Editor’s note: the instructions here may be out of date. If you’re interested in updating it, contact us on Fedora Discussion.

Gmail is a popular email service and web client for browsing, receiving, and sending email. Gmail is used by billions of people across the world. It’s one of the simplest, most accessible email services even with being full of features. Did you know that it is possible to read and reply to other email services directly from Gmail? I’ve been doing this for years. Here is how to do it with your Fedora (fedoraproject.org) email alias.

Using your Fedora email alias

If you are a Fedora contributor that is a member of the CLA signature group and one other group, you have access to FedoraPeople.org and receive a few other services. One of these includes email forwarding to a fedoraproject.org email alias. Once you meet the group requirement, email forwarding will start working to <username>@fedoraproject.org to the email you registered with.

If you use Gmail’s web interface for your email, it is possible to set it up to work with outgoing mail as well. Before getting started, you should make sure the email you use for your FAS account is the Gmail you want to use. With a few simple steps, you can get outgoing mail working too.

Setting up outgoing mail with email alias

Log in and open your Gmail.

Using Fedora email alias: Logging into Gmail

Click on the gear icon in the corner. Click on settings.

Using Fedora email alias: Going to Gmail settings

Go to the “Accounts and Import” tab in the settings menu.

Using Fedora email alias: Click on "Accounts and Import" tab

Click on “Add another email you own“.

Using Fedora email alias: Add another email address you own

Enter your name and your fedoraproject.org email address here. The email address will be the same name as your username in FAS. Leave “Treat as an alias” option checked. Mine is shown below as an example.

Using Fedora email alias: Adding your Fedora email alias to Gmail

Now, you will be prompted to enter the SMTP settings for the email alias.

Using Fedora email alias: Entering SMTP settings

Clear out the defaults and fill in the following info for your account.

  • SMTP: smtp.gmail.com
  • Username: youremail@gmail.com
  • Password: <your Gmail password>

Make sure to use a secured connection over TLS.

Using Fedora email alias: Using Gmail as the SMTP provider

Important! You might get an error here. In most cases, this is because Gmail is cracking down on less secure apps. However, the tool that they themselves use to import third party emails isn’t secure enough to meet the criteria for more secure apps. Ironic, I know. If you receive this error, you will need to change a setting in your Google account.

Using Fedora email alias: Authentication failure example

You can go here to allow access for “less secure” apps, but do this at your own risk. Usually it is not a concern, but it is worth taking into consideration. You might also want to consider using two-factor authentication.

Using Fedora email alias: Enabling access for less secure apps

Testing your outgoing email alias

On doing all this successfully, Gmail will send a confirmation email to your Fedora email. If you’ve got your email setup properly, this will be forwarded to your Gmail inbox.

Using Fedora email alias: Verifying the email alias

Boom! There it is. Click on the link in the email and confirm ownership of the address.

Using Fedora email alias: Checking the confirmation email

Test out the new setup. Just send yourself (the Gmail address) a test message from the Fedora email. Click on the “From” field to toggle the sender email to select the email to send from.

Using Fedora email alias: Testing outgoing mail with the alias

Ta-da! Yes, there it is in our inbox.

Using Fedora email alias: Receiving mail from your alias

Bonus! If you’re into the new Inbox app by Google, this works on there as well.

This post was drafted from the result of a productive discussion that I had on #fedora-commops with jflory7 and masetrax. Thanks guys.

Justin W. Flory, my possible mentor for GSoC, told me that he uses a third party service called Mailgun to handle outgoing SMTP. There are many ways to do it, but here’s how to do it directly from Gmail.