See Gmail unread message count in Safari's dock icon

Aug 06, '08 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: emale

If you are like me, you want to keep an eye on your private e-mails even when you're working. In my company, all ports except the ones for FTP and HTTP are blocked, so there's no chance to run e-mail client software such as Mail. I also don't want to log into my mail account every hour (IT/help desk is watching you...), or install a special widget or menulet -- but now I've found a nice way to stay informed about new messages in my Gmail mailbox.

The following assumes you have Safari running all the time, and that you're using Gmail (or any other mail account with an RSS feed available).

  1. Download the Safari Dock Status SIMBL plug-in. Eventually you have to install SIMBL as well. With the help of SIMBL, you can extend some aspects of Safari (and other applications). Both are free, but install them at your own risk.

    SIMBL comes with an installer, but the Safari Dock Status extension has to be manually placed into /Library » Application Support » SIMBL » Plugins.
  2. Log into your Gmail account and activate the "keep me logged in" option. Of course, it's helpful if you're the only person that has access to your computer, and/or the account is password locked.
  3. Now you're in your inbox. Click the RSS icon in the location bar. The RSS feed of your Mailbox is shown. Click the plus sign icon to add the page to your Bookmarks -- the best place would be the favorites bar.
  4. Remove all other folders and bookmarks with RSS feeds (like the News folder) in the favourites bar placed there by default. If you are like me, you don't need them any way on your work machine; I just use them at home. If you don't remove them, you won't know if there's a new mail message, or just a new news entry.
From now on, you'll have a little number on the Safari dock icon (Safari has to be running, obviously) showing the count of new mails in your Gmail inbox. Click the Bookmark you added before to get more information about the messages.

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