An app password works like an alternate password for your account.

It can only be used by the

applications you share it with, so it’s more secure than sharing your primary password.

If you’d like to use an app password, you’ll need to turn on two factor authentication for your
Google account first. After that, you can create an app specific password for WP Mail SMTP in the
security settings for your Google account.

To do so, select Other (Custom name) as the app on the App passwords screen.

Then type in WP Mail SMTP or another name that will help you identify this password in the space
provided.
After that, you just need to click the Generate button to create your password.
If you’d like to start now, you can find more details and step-by-step instructions in our doc on how
to set up the Other SMTP mailer in WP Mail SMTP.

Note: any time you change your main Google account password, it will deactivate your app
passwords as well. If you change your password frequently, this may not be the best workaround.

Option 3: Switch to a New Mailer

If you’re not set on using Gmail, WP Mail SMTP has a ton of other mailers that use secure, API-
based connections to send email from WordPress.

Our recommended mailers are listed at the top of the Setup Wizard.