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Hey Product Hunt 👋
Google killed the old Gmail Checker extension years ago, and I never found a replacement I actually liked. So I kept a Gmail tab pinned all day just to know whether something new had landed. That's a stupid reason to burn a tab.
Email Checker for Gmail is the small thing that replaces it:
- 🔴 Unread count on the toolbar badge — one glance, no tab
- 🔔 Desktop notification + a soft chime when new mail arrives; click it to open the email
- 📥 A side panel inbox — sender, subject, preview, time. Read mail stays in the list greyed out, so it reads like a real inbox, not a counter
- 🗂 Category filters (Primary / Promotions / Social / Updates) — the badge and the alerts follow the tab, so you can get pinged for Primary only and let newsletters pile up in silence
- ⏰ Reminders — if a message you were notified about is still unread, it nudges you again until you deal with it
- 👥 Up to 3 Google accounts in one list
On privacy, because this is the part that matters for a mail extension: no OAuth, no sign-up, no server. It reads Gmail's own built-in unread feed using the browser session you already have — the same mechanism the official Google Mail Checker used. Nothing leaves your browser: no analytics, no accounts, no third parties. There is no backend to leak anything, because there is no backend.
Honest limitations: Gmail only for now (Outloand Gmail's feed returns ~20 newest unreadmessages — the badge count is always exact, and the panel tells you when there's more than it can show.
It's free, and it's ~200KB of vanilla JS. No framework, no tracking, no upsell.
I'd love to hear: what would make you switch from having a Gmail tab open? Outlook support is already written and
parked for v1.1 — tell me if that's the thingll ship it sooner. All feedback and featurerequests welcome, I'm here all day. 🙏
Not affiliated with Google. Gmail™ is a trademark of Google LLC.