The Next Step

I’ve been using Gmail Notifier for years to tell me when I have new mail. It’s nice and lightweight, and stays out of my way. A few months ago, it just stopped working and I couldn’t figure out why. I tried updating, read through a bunch of Google Support pages, and saw a couple of useless forum threads on the subject, to no avail. So I left it alone, hoping the problem would solve itself. It didn’t.

Just today, though, I stumbled on this little gem: A patch that allows the Notifier to work if you’ve checked the “Always use https” setting in Gmail (which, incidentally, you absolutely should). Just install the patch and your Gmail Notifier will work again. I don’t know why Google doesn’t mention this on the download page for Notifier or why they don’t just build this functionality into a new release. Anyway, I know I wasn’t the only one to have this problem so I thought I’d share my knowledge.