Yahoo Mail IMAP settings: connect Yahoo with an app password

Yahoo stopped letting other mail apps sign in with your plain password years ago. What you get instead is an app password: a code you generate for one app, paste once, and can delete whenever you like.

The flow itself is short. The catch is that Yahoo has moved the page that makes one around over the years, so what's below is what we recorded on 26 September 2026. If your screens look a little different, that's why.

How to set up Yahoo Mail IMAP in MorningZero

Start in MorningZero

1. Open the inbox switcher at the bottom left. Under Connected inboxes, click + Add new inbox, or use Settings, Add account, which gets you to the same place.

   

2. The Connect a mailbox picker lists every provider. Choose Yahoo Mail.

   

3. The Connect Yahoo Mail form only wants two things, Email address and App password. Fill in your address, then go and get the password.

   

Create the app password in Yahoo

4. Over in Yahoo Mail, click your profile picture at the top right, then Manage your account.

   

5. Click Security in the left menu.

   

6. Scroll down to External connections and click Create app password.

   

7. In the Generate an app password box, type a name (MorningZero works) and click Generate password.

   

8. Yahoo shows Your app password once, with a Copy button, so copy it now. Yahoo calls it single-use: you don't need to remember it, and it doesn't replace your normal password.

   

Paste it and connect

9. Back in MorningZero, paste it into App password and click Connect. Yahoo shows the code in groups with spaces, and you can paste it just as it is.

   

10. You'll see a Reading your mailbox screen fill to 100 percent. The last 15 days are usable straight away, and full history keeps loading in the background. Click Open the inbox.

    

11. Yahoo Mail now sits in the inbox list next to your other mailboxes.

    

Back on Yahoo's page, click Done to close the box.

If Yahoo won't generate a password at all, its help suggests trying a browser you've signed in to Yahoo from for several days, and not a private window.

Yahoo Mail IMAP settings for any mail app

If you want Yahoo in Apple Mail, Thunderbird or Outlook too, these are the details they need.

Setting	Value
Incoming (IMAP)	imap.mail.yahoo.com, port 993, SSL
Outgoing (SMTP)	smtp.mail.yahoo.com, port 465 or 587, SSL
Username	Your full Yahoo address
Password	An app password from External connections

AOL uses imap.aol.com and smtp.aol.com on the same ports, with the same kind of app password.

If what you really want is Yahoo mail landing inside Gmail, forwarding Yahoo Mail to Gmail changed this year, and we went through what still works.

After connecting

Yahoo doesn't push new mail to us, so we check it every five minutes, like every other IMAP mailbox here. The other direction is instant: anything you archive or read is written back at once.

Yahoo also caps how many IMAP connections one account can have open, and it doesn't publish the number. If several other mail apps use the same account, you may see the odd sign-in failure. Removing an app you no longer use fixes it.

The form tells you the password is "Stored encrypted (AES-256-GCM) so we can sync your mail. You can revoke it any time from your provider's settings."

AOL

AOL runs on the same infrastructure, so the steps are the same. Generate an app password from AOL's account security page, then use Add new inbox and pick the AOL Mail tile. We recognise @aol.com, @aim.com, @love.com and @games.com addresses.

Revoking

In your Yahoo account, open Security, then External connections, find the MorningZero app password and click Delete. Changing your main password won't do it, because Yahoo notes that app passwords survive that change. Deleting is the only way to switch one off.

If you disconnect from our side instead, we remove the mailbox's data here and the stored password along with it.

If it stops syncing

Once the app password is deleted, the address shows has stopped syncing — the app password was changed or revoked, with an Update password button and your address already filled in. Make a new password in Yahoo and paste it there.

Sources

• IMAP and SMTP servers and ports: Yahoo Help, "IMAP server settings for Yahoo Mail", read 28 September 2026.
• Creating, using and deleting app passwords, and the browser advice: Yahoo Help, "Generate and manage 3rd-party app passwords", 28 September 2026.