How To Access Gmail on your Desktop

Posted by: fasil on January 5th, 2009

Gmail is one of the most preferred web mail service among many Internet users. Apart from accessing Gmail using POP client in your desktop, there are other ways that you can access your Gmail on desktop. In this tutorial, we shall discuss two other ways to access Gmail on your desktop.

1. GMDesk

GMDesk is a Adobe Air application which runs on your desktop. With GMDesk, you can access most of the Google services, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Picasa and Maps. A good thing about this software is that it is cross-platform compatible and you can access your Google services under your own domain name. The only issue you might face with GMDesk is that some of the fonts in Gmail are smaller than the original one and could be straining to your eyes.

Screen shots illustrating the use of GMDesk

GMDesk Standalone application
Preferences and setting for GMDesk Application

GMDesk preferences and setting

GMDesk applications
Access to other Google services using GMDesk

Installing GMDesk

If you have not installed Adobe Air on your system, download the installer and install it. Ubuntu users can follow this guide to install Adobe Air in Ubuntu Intrepid.
Either go to the GMDesk home page and click on the GMDesk Flash Installer to install, or if you prefer a manual method, download the AIR application from Google code.

2. Google Gmail Desktop Gadget

Google Desktop is an application that enables the user to search the desktop like how you search in the browser. It also allows you to install little widget-like gadgets such as calendar, clock, games and weather information on your desktop. The Gmail gadget is one of the thing that you can install on your desktop for easy access to your Gmail account.

You don’t really get the full-fledged Gmail, but it will enable you to read your emails and star it without logging on in the browser. In the event that you need to write a new mail, there is a shortcut link to Compose that you can click to access your Gmail account (in browser) quickly and easily. Other shortcuts include Search and Signout.

The Gmail gadget is only available for Windows platform with Google Desktop 5 or above.
Gmail Google Desktop Gadget

Installing Gmail Gadget

Install Google Desktop
Download the Gmail gadget and install it on your Google Desktop

Fasil is a Systems Engineer,who likes to explore Linux kernel stuffs and involves in blogging as a spare time activity.His interests are exploring open source software's and Linux kernel.He blogs at http://smashtech.blogspot.com about technology stuffs.

Tags: desktop app, gmail, Google

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BobCFC

Mozilla Prism or Google Chrome will allow you to make a Gmail web app short cut on your desktop to use it like an application without back/forward buttons etc. (or any website)

Prism needs more work but it has potential. You can even find a pre-built package in Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install prism-google-mail

Or just install prism by itself and use it with any website

fasil

Thanks for listing the other ways to access gmail..

Phil

I would add Thunderbird or any other POP3 or IMAP capable e mailclient to that list...