mailplaneapp.com  ›  Support  ›  Howto  ›  Enable “Offline Gmail”

Enable “Offline Gmail”

Read, compose and answer your email offline. Learn how to setup the Offline Gmail lab feature.

"Offline Gmail" is a Gmail lab feature provided by Google. The lab feature needs "Google Gears", a browser extension, to operate.

Google Gears for Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Currently there is no official Google Gears for Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) version from Google. If you wish to use "Offline Gmail", you may want to try the unsupported workaround.

Prerequisites

Download and install Google Gears for Safari. Important: Google Gears for Firefox doesn't work with Mailplane, you need the Safari version. Visit the Google Gears page in Safari to download the software under Mac OS X Leopard or Tiger. Snow Leopard users can get a compatible version here.

Tip: In case the Gears installer complains about incompatible Safari version (3.2.1 and you have 4.0.4, for instance): Please move Safari to the /Applications folder and restart the Gears installer.

Restart both Mailplane and Safari after the Google Gears installation.

Enable Google Gears in Mailplane

Inside Mailplane Open Preferences > Advanced and make sure the "Enable Google Gears for Offline Gmail" setting is checked.

offline_preference.png

Setup

offline_setup.png
  1. Click Gmail > Settings
  2. Select the "Offline" tab
  3. Enable "Offline Gmail"
  4. Click Save Changes to apply the changes
setup_offline_1.png
  1. Click the "Offline" link to open the setup wizard
  2. Click "Next" to start the installation process
offline_shortcut.png
  1. Click "No", you don't need a shortcut to open Gmail.
offline_synchronizing.png

Wait until the download has finished...

offline_download_finished.png

Customize

offline_customization.png
  1. Click "Settings"
  2. Activate the "Offline" settings tab
  3. Enable/Disable Offline for your Mac
  4. Decide which folders need to be downloaded
  5. Decide how attachments should be handled
  6. In case of trouble: Visit the Offline Gmail troubleshooting page
  7. Save changes

Offline Gmail stopped working?

  1. Make sure you have the latest Google Gears version
  2. First try Mailplane > Reset Gmail Session
  3. If that doesn't help, consider to re-setup your offline database:
    1. In Finder go to /Users/USERNAME/Library/Application Support/Google
    2. Move "Google Gears for Safari" to the Trash
    3. Restart Mailplane and redo the installation above

OOOOC (7 votes)
Was this article helpful?
 

Related Articles

Comments

Posted by bison  (11/20  at  08:37 AM)

I could not install Gears process.
The message is “Your browser is not currently supported.”

Mac OS X 10.6.2
Mac Pro 8core
MailPlane 2.1 (1237)

Posted by Ruben  (11/23  at  08:20 AM)

Please download & install the Snow Leopard Google Gears version first: http://mailplaneapp.com/download/google_gears/
Next: Make sure Preferences > Advanced > Enable Google Gears is checked.
Hope this helps.

Posted by Ed  (12/08  at  01:54 PM)

Is Gears still needed now it’s out of Labs?

Posted by Ruben  (12/09  at  11:36 AM)

Hi Ed,
Yes, Google Gears is still required. In the long term Google Gears could get replaced by HTML 5, which is already included in WebKit/Mailplane:
http://mailplaneapp.com/blog/entry/offline_gmail_bye_bye_google_gears_hello_html5/

Ruben

Posted by Samuel Lavoie  (12/12  at  04:56 AM)

Works like a charm!

Mailplane 2.1.1
Safari 4
Snow Leopard
thanks for the little fix!
:)

Posted by Jernej  (01/30  at  12:40 PM)

Gmail for my domain (g apps) looks like does not support offline or I dont find it!

Posted by Ruben  (02/05  at  02:04 PM)

There’s a “Enable Offline Gmail for my users” setting for “premium” Gmail users. You find in the Google Apps management console.
Ruben

Posted by matt  (02/28  at  05:14 AM)

Do i have to upgrade my google apps email to “premium” to have google gears offline support ??

Posted by Ruben  (03/02  at  11:19 AM)

Hi Matt,
There’s a global Google Apps preference for “Offline Gmail”:
“Enable Offline Gmail for my users”, which is turned off by default. Please go to the Google Apps Dashboard > Email Service settings to change it.
Ruben

Posted by Mike  (04/22  at  05:54 PM)

Doesn’t seem to work for me :(

Mailplane 2.1.7
OS X 10.6.3
Safari 4.0.5 (tried it in both 32bit and 64bit modes)

I also have Glims and SIMBL installed, maybe that’s why?

I used the gears package distributed from here
http://dist.mailplaneapp.com/downloads/sl-gears.pkg.zip

Everytime I go to settings/offline to enable it simply says
    Offline Mail is not supported by your browser

Also I reset the Gmail session with no luck as well as made sure that the google gears folder from /Users/USERNAME/Library/Application Support/Google was deleted.

While reinstalling I used the script from “/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Gears.plugin/Contents/Resources/uninstall.command” to delete any existing Gears settings.

Thanks for the effort, obviously it works for many others!

Mike

Posted by Ruben  (04/29  at  03:41 PM)

Hi Mike,
Just to make sure: Is Preferences > Advanced > Enable Google Gears for Offline Gmail enabled?
Thanks.
Ruben

Posted by Mike  (04/29  at  03:43 PM)

Yes, Absolutely I did. 
Thanks

Page 1 of 1 pages

Post a comment

Name:

Email (not displayed):

Location:

URL:

Smileys

Your comment:

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Submit the word you see below: