There are tons of chrome extensions that add features to gmail and improve its interface. this article compiles the ones we consider most useful.
this spring, google released a redesign of the gmail web interface that added several new features, which could make some extensions obsolete or inoperable. After the relaunch, we retested all of the extensions in this article to make sure they’re still useful and work properly with the updated interface.
They do everything from making neat little tweaks to the interface to adding fancy features to gmail. some have been around for several years, while others were released a few months ago, but all can be useful additions to your gmail experience.
to be clear: we do not recommend installing all these extensions at once; too many extensions installed on any browser can bog down its performance. instead, consider this list and choose the ones that give you the features you want most in gmail.
1. checker plus for gmail or notifier for gmail
checker plus for gmail notifies you of new emails with pop-up windows in the lower right corner of your computer desktop. each popup shows a preview of the first few lines of the email. Click the plus check icon in the chrome extensions toolbar to open a panel from the top of your chrome window that lists your unread emails.
You can read them from this panel (or have checker plus read them aloud), delete them, or perform other actions on them without having to go to your gmail home page. you can even compose a new email from the panel.
You can monitor multiple gmail accounts using this extension. according to the developer, checker plus doesn’t restrict the number of google user accounts you can add, but gmail’s servers seem to allow a computer to simultaneously access about 10 accounts.
If you don’t need all the features of checker plus for gmail, notifier for gmail, shown above, does the job. uses much less memory on your computer than checker plus, so it might run faster if you’re using chrome on an older, slower computer.
just like checker plus, notifier for gmail displays a notification window in the bottom right corner of your desktop for every incoming email, displaying the first piece of text in it. and just like with checker plus, you can click the gmail notifier icon in the chrome extension’s toolbar to open a panel where you can read an unread email. From the panel window, you can also delete the message, mark it as read/unread, or mark it as spam. you can add up to five gmail accounts to this extension and switch between them.
2. gmelius
This feature packed extension is like a steroid shot for gmail. gmelius allows you to tweak a lot of little things about the gmail interface, like forcing the cc or bcc field to always appear in the email compose window, or automatically reducing the size of large embedded images in emails, and does what attachment icons for gmail and row highlighter for gmail work separately: change the default paperclip icon for attachments to an icon that better represents the file type for the attachment and highlight an email header on your gmail home page when you hover over it.
gmelius also includes a number of larger features, including email templates, the ability to schedule emails to send later, reminders to follow up on recipients who haven’t responded, and email follow-up with receipt confirmations. reading so you know what emails have been read. paid business plans start at $5 per user per month and include advanced features like recurring emails and detailed activity reports.
3. mail track
Speaking of email tracking, there are several extensions that can track the emails you send and confirm each time the recipient opens one. most charge for this service, but many also allow you to send a limited number of tracked emails for free.
mailtrack is one of the highest rated and most popular extensions on the chrome web store, probably because the free plan allows you to send an unlimited number of tracked emails. gmelius offers unlimited email tracking with a free plan, but mailtrack is a good option if you prefer an extension that doesn’t have as many unrelated extra features as gmelius.
unlike gmelius and other trackers, mailtrack does not include a send later feature that allows you to set an email to be sent at a date or time of your choosing. advanced features like daily activity reports, click tracking, and reminders if recipients haven’t opened your email after a period of time are available only on mailtrack’s pro plan, which costs $5 per month.
4. boomerang for gmail
Like mailtrack, boomerang for gmail offers email tracking features including read receipts, reply tracking, follow-up reminders, and click tracking. but where the extension really shines is in the time control it gives you over the emails you send and receive.
boomerang adds a big red “send later” button to the gmail compose email toolbar. clicking it opens a panel where you set a day and time you want the email to be sent. The extension also has a “Dismiss this email now and return it to me later” feature that is similar to Gmail’s snooze feature, added in the April redesign. and boomerang’s inbox pause feature prevents new emails from arriving in your inbox at times you designate, so you can focus on your work.
another feature you may (or may not) find useful is responsive, a digital assistant that uses artificial intelligence to determine how likely your email is to get a response and makes suggestions to improve your text.
boomerang allows you to use any of the above features for free for up to 10 emails per month. pay for a subscription plan, starting at $5 per month, and you can use these features with an unlimited number of emails.
5. pixel block
You don’t like email tracking, at least when it comes to the messages they send you? If you receive an email that has a tracker applied, pixelblock can prevent you from telling the sender that you’ve opened their email.
with pixelblock, you can tell that an email has a tracker only after you open it. if so, you’ll see a crossed-out red eye icon next to the sender’s name. clicking this icon opens a callout displaying the name of the tracking service, if it can be identified.
6. get rid
Have you ever lost track of a file that arrived as an email attachment at some point in the past? of course you have dittach can help: add a column on the right side of your gmail homepage that shows thumbnails of all your email attachments, with the most recent date at the top. you can scroll through this column to see thumbnails of attachments in older emails, or use the search feature to hone in on the right attachment. dittach can also sort your stored attachments by category (documents, movies, music, other, pdfs, photos) to make it easier for you to find what you want.
Clicking a thumbnail opens a larger preview of the attachment, and then you can delete, download or share the attachment, or open the email it’s attached to. (if you delete the attachment, the original email it was attached to still remains).
7. convert google docs to gmail drafts
The name convert google docs to gmail drafts says it all: the idea is that you can use google docs to compose a fancy looking email. it could, for example, include charts that are available on google docs. In the google docs window of the document you’re working on, the extension adds a blue “open in gmail” button to the top right corner. click on it and the document will be saved as a draft email in gmail. your advanced layout will be preserved when you send it from gmail.
8. gmail sender icons
On the gmail home page, the gmail sender icons label each email subject header with the sender’s email address domain and the domain’s page icon. Being able to quickly see the sender’s email domain without first opening their email can serve as a security measure. For example, a phishing email may state in its subject line that it is an important email from Dropbox, but it will not be sent from dropbox.com. this extension highlights the domain it was actually sent from.
9. attachment icons for gmail
Before the gmail redesign, all email attachments were indicated in your inbox list with a simple paperclip icon. now each attachment is represented as an icon with a leading part of its filename. This icon is located below the email subject header and is designed to represent the attached file (a pdf, for example) so you know what you’re getting before you click on it.
but this improved icon appears only when the main page “display density” is set to “default”. if you set it to “comfortable” or “compact” (so you can see more subject headings on the main page at once), your emails that have attachments are indicated by the simple paperclip icon.
The Attachment Icons for Gmail extension changes the paperclip icon that appears in “comfortable” and “compact” display modes to one that is more representative of the attachment. so if the attached file is a pdf, the icon becomes a pdf document symbol. Attachment Icons also assigns unique icons for other file types, such as media (image, sound, video) and Microsoft Office documents (excel, powerpoint, word).
That’s right, the gmelius extension does the same thing and much more. But if you just want an easy way to identify attachment types in any view mode, and aren’t looking for an extension that does it all, try Attachment Icons.
10. row highlighter for gmail
Here’s another single-purpose extension: On your gmail home page, row highlighter for gmail highlights the header of an email when you hover over it. nothing momentous here; it just provides a simple visual aid when going through your email headlines to find the one you need to open. you can customize the highlight color; two colors can be selected to differentiate between an email that has been marked as read or unread.
This story, “10 Chrome Extensions to Improve Gmail” was originally published by computerworld.