With there being so many new ways to communicate with each other, such as Twitter and Facebook, you may quickly forget how email is still the top dominant way to communicate online. Most of use primarily use Gmail for out free email hosting because of the friendly user interface in addition to how it has primarily became the #1 email provider available. One of the great things about Gmail is how well it works with Mac OS X and the many ways to set up desktop notifications so you don’t have to continually check your inbox.
Gmail Desktop Notifier
The Gmail Desktop Notifier is one of the more popular methods to receive desktop notifications for Gmail. It is also one of the original notification clients available once notifications were released as a feature on Mac OS. Gmail Desktop Notifier is a nice, small, unobtrusive icon that sits in your menu bar. The icon will turn red when a new message has been received and a small number appears next to it to tell you how many new messages you have waiting in your inbox.
Another great feature is that you can click the icon and a pull down menu will appear which will show what the subject of the email is and who the sender was. Once you select an email, Gmail will automatically open up in a web browser.
Chrome Gmail Notifications
If you are a big Chrome browser user then this is the best Gmail notification you can use for your desktop. It is a very easy to set up and has a simple interface that shows the sender, subject and first line of the subject. In order to activate notifications through Chrome simple click the Gmail settings menu (gear icon) then click Gmail settings, general and then enable Gmail notifications. The only con about the Chrome Gmail notification is you must be logged into your Gmail account through Chrome at all times in order for it to work.
Notify Email Notification Utility
Notify when it was created was a free notification application that quickly added new features, which in return made it a paid utility costing $10. Although it is no longer free, it is for sure the most robust and dynamic Gmail notification utility that you can purchase. Notify has some very cool features that give you the ability to create new messages, mark the messages as read, reply and receive a full message preview all from a dropdown on the menu bar. Notify is also great if you utilize any other email clients because it works with almost any email available.