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Gmail android app: no attachment download possible

Hey together!

When using the nextDNS android app with standard ads and tracker blocklist, I cannot download attachments in the official Gmail android app from my Gmail account (but from my university Exchange server it works even with the Gmail app). The download progress never advances over 0%. I am not using the block page setting.

I already tried to set some of the blocked domains like googletagmanager.com and google-analytics.com on the allowlist, but this did not help. Does anyone know which domains to allow for repairing this issue? Alternatively, does anyone know any other solution besides switching nextDNS off for every attachment download?

Thank you very much! Cheers,

Chris

8 replies

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    • Ruby_Balloon
    • 3 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Do you use any other blocklists in addition to the recommended NextDns one? Also do you have any queries being blocked that end in "gvt2.com" or match some of the below domains? It sounds like at least one of the Google Services Domains (needed for Gmail, Drive, Play Store, etc) are possibly being blocked

    Here are a few of the Domains: 

    android.clients.google.com
clients1.google.com
clients2.google.com
clients3.google.com
clients4.google.com
clients5.google.com
clients6.google.com
connectivitycheck.gstatic.com
beacons.gcp.gvt2.com
beacons.gvt2.com
beacons2.gvt2.com
beacons3.gvt2.com
beacons4.gvt2.com
      • Chris_S
      • 3 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Ruby Balloon 

      Thank you very much for your response. Apart from the NextDNS adblock blocklist, I also activated some entries of the security tab (Threat-Intelligence, Safe Browsing, Kryptojacking, IDN protection, typo protection, DGS protection, arachnid porn protection), but no youth protection and nothing in the denylist. However, when I try to download an attachment, no domains seem to blocked and the following domains seem to work fine:

       

      clients4.google.com
      storage.googleapis.com
      update.googleapis.com
      ci5.googleusercontent.com
      ci4.googleusercontent.com
      ci6.googleusercontent.com
      ci3.googleusercontent.com
      mobile-webview.gmail.com
      lh3.googleusercontent.com
      mobile-webview.gmail.com
      cloudsearch.googleapis.com
      accounts.google.com
      peoplestack-pa.googleapis.com
      mail.google.com
      inbox.google.com

       

      Any ideas what else the NextDNS app changes to somehow confuse GMail?

      • Chris_S
      • 3 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Ruby Balloon I now added *.com to the allowlist, restarted the NextDNS app, but still cannot download attachments. There has to be some issue with the NextDNS app / VPN itself and not the filter lists, doesn't it?

      • Ruby_Balloon
      • 3 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Chris S. I'm not entirely convinced, has it ever worked in the past? Have you tried clearing the Gmail app's cache & data? What version of Android are you on? If on version 9 or later, have you tried using NextDns via Private DNS instead of the NextDns App.

      • Chris_S
      • 3 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Ruby Balloon I am on Android version 8 and thus have no "Private DNS" available which is the reason why I had to install the NextDNS app. And without NextDNS, opening / downloading attachments works fine and within seconds, even without having to wipe GMail data. Hence, it has to do with NextDNS somehow.

      I wish I could simply exclude GMail from NextDNS app like it is possible, e.g., in DNS66 (which however seems not to support DNS-over-TLS and thus is not useful for me). If possible, I would want to stay with the official NextDNS app.

      • Ruby_Balloon
      • 3 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Chris S. On Google Support forums, there's also a record of this not working on Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS app

      https://support.google.com/mail/thread/4136375?hl=en&msgid=7795885

      So this might be an inherent dns/vpn app incompatibility issue

      • Ruby_Balloon
      • 3 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Chris S. One alternative (at least for wifi connections) is to manually set static dns ips to your NextDns linked ip dns servers.

      • Chris_S
      • 3 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Ruby Balloon Thanks for the additional information. The static IP solution works for my router at home but not for my phone, because I would have to somehow update the linked IP manually all the time or with another app I guess. 

      Reluctantly, I now changed from the official NextDNS client to Nebulo which offers DoT and DoH to custom servers like NextDNS and you can manually ignore certain installed apps concerning the DNS requests. Now, downloading attachments works fine again. Would be great if the official NextDNS app could either also allow for such an ignore list. Thanks again!

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