[Android Apps and Games] GalaxyA325G:
Got it. Thanks for answering the two questions.

There's a HUGE difference in privacy from just reading Google email on your phone, and setting the phone to a Google Account. It's astoundingly huge, so I just want to make that point first, but I do realize most people set their phone to a Google Account.

As for FairMail creating the Google Account on the phone...

To be honest (as I always am), I had certainly read the FairMail FAQ but I didn't intelligently make the mental bridging connection that a Google Account had to be created on the phone (if it didn't already exist, of course) in order for FairMail to work with OAuth2 - but now that you have bridged that gap mentally for me, I understand and agree with the developer completely. I respect his choices and his logic as most people will already have a Google Account set up on the phone (because they do whatever the marketing people tell them to do).

Moving forward... given Google is apparently deprecating login/passwd authentication as of June 30th (AFAIK), it behooves me (and anyone like me) to find another solution.

I'm a regular on Usenet for the Windows 10, Thunderbird, and Android newsgroups, where we've discussed "app passwords" to death ever since Google's announcement a few months ago, so I don't think app passwords are a "separate" viable solution because they apparently also require 2FA/2SV/MSV/MFA anyway (and if you remove 2FA/2SV/MSV/MFA, they become worthless - AFAIK).

If that's true (and it may not be as I'm just a user who wants privacy), that means, essentially the only "set" of solutions left for FairMail are listed below, variously referred to as OAuth2, 2FA/2SV/MSV/MFA and forwarding solutions, I think.

Is that right?

OAuth2 (using an on-device Google Account), or

Autoforward Google mail to a non-Google account, or,

2FA/2SV/MSV/MFA via a variety of authenticators, such as...

app passwords

Some kind of "google authenticator" app, such as...

FreeOTP Authenticator by Red Hat rated 3.7 1M+ installs, free, no ads, no gsf

(see also "Google Authenticator" & "Authy" & "FreeOTP+")

USB tokens

Time-based one-time passwords (TOTP)

SMS 2FA

Use the phone's built-in security key

Use a physical "security key"

Get a one-time security code from another device

Enter one of your 8-digit backup codes

Sign in using QR codes

Set up a "trusted computer" for sign in

Sign in with "google prompts"

...

any others?

Note: I'm aware of the distinct possibility/liklihood that some of those may simply be different words for the same thing (and that some of them may not apply to FairMail anyway).

What's so sad is all this effort by the FairMail developer has nothing, per se, to do with writing a mail user agent, and all to do with Google making his life difficult for no added value or compensation whatsoever.

In summary, to be blunt, it is what it is, and given I have absolutely no experience with any of these authentication methods... I therefore have a lot of homework to do, where I think that homework is most likely well outside the scope of this thread now that I have the definitive answer to the two questions I had asked.

Thank you both for answering the two FairMail questions.

Much appreciated.

Honor & respect is due to the developer!