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up vote 6 down vote favorite

Of course I can't reproduce it now, however about 20% of the time I try and login to my Gmail account (because my wife logged into her), it get's stuck in an infinite redirect loop. I always end up surfing around to different Google sites for a while, and then eventually it fixes itself.

Anyone know how to fix this? What causes it?

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4 Answers

up vote 6 down vote accepted

A couple things to try:

  • Clear your cookies (if a duration is allowed, I'd try "everything")
  • Clear your cache (if a duration is allowed, I'd try "everything")
  • Make sure your system time is correct.
  • If none of that works, try logging in with labs disabled: http://mail.google.com/mail/?labs=0
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FWIW I just remedied the infinite loop problem on iPad iOS 5 safari by clearing browsing history only. – alx9r Nov 5 '12 at 20:14
up vote 1 down vote

I found that it was the Smart Labels feature available in Labs that caused the infinite redirect loop. After using http://mail.google.com/mail/?labs=0 to get into my mail, I disabled that lab feature. After that, I could access email again normally. It's a shame this answer (specifically to use the labs=0 URL) isn't listed anywhere in the Google Apps help site.

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up vote 0 down vote

Seems like clearing the cookies should help it, however that would be annoying to do every time you want to login to your Gmail account.

I would therefore suggest that you either ask your wife to use the private browsing/incognito mode of your browser, or that you create a separate browser profile for each of you (with Chrome, you can use ChromeDeck: http://lifehacker.com/5549178/chromedeck-creates-and-manages-multiple-chrome-profiles).

Alternatively, if you are happy to use a desktop client, such as Thunderbird, that should also solve your issues, albeit indirectly.

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I have multiple accounts that I sign in and out of. The redirect loop is not normal. Just to clarify, I was not saying clearing data needed to be done every time, just once to get out of the corrupted state. – Rebecca Chernoff Jul 18 '10 at 2:51
You can avoid signing in and out by using the multiple sign-in feature – Itamar Sep 19 '11 at 8:17
up vote 0 down vote

I had to enable third-party cookies to make mine work. After cleaning everything out and logging in, the cookies I had were: google-analytics.com googleusercontent.com gstatic.com youtube.com

So, that's what google registers you with upon log in.

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