Gmail is the email client I love and use every day. Desktop email clients like Sparrow, Apple Mail, and Microsoft Outlook are nice, but I prefer doing most of my work inside my browser.

One of the annoying things that I often have to deal with is accidentally clicking a mailto link on a webpage and then furiously trying to quit Apple Mail as it launches. Ideally, I wanted mailto links to open in Gmail by default. Here are some methods I’ve found that will do just that.

In Firefox:

I’ll start with the easiest method. In Firefox, go to Preferences and then select the Applications tab. From here, scroll through the list of content types and locate the item “mailto“. On that row, select “Use Gmail” from the dropdown list.

I like this method because it requires the fewest steps and you don’t need to download anything. It’s built right into your browser! As far as I know, Firefox is the only browser that currently has this option built-in. Let me know if you find it buried somewhere on other browsers, especially if it’s Chrome.

In Chrome:

There are a couple of plugins/apps you can install in order to open mailto links in Gmail while using Chrome. Here are some of them:

Google Notifier app

The Google Notifier app sits in your menu bar and notifies you whenever you receive a new email, and also supports Google Calendar in case you’re interested. Inside the Preferences, go to the Gmail tab and in the field “Compose mail in“, select Gmail from the dropdown list.

The method I currently use

In Chrome, launch your Settings (via the wrench icon). Click on Show Advanced Settings. Under the Privacy section, click Content Settings. A dialog box will then appear. Find the Handlers section, and select Manage handlers. Another dialog box will appear where you can select Gmail as your default application when clicking mailto links. You can also set Google Calendar for webcal links as well. (Source)