Gmail Manager for Windows

Gmail has become pretty ubiquitous, and it's not uncommon for people to have more than one Gmail account. We have several: a personal one, a professional one, and at least one related to a blog we maintain. Keeping track of multiple Gmail accounts can be a hassle, but Gmail Manager, a handy add-on for Firefox, makes this task a breeze.

Gmail Manager appears in Firefox's status bar, showing the name of each configured account and how many unread messages there are in each. Mousing over each account name also shows how many spam messages there are and what percentage of the mailbox's space has been used. We liked that the program is so customizable; users can choose, for example, whether clicking on an account's icon checks for new mail, opens a tab to compose a new message, or goes directly to the account's in-box. The add-on also offers a small pop-up preview of each message, allowing users to see what's in their e-mail without having to go to their in-box. We do wish that users could set the frequency for how often Gmail Manager checks for new messages; this is a common feature in a lot of e-mail notifiers, and Gmail Manager doesn't seem to do it with particular frequency. Still, this isn't a significant drawback when users can easily have the add-on check for messages with the click of a button. Overall, we found Gmail Manager both useful and unobtrusive.

Gmail Manager is free. Like most browser add-ons, it doesn't have a Help file, but it's pretty easy to figure out. The application installs and uninstalls without issues. We recommend this program to all users.