Why won't gmail respect what I tell them my default email address is?

July 27, 2023 4:49 PM

I have a couple of gmail addresses. Sometimes I go to address #2. Then (now), even though address #1 is listed as "default," when I click on the bookmark for Inbox - (address #1), address #2 comes up. How can I tell gmail that it needs to go to address #1 as the default?
posted by DMelanogaster to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

I think you've got some assumptions that may be confusing the issue, or I'm misunderstanding what the problem actually is.

Sometimes I go to address #2. Then (now), even though address #1 is listed as "default," when I click on the bookmark for Inbox - (address #1), address #2 comes up.

My understanding is that gmail accounts do not have account specific URLs. Typically, your bookmark would be for GMail as a whole, not for Address #1 or Address #2. If you're logged in to a given account, that's what you get when you go to mail.google.com.

How can I tell gmail that it needs to go to address #1 as the default?

Log into/switch to Address #1.

What Google would prefer for you to do is only have one account, and failing that, use Chrome, and have separate Chrome profiles/Google accounts for each identity, which then will show the relevant GMail, Google Drive, etc. For setting a 'default', I think the way it's supposed to work is that after signing out of all accounts, the one you sign into first is the 'default' account.
posted by zamboni at 6:51 PM on July 27, 2023

I have three connected Gmail addresses and I have each bookmarked separately both in Firefox and Chrome so can share that it works. However that's also my lazy solution instead of switching between default and the others from within a central location. If someone can't answer you on how to make what you want to work be consistent, and if this is related to why it's a problem for how you want to be using it, it's another option.
posted by mireille at 7:25 PM on July 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I go to my primary gmail account in Firefox, and my 2ndary gmail account in Chrome.
posted by theora55 at 7:26 PM on July 27, 2023

I've got so many gmail addresses I've lost count. I forward everything to my preferred account, and have half a dozen email addresses set up in the "send mail as" setting. I can receive all my emails and send as any of my emails with one account login. That's not an answer your direct question, but it might be an answer to the overall problem.
posted by phunniemee at 7:35 PM on July 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Sounds to me like the bookmark needs to be changed. Or add a new one with email addy #1. From what I heard about what you wrote, the bookmark seems to have been created when email addy #2 was the last one?
posted by JohnnyGunn at 8:30 PM on July 27, 2023

In my experience, the numbers in the URL aren't permanent identifiers, but are the order in which you signed in to the various accounts on that browser. In my case, in this browser, my primary gmail inbox is at https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0 . Using the profile menu to switch to a secondary account, the URL becomes https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1 . But in the past, when I signed in to the secondary account first, those switched.

The only solution I've found is to sign out of all the accounts, then sign in to the primary one first, then the secondary account. And if you have more than two, sign in to the accounts in the same order each time, and the URLs will work as you want them to.
posted by yuwtze at 9:05 PM on July 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

My experience is that the urls (which contain u/0, u/1, u/2, etc) are based entirely in the order in which you sign into the accounts. So sign out of all of them and sign back into the default account first and you should be sorted.
posted by ssg at 9:06 PM on July 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Firefox has a feature called Containers that allows the browser to maintain separate cookie jars per container. If you open a tab in a container, and log into some online service or other, that login is effective only for tabs opened inside that same container. Tabs in a container get a colour coded stripe in the tabs bar so you can tell at a glance which tabs are open in which containers.

This is particularly useful when dealing with services like Google that insist on using single sign-on for everything, a pattern that would otherwise make using multiple accounts the complete pain in the arse that it currently is for you.

The feature comes with several containers predefined (Personal, Banking and whatnot) but you can easily delete those you're not using and make as many others as you like. So you could

1. Log out of all your existing Google accounts.
2. Create containers for Address 1 and Address 2.
3. Open a new tab in the Address 1 container, and use it to log into the Google account for address 1.
4. Open a new tab in the Address 2 container, and use it to log into the Google account for address 2.

From that point forward, any tab you opened in the Address 1 container would behave as you'd expect when logged into Google with address 1; any tab opened in the Address 2 container would behave as you'd expect when logged into Google with address 2; and any tab not in a container would behave as if you weren't logged into Google at all.

I only have the one Google account, but I don't want Google routinely tracking me all over the web so I do most of my browsing logged out from Google. When I feel like e.g. leaving a comment on a YouTube video, I can just right-click on the tab with the video in it, choose "Open in New Container Tab -> Google", use the newly opened tab to leave my comment, and then close that tab again. It all works very smoothly. I don't even need to log into Google explicitly in the newly opened container tab, because Google still maintains login state across browser sessions just like it always did; it just doesn't get to do that outside its own container any more. I like this feature a lot.
posted by flabdablet at 11:52 PM on July 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

I have a work Google login (for Google Analytics etc) and a personal one. On my work computer, I have two different Chrome profiles and am logged in to the work one in one profile and my personal gmail in the other. This has a nice side effect of segmenting my personal vs work bookmarks as well.
posted by misskaz at 7:53 AM on July 28, 2023

Oh I had the same issue. It can be resolved by logging out of both accounts, then log into your default account *first*, and then use "add another account" to log into the other one. The order of your log ins matter, and changing your default account settings won't get it to behave properly. It's a weird little bug and they should really fix that.

However using separate browsers is also a very good fix, especially if you use both accounts very frequently. I'm logged into my personal gmail on firefox and my work gmail on chrome. I had minor irritating bugs cause issues when I used different Chrome profiles a couple of years back. IDK if those bugs have been fixed now, I have not checked. Separate browsers works great for me.
posted by MiraK at 8:36 AM on July 28, 2023

Using containers in Firefox works very much like using multiple browsers, just without the multiple browsers part.

That's good for me because I find Chrome infuriating and only ever use it as an absolute last resort. Unless I'm stuck with a Windows box, in which case Edge is the absolute absolute last resort.
posted by flabdablet at 6:15 AM on July 29, 2023