Why is my Gmail not syncing automatically?

Last reviewed: September 21, 2026 · Markdown version

Check storage first. It is the cause people suspect last and the one that breaks the most things at once: a Google account at its limit stops accepting new mail, and an app that cannot fetch new mail looks exactly like an app that is not syncing. How to tell, and what to clear.

The rest, in the order worth checking

Sync is switched off for that account. On Android, Settings → Accounts → your Google account → Sync Gmail. In the Gmail app itself, Settings → your account → "Sync Gmail" also has a days-of-mail-to-sync setting that quietly limits what arrives.
Battery optimisation is throttling the app. Aggressive power management stops background refresh, which turns "instant" into "whenever you open the app." Excluding Gmail from battery optimisation is the fix, and it is a per-manufacturer menu.
The network is captive, not absent. Hotel and café Wi-Fi that has not been signed into looks connected and passes nothing. The quickest test is loading any page in a browser.
The app or the OS is out of date. Unglamorous, and genuinely the fix often enough to be worth ruling out early.
Filters are eating the mail. Sync is fine; a rule is archiving or deleting the message before you see it. Search in:anywhere from:sender — if the mail is there, this is your answer. How filters work.

Not syncing, or not receiving?

They present identically and have different causes. If mail is missing on one device but present on another, it is a sync problem on that device. If it is missing everywhere — or senders are getting bounces — it is a delivery problem, and that has its own page.

Where we fit, honestly

We do not fix syncing — that is between your device and Google. What we do is remove the cause at the top of this list. Adinand Email Cleaner groups your Gmail by sender so you can clear the senders that are actually consuming your storage, and it shows the measured space each cleanup returns once Trash empties, taken from Gmail's own per-message byte counts. If the reason mail stopped arriving was a full account, that is the part worth fixing properly.