Can't send emails—it keeps asking for my password

Lately, I’ve been having trouble sending emails through Mozilla Thunderbird. I use a Gmail account, but every time I try to send anything, it just keeps prompting me: Enter your password for xxxxxxx@gmail.com on smtp.gmail.com. Even after I type in my password, the prompt just pops right back up...
Has anyone else run into this issue?

crimsonridge44 said:Lately, I haven't been able to send emails using Mozilla Thunderbird, andI'm using a Gmail account, so every single time I try to send something, it just keeps asking me to "Enter your password" for xxxxxxx@gmail.com via smtp.gmail.com, and even after I type the password in, nothing changes.
Has anyone else run into this?

This strikes me as some kind of specific software bug within Mozilla Thunderbird.

It is entirely possible that something else on your system is interfering with the process, so you might want to try disabling Norton just to see if that clears things up, since it's quite plausible that the antivirus is causing issues out of nowhere. By default, most antivirus programs include a specialized module designed to scan standard mail applications on macOS.

If you are strictly using webmail services like Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook, there really isn't any reason to keep that module active. There is no real point in letting that module run in the background and wasting your system resources for no reason.☕

crimsonridge44 said:Lately, I can't send anything through Mozilla Thunderbird. I'm using my Gmail account, and every single time I try to hit send, it just keeps asking—"Enter your password for xxxxxxx@gmail.com on smtp.gmail.com." Even after I type the password in, it just loops back to the same thing.
Anyone else dealt with this headache?

Look, if your Norton isn't acting up and blocking things, then your ISP or the mail server itself probably has your SMTP traffic flagged and blocked.

Basically, to stop bots and all that annoying SMTP spam, ISPs constantly block outgoing SMTP traffic from their nodes to other providers unless they’re on some kind of whitelist.

So, if you're an internet subscriber in the US with Provider X and you're trying to use an SMTP client for a server hosted by Provider Y, they'll often just block both sides automatically to keep the spam bots at bay.

Gmail can be a real pain about blocking third-party email apps. You basically have to go into your Google account settings and disable that strong authentication stuff just to get it to cooperate
That worked for me
Usually, things just get messy when you have the same Google account logged in on your phone too
During that whole process, you end up stuck in this endless loop of verifying your identity. Google sends these codes to your phone, and then you have to manually type them into the form on your computer just to prove to them that both devices actually belong to you

In my case, honestly? It was way easier to just ditch the third-party app entirely and stick to the Gmail web interface