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How do you deal with multiple Gmail accounts?

15 points by bitdrift ↗ HN
I currently have 4 Gmail accounts that I use on a fairly regular basis (for personal, work, side projects, etc). One of the accounts I forward to my personal account, but the others I want to keep separate and distinct.

I have tried the Gmail account switcher but I don't like not being able to see everything at once (plus it's slow switching between accounts). I also don't like desktop clients because their UX is old and clunky (apart from Sparrow, which I can't use because I'm on Linux) and I don't want to configure my client every time I find myself using a new machine. I'm also getting tired of having multiple browsers open just so that I can keep two accounts open at once.

So my question is--how do you deal with multiple email accounts? Am I missing out on something that others know about? Or is this a common problem?

21 comments

[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 60.2 ms ] thread
mindcrime
I have 3 GMail accounts I use regularly, so I just keep GMail open in three tabs, and use the GMail account switcher to switch each tab to one of the three accounts I care about.
petervandijck
You can do that? Do you have to switch back and forth every time, or can you keep multiple accounts open at the same time?
mindcrime
Nah, it works fine... each account stays open in it's tab and I can just switch tabs to see each account I care about. Note that I've only ever tried this using Chrome, so I don't know if they do something special to make it work or not.
bitdrift
Wow. The multiple tabs + account switcher thing works surprisingly well.

Have you ever run into problems using it this way? Seems like this is somewhat outside of the normal usage (maybe because of all of the disclaimers when you add extra accounts?).

mindcrime
So far, no. I've been doing this for about a week, and - as far as I can tell - it works fine. I don't know if this is actually a supported thing, or something that only works by happenstance, or what. But for the time being it seems to work. <shrug />
bigohms
should be noted: Logging in is a pain. Cookie and FF default auth details are saved using the same underlying mail.google.com domain, it doesn't bind the correct saved authentication detail with the correct account. CNAMES have no effect on this.
petervandijck
I forward them all to 1 account. However, even though I've set this up before, I can't for the life of me figure it out now.

Let's call EX the existing (old) email account that you want to keep and use daily (your personal one), and NEW the new one that you want to forward to your old one.

In NEW, settings>forward&pop3>allow pop3

In EX, settings>accounts>check mail pop3: add the new one.

The problem I'm having is that I can't seem to add the right settings for the new one (which is a google app hosted email)

bo_Olean
have you tried this ?

username: username@yourdomain.com

pop.gmail.com as incoming server

smtp.gmail.com as outgoing server

Link : http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...

petervandijck
Doesn't work with a domain name that uses Google apps.
rick888
It does, I have gmail for domain accounts all going into my main account.

You need to make sure SSL is on and the ports are different that the standard pop3+smtp

d_r
Why not just use the Forwarding option (also under "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab?)
madhouse
I'm using Gnus, problem solved. Only 4 separate mailboxes, but it could scale to any number of sources, without trouble. The UI is the same as the rest of my environment, fits in perfectly, it's flexible beyond imagination, and tailored to my specific needs.

I used to use the gmail web UI before, but due to the problems you yourself outlined, I switched to something much more powerful, something much more flexible.

I love Gnus, now that I managed to set it up after more than 10 years of using Emacs, and resisting the temptation to finally give gnus a real try.

mapleoin
What do you use to get your email? Do you index it? The last time I tried using Gnus it used to take more than a minute to start up and I really don't think I have that much mail, although I am subscribed to 10+ mailing lists.
madhouse
Plenty of mailing lists here (including some high traffic ones like LKML). I use OfflineIMAP to sync my mail.

This results in pretty fast gnus startup times. But then, I only start it up every once in a while when I have to reboot due to a kernel upgrade.

ollysb
I use the standard mail client on my iphone, macbook and imac. They all have an "all accounts" inbox so you can view all your email at once.
sixtofour
As others have said, use an email client of some kind, and access gmail via IMAP. See as many accounts as you want.

I use Thunderbird, your preference may vary.

marilyn
I have several email accounts for different domains set up with google apps. One is the primary one that I am always logged into, and the others I have set up as an account I can send mail from (Settings, Accounts, Add another email address you own) in the primary account. In addition, I set up a filters for each of the email addresses that label the incoming mail according to what address it was sent to, so I can easily identify which of my identities is getting the email.