Fix for Mac Google Notifier sign-in problems
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.
May 5th, 2007 at 5:13 am
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
May 8th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
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.
June 14th, 2007 at 9:59 am
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
June 16th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
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.
July 24th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
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.
July 25th, 2007 at 10:04 am
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…
July 31st, 2007 at 4:23 am
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
September 25th, 2007 at 3:14 am
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….
September 25th, 2007 at 3:16 am
I forgot to mention that I am not using any form of proxy.
September 28th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
It worked for me!
Thanks for the tip!!!
Regards
January 30th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
My google notifier always crashes when I’m behind my school’s proxy. Any ideas what is wrong?
March 17th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Thank you Michael.
I was having the same problem as above.
But followed you instruction and it is now up and running.
Thanks again.
April 9th, 2008 at 1:02 am
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. ; )
June 18th, 2008 at 6:47 am
Uninstalled and reinstalled. Still does not work.
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:05 pm
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.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:39 am
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?
August 5th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
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.
August 19th, 2008 at 8:03 am
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…