
Show HN: A Gmail desktop client in Electron - paulo-tanaka
https://github.com/paulot/gmail
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teleclimber
Interesting use of Electron.

Did you recreate the Gmail interface and leverage its API[1], or is this just
running gmail.com in a webview?

[1]
[https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/?hl=en](https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/?hl=en)

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paulo-tanaka
Just as a webview. I thought of recreating the interface using the API, but
frankly it seemed like over-engineering the problem. My goal with this project
is to simply provide a better way to use gmail, and not have it lost in the
millions of tabs that I constantly keep open in my browser.

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fiatjaf
This is bizarre. It seems everybody want to use Electron for something.
Couldn't you create a shortcut to opening Chrome in "app mode" (without URL
bar or browser menus) directly in Gmail?

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paulo-tanaka
Sure, but by making it an app it more tightly integrates with the desktop. For
instance, I personally find it rather useless that when you resize gmail to a
small screen, around 25% of my screen's real-estate is taken by the hangouts
menu, which I almost never use. A much better use of screen space would be to
hide the hangouts menu, when the screen diminishes. Also, by going the app
route we can set some nice app specific shortcuts to gmail page
functionalities that users might not know about and leverage Apple's awesome
search bar under the help menu.

The idea of this app was to make a gmail equivalent to what Caprine
([https://github.com/sindresorhus/caprine](https://github.com/sindresorhus/caprine))
is for fb messenger. I've been using the gmail app since last week (when I
made it) and so far, I like it more than I thought I would.

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binwiederhier
You should probably rename the project before Google comes after you for
copyright infringement. Nice project :-D

