gmailto is a small program that handles mailto: links on Mac OS X by opening a Gmail compose window in the default browser. It also supports Google Apps email accounts.
It was inspired by the following train of thought:
- Apple’s Mail app is clunky; I prefer Gmail’s web interface.
- Google’s official notifier app handles mailto links, but I prefer Gmail Notifr because it checks Gmail as often as every minute (obsessive, I know) and takes less menubar space. Gmail Notifr does not handle mailto links.
- Browser-based solutions are suboptimal because they require an extension to run at all times and don’t work in all browsers.
My build of gmailto requires Snow Leopard because I use some new Cocoa magic ([NSApp setActivationPolicy:]). However, if you want to build gmailto for an earlier version of OS X, you are free to do so. gmailto is open source and licensed under the MIT License, which is exceedingly permissive.
To install gmailto, drag gmailto to your /Applications folder, or wherever you would like to put it. Then select gmailto as the default email reader in Mail.app’s general preference pane. If you use Google Apps, launch gmailto once to set your domain. Otherwise, everything should just work.
Download gmailto.
Get a zip of the source code.
Fork me on github.
Donate.