox instead by setting Firefox as your default browser in OS X. To do this, open Safari and open its Preferences, under the General tab there is an option called “Default Web Browser”. Select Firefox here and the Google notifier will open links to you inbox in Firefox.
Hey guys.
I just installed some things on an friends brand new macbook. I had the same problem with sign-in failed in google notifier. I tried to add my own email in google notifier just to check, but by my surprise it didn’t work either on that computer. I discovered at last that the date and year was wrong! when I corrected it, all things sudently worked as they should…
Yes, yes, yes! I just opened Safari, searched for Google Notifier there, clicked and Voila! I’ve got it working! Thanks so much. Just trying to go from Firefox was NOT working for me!
Michael –
I think I’ve followed to the letter your instructions for correcting the “Can’t sign in. See Preferences: Fetch -2″ problem on gmail notifier, but the problem persists.
Are you aware of any other approaches to a fix?
a postscript:
I have two accounts on gmail — call them A and B. I’ve just discovered that my problem is limited to account B — the one I most use. When I have signed into account A, the notifier behaves as it should.
hello, thank you for your help, fixed my problem straight away.
Fix isn’t working for me. I tried everything in the book.
I’ve tried this, and all the other suggestions mentioned in the comments, and nothing has fixed this issue for me. Help please.
Thank you! This worked!
People, this “fetch -2″ thing is a REAL problem. I have it, and like Jay, cannot solve it for my main account. I have 3, 2 work fine, but my main, and most important account, does not.
I have installed, uninstalled, cleaned the cache, yada yada yada, to no avail. What in the Hell is going on?
I am amazed that the Google folks haven’t solved this. It is a real problem, not just for me, but for many, many, MANY.
They just blow us off, and, for Google, that sucks. If IT were Microsoft, it would be normal, as that what we expect from them. But, GEEZ, not from Google. That bites!
Ditto Jay and John. It works with my secondary email but not my main one. This password problem extends to my blackberry and applemail as well as notifier. It’s driving me crazy. I changed my password and everything stopped working despite updating keychains and the likes. I even changed it back and still to no avail. Any ideas?
My problem is still not fixed.
I even tried going into access control and gave google notifier access to my login/password for https://www.google.com.