What just happened? Gmail is having one of those mornings, the kind where the world's default email client suddenly feels like it's running on dial-up and forgot how to spot obvious junk mail. Users are reporting delays in email delivery and warnings that some messages haven't been scanned for spam, letting junk (and potentially worse) slip into inboxes.
Update: Google says the Gmail disruption has now been resolved. In its latest status update, the company confirmed that the email misclassification, spam warning banners, and delivery delays were fixed as of 9:55 AM Pacific on Saturday, January 24.
Users on Reddit and X are reporting email delivery delays of 10+ minutes, with some messages arriving so late that one-time passcodes and email-based two-factor authentication are timing out before they can be used. That's the sort of hiccup that can turn a simple login attempt into a frustrating wait.
Another big issue is Gmail's normally invisible superpower: spam scanning. Google's Workspace status dashboard has been updated to indicate that some users "might see banners indicating missing spam checks," including a notice stating: "Be careful with this message. Gmail hasn't scanned this message for spam, unverified senders, or harmful software." Google says the incident began Saturday morning at 5:00 AM Pacific time and that it is investigating, although user reports appear to have started earlier.
Anyone else getting all the promotions / updates emails in the primary @gmail inbox today? Extremely annoying… pic.twitter.com/q4qHLESH5V
– Akshat Khandelwal (@akshatk7) January 24, 2026
Meanwhile, users are also complaining that Gmail's tabbed sorting is acting up, with Promotions and Social emails suddenly being routed into the Primary inbox. For those with mobile notifications enabled, this misclassification can result in a flood of alerts from messages that would normally be filtered into secondary tabs.
And while Gmail isn't "down," crowdsourced outage monitoring suggests widespread disruption. Downdetector is showing a spike in reports, with "receiving messages" listed as the most common issue.
Until the problem is resolved, the advice is boring but important: your Gmail settings have not changed, avoid clicking suspicious links, and consider temporarily relying on an authenticator app for two factor authentication where possible. Google says it will provide another update later this morning.