Creating an app password for AOL Mail

Two minutes at your AOL Account Security page, and you only do it once.

Nevermore signs in to AOL Mail over IMAP with an app password: a separate, revocable password that works for one app and nothing else. Your ordinary account password will not work, and that is deliberate — there is no OAuth consent screen and no third party in the middle. AOL Mail runs on the same system as Yahoo Mail, so the process is nearly identical.

Creating one

Sign in to your AOL Account Security page.
Create an app password there and follow the prompts. AOL's help article, linked below, has the current wording for the button.
Copy the password AOL generates.

As with Yahoo, AOL decides whether your account is eligible: use a browser you have signed in to AOL with on several days, and not a private window. Changing your main password does not invalidate an app password — delete it to revoke it.

AOL's own instructions →

Then, in Nevermore

Paste it into the App password field on Nevermore's sign-in screen. Spaces are fine — the app strips them. It goes straight into the macOS Keychain, is never written to disk in the clear, and never leaves your Mac.

An app password is a credential: it grants access to your mailbox. Put it in Nevermore's password field, and nowhere else — not into a note, an email to yourself, or a chat window. If you ever want to cut Nevermore off, delete the app password at your provider; nothing else about your account changes.

If sign-in still fails

Check you entered the app password, not your normal account password. Providers reject both with the same error, so the message looks identical.
Most providers show the password only once and cannot show it again. If you did not copy it, delete that one and create another — they are free and disposable.
If you deleted the password at your provider, or changed something about the account, create a new one and re-enter it.
Still stuck? Get in touch — include your provider and what the error said.

Checked against AOL's own instructions on 22 August 2026. Providers move these settings without warning; if what you see does not match, their page is the authoritative one and we would be glad to hear about it.