Email is the single most important element of daily work life; without which we would be less-than-efficient. We rely upon email to communicate, send files, schedule, and much more. Every company depends upon different solutions for email - some use Gmail. For those that depend upon Gmail, the browser interface may not be the ideal interface to work with throughout the day. For those wishing to have a more standard email client, you're in luck. I have found five efficient, user-friendly desktop email clients that interact with Gmail.![Email Email](https://zapier.cachefly.net/storage/photos/8725bf0eb702aaac6b9ebd844dc61036.png)
![How Do I Use Gmail For My Email Client On A Mac How Do I Use Gmail For My Email Client On A Mac](/uploads/1/2/6/8/126895170/906778855.jpg)
No more will you have to depend upon a browser-only interaction with your email account. Let's take a look at these five clients and see if any of them can stand up to your demands. Each of them offers a different feature set; but all of them tackle the most important task – email.
You can use gmailto firefox extension to have 'mailto:' links handled by gmail. Or better, set it up without an extension, in Firefox. For the rest of the system, you'll need to have a wrapper application that launches gmail. The Windows market is still said to be underserved in terms of email clients, especially compared to what is being offered to Mac users. Nevertheless, there already is a great choice of apps to help you manage your gmail (and other) accounts from your Windows desktop. Do you ever click a link to an email address and get frustrated when Outlook or Apple Mail pops up, rather than Gmail? Google Chrome makes it stunningly easy to make your Gmail account the default when clicking linked email addresses.
Set Gmail as default email client in Chrome Browse to Gmail, find the double diamond shaped icon in the search bar at the top of your browser, and click it. After clicking the diamond icon, you'll be prompted to allow Gmail to become the mail handler. Set up IMAP and change your SMTP settings to read Gmail messages in other mail clients, like Microsoft Outlook and Apple Mail. When you use IMAP, you can read your Gmail messages on multiple devices, and messages are synced in real time. With all these devices, especially the Macs, it makes sense to me to use Gmail in the web browser, so I don’t have to keep setting up email client after email client, or make sure all my filters.
Five apps
1. Geary
Geary is the one Linux-only client on the list. It's written in Vala and intended for seamless integration into the GNOME desktop. It's about as simple as it gets - open it up and use your Gmail account. There are few bells and whistles to this take on the desktop Gmail client. The Geary interface is based on conversations, which makes reading an entire discussion quite simple. Setting up Geary is as simple as adding your Gmail address and password. Once you've done that, Geary will very quickly draw in your email so you can begin reading within seconds. Geary does allow you to mark conversations, add labels, archive emails, view inline and attached images, search, and more. Geary is free and can be installed from source or from your package manager.
2. GMDesk
What Is My Email Client
GMDesk is built upon the Adobe Air runtime environment. Although GMDesk hasn't been in development for quite some time, it still works and works well. With this Air-based application you get access to all of the Gmail features, including Calendar, Drive, and more. Each app will open as a stand-alone application and can be closed as such. There is zero configuration necessary - just enter your Gmail credentials and go. You can also connect GMDesk to your Google Apps account instead of the standard Google services. You can select your preferred start-up service, and even switch between Google services within a single window.
![Email Email](https://zapier.cachefly.net/storage/photos/8725bf0eb702aaac6b9ebd844dc61036.png)
3. eM Client
eM Client offers Gmail synchronization built in. This particular solution is more of a traditional email client. In fact, you might find it similar to that of Outlook - only geared toward Gmail. With eM Client you can work with your email, calendar, tasks, and contacts. You do miss out on Google Drive - but that's not really the purpose of an email client anyway. Em Client also has a built in tool to connect with your colleagues using Gtalk. The one caveat to using eM Client is that, in order to get it for free, you must register. The free license is intended for non-commercial use and does not offer any support. If you want the Pro version, you'll have to shell out $49.95 USD.
Also read:Five email clients to help ease you away from Outlook
4. Gmail by Pokki
Gmail by Pokki is another simple to use desktop app for your Gmail account that offers up friendly notifications from within the Windows system tray. With this free app you can: View and save attachments, set label notifications, create customized tabs, chat, turn any conversation into a video call with up to ten friends, establish a theme, and more. The one thing to be aware of is that Pokki is an entire app store on its own. So when you download Gmail by Pokki, you are installing their app store. It is quite unobtrusive and can be easily avoided. Getting to the settings requires a right-click of the Pokki 'menu' button in the task bar.
5. Thunderbird
Thunderbird is just as capable of dealing with Gmail as any other client. Set up of your Gmail account on Thunderbird is quite simple - no need to know the Gmail server addresses (just create a new account, add your Gmail credentials and let Thunderbird handle the rest. You won't gain access to your Calendar, contacts, tasks, labels, or any of the other Gmail features, but you will have a very powerful email client at your disposal. You can, of course, add the Lightning addon and have it connect to your Gmail Calendar. Thunderbird is a great cross-platform solution (Windows, Linux, Mac) for those looking for a Gmail desktop client.
Bottom line
If you're looking for user- Gmail-friendly desktop client, look no further than any one of these apps. Although not every app offers the entire range of features as found in the browser-based solution, each of them offers everything you need to access the basics of your Gmail account. Give one of these desktop clients a try and see if it doesn't wean you from your browser.
Google's free Gmail offers fantastic convenience and many useful features, but it's never played well with Apple's Mail.
The crux of the conflict when using Mail as a client for Gmail is labels, Google’s alternative to traditional e-mail folders. Instead of filing messages into single folders like Mail and most other clients, Gmail essentially lets you tag e-mail messages with multiple words like you can with photos on Flickr or bookmarks at Delicious. Because you can apply as many labels as you want to a message, and Google creates an All Mail folder to collect every message in your account, working with Gmail in Mail can get clunky, and fast.
For instance, if you apply three labels to an inbox message in Gmail, five copies of that message will appear in Mail when you search for it: three for the aforementioned labels, one from the inbox, and one from the All Mail folder.
Over time, though, both Google and third parties have attempted to bridge the gap between Gmail and Mail, with tactics that include adding more control over IMAP features and replicating some of Gmail’s productivity perks in Mail. Depending on your needs, Gmail and Mail can actually work quite well together, and we can show you how.
This article assumes that you already have a Gmail account, have properly set it up in Mail, and have some reasonable familiarity with both.
Step 1: Turn on advanced Gmail features
For a while now, Gmail has offered some often overlooked options that give you more control over how external clients like Mail interact with your Gmail labels.
To start using these options, go to the Labs tab of your Gmail settings and enable the Advanced IMAP Controls feature. Be sure to click Save Changes, and Gmail will refresh itself, bringing you back to your inbox.
Step 2: Customize your labels
![How Do I Use Gmail For My Email Client On A Mac How Do I Use Gmail For My Email Client On A Mac](/uploads/1/2/6/8/126895170/906778855.jpg)
Go back into your Gmail settings and then to the Labels tab. You now have control over whether most of Gmail’s labels appear in Mail (again, as folders). More than likely, you want to disable the All Mail label—it is responsible for most of the message duplication in traditional e-mail clients.
Also, feel free to hide any other labels that you don’t need while offline, or labels for any of your Gmail rules that might create unnecessary duplicates in Mail. Note that you’ll have to log into Gmail in a browser if you need to look up messages with any of the labels that you excluded from Mail, including archived messages. If you opt to follow step three to automatically archive Gmail messages that you trash in Mail, you might also want to hide Gmail's Trash label from your IMAP clients.
Step 3: Enable IMAP archiving
When you delete messages from Mail (and most typical e-mail clients), the program moves them to the Trash folder for disposal. This behavior made sense in the past when disk space was a precious commodity and e-mail programs and services could get bogged down if they had to organize too many messages. But thanks to zippy Macs, powerful servers, and bountiful disk space these days (even online), Gmail takes a different approach by defaulting to an “archive” behavior. This moves messages out of the Inbox, but keeps them around in the searchable All Mail folder—instead of just getting rid of them forever—for that rainy day.
Since we’re looking to turn Mail into a good Gmail client, you can make your keyboard’s Delete button tell Gmail to archive the message. Just go to Gmail’s Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab in Settings and locate the Auto-Expunge setting, in the IMAP Access section. Switch it to Do Not Automatically Expunge Messages. Then, set When A Message Is Expunged From The Last Visible IMAP Folder to Archive The Message. Save your changes at the bottom of the page.
Now, whenever you delete a message from Mail (including all of the labels/folders it is duplicated in), it’ll be archived in your spacious Gmail account and searchable online if you end up needing it down the road.
Step 4: Fine-tune your Mail settings
Now that Gmail is all set, it’s time to tweak your Mail settings to be on their best behavior. Go to Mail -> Preferences, and select your Gmail account. Click on the Mailbox Behaviors tab and:
- Enable Store Draft Messages On The Server if you want your drafts to be accessible in Gmail on the Web.
- Make sure Store Sent Messages On The Server is checked, and that the Delete Sent Messages When popup menu is set to Never.
- Enable Move Deleted Messages To The Trash Mailbox, but disable Store Deleted Messages On The Server. This is the other half of the feature we set up in step 3. Mail will create its own Trash folder that is stored locally on your Mac, but in Gmail on the Web, messages will be archived and searchable. Close the settings window and click Save to accept your changes.
- Find your Gmail folders in Mail’s sidebar, unfurl the folder called [Gmail], and then select the Drafts subfolder. Then select Mailbox -> Use This Mailbox For -> Drafts.
- Select the [Gmail] -> Sent Mail subfolder and choose Mailbox -> Use This Mailbox For -> Sent
- Finally, select the [Gmail] -> Spam subfolder and select Mailbox -> Use This Mailbox For -> Junk. These last three actions ensure that Mail and Gmail are on the same page when it comes to which folders to use for storing these types of messages. If you use multiple Macs, be sure to go through these motions in Mail on each one.
Your Gmail account and Mail should now be humming along together about as in tune as they can, given their different approaches to handling e-mail.
Step 5: Opt for some extras
One of Gmail's advantages is its focus on keyboard productivity. You can quickly label, archive, and delete messages, or even move between labels, all without touching a mouse. If you want some of that organizational power in Mail, give Indev Software's $25 Mail Act-On plug-in () a try. Mail Act-On lets you customize keyboard shortcuts for doing just about anything you want in Mail. Select one or more messages and add colored labels to help them stand out for revisiting later, move messages to a folder, even run an AppleScript on a group of messages—all with a single keyboard stroke.
Mail Act-On also integrates with one of Indev Software's other plug-ins, the $30 MailTags (), for applying tags and project management tools to your e-mail. Note that there's one important limitation with Gmail and Mail Act-On if you use multiple Macs. Unlike most other IMAP e-mail services, Gmail will not sync these tags back up to its servers, so they are not accessible to any of your other Macs. If you apply a Mail Act-On tag to a message on one Mac and search for that tag on a second Mac, you won't get a match.
Mail and Gmail might not be a perfect match, but with a little configuration, they can get along. If you prefer accessing all of your mail offline, harnessing the advantages of Mail’s integration with the rest of Mac OS X, or if you simply have multiple accounts and services to keep an eye on, you can incorporate Gmail into the rest of your business and pleasure with a minimum of hassle.
Updated at 1:13 p.m. PT to add instructions for Gmail's Trash label.
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