Gmail Notifier Extension
Email notifications have become an essential part of every ones Internet life. Throughout the course of a normal workday, you will browse many tabs and in between all that mess, you have to constantly visit your email web-client occasionally to check for anything new. Extensions and add-ons that keep track of and notify you when you have new email are useful for precisely this: keeping you sane and up-to-date with your emails.
Gmail Notifier is a multi-browser add-on that does just that, but on a plus side it supports for multiple accounts and an amazing preview panel that gives you an excellent overview of the new emails you’ve just received. It tracks your inbox or any other label of your choice for activity and sends you notifications for new emails. You can receive notifications for up to six accounts and as many labels as you wish.
You can delete, archive or mark emails as read from the panel, and navigate to the next/previous email without even having to open your Gmail interface anymore. The add-on gives you both desktop and audio notifications, and lets you manually check for new emails, switch between different email accounts, as well as the notification on the add-on’s toolbar button.
How it works
After installation, to get notifications, you will have to sign-in into your Gmail account webpage (not from the extension, but from Gmail web interface). This is where the magic happens! The extension grabs your account(s) details without the need of accessing your credentials, or in another word, there is no need of storing your passwords anywhere.
At this point, the toolbar icon changes from blue to gray if there is no unread emails. If you click the add-on toolbar button, it will take you to the Gmail webpage. However, if you have unread email, each time you click the toolbar button, it will open the preview panel instead. A simple right-click will allow you to switch to a different account. To add multiple accounts, you must be signed into each one in your browser.
When you receive a new email, click the toolbar button to open the preview panel. You will be able to read a small snippet from the email and view the sender’s email address. You can switch to a different account from the preview panel as well. The all too familiar archive, delete, mark as spam, refresh, and mark as read buttons do exactly what you expect them to.
The appearance of the new email badge, the notification alert sound and the default action associated with clicking the add-on button can all be customized from the add-on’s settings. You can pick a sound of your choice in WAV format, and choose a different color for the notification and unread email count. The extension might appear simple on the surface, but you get granular control over it via its settings page.
Overall, Gmail Notifier is pretty good for its excellent preview pane and all the customization options it offers but the notification its notification is quite the disappointment.
How to get Gmail Notifier extension
Gmail Notifier extension is currently available for Firefox, Chrome and Opera browser. If you are a Safari fan, there is a developer version of the extension for Safari browser as well.
- Firefox download link: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/gmail-notifier-restartless/
- Chrome download link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gmail-notifier/dcjichoefijpinlfnjghokpkojhlhkgl
- Opera download link: https://addons.opera.com/extensions/details/gmail-notifier/
- Safari download link: https://github.com/inbasic/ignotifier/tree/master/src.safariextension/executables
How to login into multiple accounts
If you have more than one Gmail account, you can use multiple sign-in to switch between accounts without having to sign out and back in again. For example, if you have one Gmail account for personal use and a different Gmail account for business, you can easily switch between the two within the same browser using multiple sign-in. To add a new account follow these steps:
- Sign in to Google
- Click your profile photo or email address at the top-right corner of the page.
- Click Add account from the drop-down menu.
- Enter the username and password for another account you want to access, and click Sign in.
- Now wait for a few minutes until Gmail Notifier extension grabs the login details of a new account.
If you have new unread emails in this newly login account, you will get a new notification right after the signin process is complete.
How to get more help
Gmail Notifier extension has an active community of developers. The easiest way to contribute to the project is to open a new bug in it’s GitHub repository. Please make sure you have already reviewed all the open bugs or suggestion topics before opening a new one.
Further readings
If you have enjoyed using the notifier, there are still a lot you can do with it. The extension’s homepage is a good place to start.