If you are using Gmail to send messages from your Microsoft Outlook or Yahoo email address, that feature is going away. Here’s what’s you need to know.
Google announced that it’s ending support for Gmail “Send as,” a setting that lets you send messages from a third-party address through Gmail’s own interface, citing “disproportionate maintenance resources.”
This is happening in stages: Google has begun restricting new Gmail “Send as” configurations for third-party addresses on the web, while existing configurations will continue to work during the transition. The feature will be fully removed in January 2027. At that point, according to Google’s own support page, “you will no longer be able to send mail from third-party email accounts in Gmail on the web or in the Gmail mobile apps.” You will still be able to read and check third-party emails inside the Gmail app.
The company is also ending Gmailify in January 2027, a feature that extends Gmail’s own spam protection and inbox organization to third-party accounts.
How to check if you can still send as a third-party email address in Gmail
If you previously set up Gmail’s “Send as” feature for a third-party email address, your existing configuration should continue to work for now. To check, start composing a new message and look at the From field. If another email address appears there, you can still select it and send from that address.
If you never set up a third-party “Send as” address, there’s little reason to start now, given that the feature is scheduled to disappear in January 2027.
Not the first time when Google ends useful features
This isn’t the first time Google has retired a feature related to privacy or security after deciding that maintaining it was no longer worthwhile.
Dark Web Report, which scanned for your name, email, passwords, and other personal data surfacing in breaches, was shut down in early 2026 because, as the company put it, the feature “failed to provide useful follow-up steps.” Google said it would instead focus on tools that offer clearer, actionable steps, but it has not introduced a direct replacement for Dark Web Report.
Privacy Sandbox, Google’s six-year effort to replace third-party cookies with a less invasive way to target ads, was also scaled back significantly in 2025. Google retired many of its core advertising technologies after citing “low levels of adoption,” although some Privacy Sandbox technologies remain supported.
Send from your Gmail address in Proton Mail
Proton Mail offers similar “Send as” convenience to the functionality Google is removing: Through Easy Switch, you can connect your Gmail account to Proton Mail and send and receive messages from your Gmail address without leaving Proton Mail’s interface.
Easy Switch also imports your existing Gmail message history and forwards new incoming Gmail messages to your Proton Mail inbox. Messages forwarded from Gmail also benefit from Proton Mail’s other privacy protections: Proton removes known email trackers, blocks spy pixels, cleans tracking links, filters spam, and stores messages with zero-access encryption. You can also set up custom domains to send and receive messages to @yourbusiness.com addresses.
As long as you’re still sending from your Gmail address, however, Gmail remains part of the delivery process for messages sent to non-Proton recipients, which means Google will still be able to access your data — unless you use password protection. If you eventually decide to leave Google behind, you can delete your Gmail account and fully move to Proton Mail for a more private Gmail alternative.
