A short guide to creating an OAuth2 Client ID through the Google Cloud Console.

Create a new OAuth2 Client ID

These steps are based on the steps outlined by ccrusius (a).

  1. Navigate to the Cloud Console (a).
  2. Choose an existing project or create a new one.
  3. Select “APIs & Services” from the navigation menu.
  4. Select “Credentials”.
  5. Create new credentials of type “OAuth Client ID”.
  6. Choose application type “Other”.
  7. Choose a name for the client.
  8. This should get you a Client ID and a Client Secret. We’ll need both.

Confirm that OAuth2 Authentication Works

  1. Download gmail-oauth2-tools.

    This utility will generate our refersh tokens for us.

    git clone https://github.com/google/gmail-oauth2-tools

  2. Create a refresh token using gmail-oauth2-tools.

    python2.7 /path/to/gmail-oauth2-tools/python/oauth2.py \
  --user=<you>@gmail.com \
  --client_id=<Client ID> \
  --client_secret=<Client Secret> \
  --generate_oauth2_token

  3. Create access token generating script; gen_email_access_token.sh.

    Create a new file, paste the following in, and fill in the variable values. Don’t forget to set chmod 700!

    #!/bin/bash
# Reference: http://blog.onodera.asia/2020/06/how-to-use-google-g-suite-oauth2-with.html

python27_executable="python2.7"

# Path to the oauth2.py file.
# Get this file by cloning https://github.com/google/gmail-oauth2-tools
path_to_oauth2py="/path/to/gmail-oauth2-tools/python/oauth2.py"

# The email address we'll be using.
gsuite_email_address="<you>@gmail.com"

# Generate these by creating a new OAuth2 Client Id in Google's Cloud.
client_id="<client id>"
client_secret="<client secret>"

# Generate a refresh token by running the following command:
# python2.7 /opt/share/oauth2.py \
#   --user=MY_GSUITE_EMAIL_ADDRESS \
#   --client_id=MY_CLIENT_ID.apps.googleusercontent.com \
#   --client_secret=MY_CLIENT_SECRET  \
#   --generate_oauth2_token
refresh_token="<your refresh token">

access_token=$("${python27_executable}" "${path_to_oauth2py}" \
  --user="${gsuite_email_address}" \
  --client_id="${client_id}" \
  --client_secret="${client_secret}" \
  --refresh_token="${refresh_token}" \
  | awk -F" " '{if(NR==1)print $3}')

echo -n "$access_token"

  4. Confirm that your access token works.

    python2.7 /path/to/gmail-oauth2-tools/python/oauth2.py \
  --test_imap_authentication \
  --user=<you>@gmail.com \
  --access_token="<your access token>"

    You should see something like this:

    05:51.26 > OKBC1 AUTHENTICATE XOAUTH2
05:51.32 < +
05:51.33 write literal size 272
05:55.17 < * CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 UNSELECT IDLE NAMESPACE QUOTA ID XLIST CHILDREN X-GM-EXT-1 UIDPLUS COMPRESS=DEFLATE ENABLE MOVE CONDSTORE ESEARCH UTF8=ACCEPT LIST-EXTENDED LIST-STATUS LITERAL- SPECIAL-USE APPENDLIMIT=157286400
05:55.17 < OKBC1 OK <you>@gmail.com authenticated (Success)
05:55.17 > OKBC2 SELECT INBOX
05:55.59 < * FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Draft \Deleted \Seen $NotPhishing $Phishing)
05:55.59 < * OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Draft \Deleted \Seen $NotPhishing $Phishing \*)] Flags permitted.
05:55.59 < * OK [UIDVALIDITY 1] UIDs valid.
05:55.59 < * 142 EXISTS
05:55.59 < * 0 RECENT
05:55.59 < * OK [UIDNEXT 142654] Predicted next UID.
05:55.59 < * OK [HIGHESTMODSEQ 65647480]
05:55.59 < OKBC2 OK [READ-WRITE] INBOX selected. (Success)

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