Mailto:Gmail in Chrome

June 21, 2011 2:40 PM

How can I make sure Mailto links in Chrome (for Mac) open in Gmail and not my default mail client (Mail)? I've seen the official 'Send from Gmail' extension in the Chrome Webstore, but surely Chrome should support Gmail natively without the need for an extension?
posted by nam3d to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Chrome supports the native mailto: extension, just as most web browsers do. The default behavior is to launch whatever your system's default email client is. As gmail isn't an email client, you need to either let your OS/browser know what your preferred client is -- and I don't believe Chrome has this option -- or install an extension that hijacks that sort of link and redirects it to gmail.
posted by mikeh at 2:52 PM on June 21, 2011

What mikeh said, there's a little more information here: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=74339
posted by dolface at 2:53 PM on June 21, 2011

Here's extension to re-route Mailto links for Chrome - the script mentioned is no longer available, but the extension is.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:56 PM on June 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

Coming soon via navigator.registerProtocolHandler() i imagine. It's a recent-ish API to register websites as handlers for certain protocols.
posted by palbo at 7:54 AM on June 22, 2011