One of the most frequently asked questions I get from Mac users is, “Why don’t you use Apple’s Mail app?” I don’t use Mail because I love Gmail. I love Gmail’s filters and labels. I love that everything is stored on Gmail servers and not taking up space on my hard drive. I love Gmail’s searchability.
Today, Google announced that Gmail’s biggest weakness is going away . They’ve been working on it for awhile and in the next couple of days, Google will roll out offline Gmail.
It’s an optional feature that, once turned on, will use Google Gears to download and synchronize a local cache of your mail whenever you’re connected to the Internet. When you disconnect Gmail will operate normally in your browser. It will just hold on to sent message until a connection is detected. An optional “flaky connection mode” bridges the gap when access to the Network is unreliable.
Thanks, Google!
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January 28th, 2009 at 7:43 am
Granted that is cool, but doesn’t that kinda take away from the fact that “everything is stored on Gmail servers…”?
January 28th, 2009 at 7:44 am
groovy – i hope they push this out to google apps (corporate) soon as well.
January 28th, 2009 at 7:51 am
FInally!!!!!
If this works well I will have my wish come true. So far I haven’t found an offline Gmail app worth the time to learn/use.
Thanks for breaking the news!
PS I LOVE the way Gmail works, still not the best email could be but it’s the best there is.
January 28th, 2009 at 7:55 am
@Jason Yeah, and that’s my big question. Will there be settings to specify how much it stores? Will I have to turn off Offline mode and only turn it on before I get on a plane? The negatives will only be found by using it.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:11 am
OT: Curious they didn’t use Chrome for the demo.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:41 am
@Cali,
Here is how it determines how many mails to download:
http://lifehacker.com/5140828/how-offline-gmail-decides-which-messages-to-download/
And here’s some extra general info:
http://www.jashsayani.com/gears-takes-gmail-offline/
January 28th, 2009 at 8:44 am
Thanks, Jash!
January 28th, 2009 at 8:54 am
@Jason and Cali: I agree, I’m kinda scared how much disk space it will take in my laptop. But, there’s no harm in trying. Who knows, it just might be something I can’t live without.
January 28th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
get some more user configurable settings and then we can crank it up to awesome.
January 28th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Realized right when I posted my last comment the demo was on a Mac and Chrome isn’t yet available for Mac. My bad.
January 28th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
For me I need to be “connected” for more reasons than just e-mail. Also, there is always my iPhone to check my GMail. So off-line access is not really needed.
January 28th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
nice to see that in gmail finally. now it just has to get out of beta. though, I have reverted back to using fastmail, I’ll miss the gmail interface. if only they had better multiple identity support and advanced filtering options (eg, let me define priority and look through the headers!!!!)
January 28th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
allright I heard gmail coming *offline*,I guess its right-http://tinyurl.com/atm6hg
January 29th, 2009 at 2:16 am
I have been using gmail offline with Mozilla Thunderbird for months.Since August 2008 and it may have been available before then.It is available for the MAC as well as PC.
Granted Thunderbird’s interface means it’s back to traditional email format rather than gmails labels and groupings but it is true offline.
I’ll have to look at the new way of doing things to see what’s improved.
Or am I missing something?
January 29th, 2009 at 4:29 am
Take Google Mail with you when you are offline! http://tinyurl.com/atm6hg
January 29th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
My favorite podcast, GeekBrief, covers Gmail’s promising new feature: offline email. Check it out here: http://tinyurl.com/atm6hg
January 29th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
I’m confused… Hasn’t this been around for a long time already? I mean, GMAIL has supported IMAP for quite some time, and it is trivial to configure Apple MAIL for a Google IMAP account… The mail stays on the Google servers, and yet you have an offline copy in Apple Mail.
What am I missing?
January 31st, 2009 at 7:00 am
Surley this means as far as GMail is concerned IMAP will be outdated. I use a desktop for most work sync’d to a laptop to take to meetings with no Internet availability. I have been using Thunderbird but don’t like the way it splits the messages up rather than keeping the groups. If this works it will be a lot better. I know I could try it but here’s a question to keep the thread going. The Google Calendar gadget works in Thunderbird (using Lightning)when off line If I enable the Google Calendar gadget in “labs” can I view it offline?
February 2nd, 2009 at 7:22 am
If Google kills IMAP for GMail, I hope they at least improve the Web interface. Yahoo!Mail’s “all new” interface is, while slow, way ahead. Fastmail.fm is somewhere in between. I use an IMAP client (Thunderbird) to read GMail because I’ve got labels that have, er, more than 50 unread items, and it’s a pain to keep clicking the Older link. OTOH, Thunderbird’s search is no match for GMail’s so I still use the Web interface.
March 14th, 2009 at 5:55 am
I have to say, I could not agree with you in 100%, but that’s just my opinion, which could be wrong.
p.s. You have an awesome template for your blog. Where did you find it?
April 15th, 2009 at 5:05 am
My friend on Orkut shared this link with me and I’m not dissapointed at all that I came to your blog.