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Saturday, May 03, 2008

A Call for Easy Gmail Account Switching

Dear Gmail,

Will you please add an easy-to-use multiple Gmail account manager? Perhaps we're not supposed to have multiple Gmail accounts (at least, probably not as many as I do), but come on, you know we're all doing it. I have my original one, one for my site, one for my other site, one for yet another site, one for work, one for spam, etc...

It is quite simply a pain in the ass to switch between them since you have to sign out, remember the name and password, then sign back in. Way too many clicks and too much typing for what should be a simple thing.

Okay, here's the real issue. So right now I basically use one Gmail and forward all others to it. I use the 'Accounts' tab in the Settings to make it so I can send from the different accounts without signing out, etc. That's all great. However, with devices such as the iPhone, if I want to send from different accounts, I have to set each one up on the iPhone - this basically gives me two copies of every email I am getting. And the iPhone does not have a 'Mark all as read' button - very annoying, and time consuming.

It's not just that either. Just in general I would like it on the web version of Gmail if I didn't have to forward all my mail to one account. It has just becomes too much of an organizational nightmare. Maybe some will disagree, but I would prefer to have them separate but all under one roof. This way, all accounts' emails would still be searchable via the one search box, and it would be easy enough to switch between them, but they would still all exist as their own separate mailboxes. This would make it a lot easier for me to sort through things.

I know exactly what I want. Just something, maybe under the 'Contacts' link that will allow me to switch between the different accounts with one click. Hell, it can even be a drop-down menu if you think that will work best (though that would be two clicks).

Obviously all my passwords would have to be saved to do this, but how about when you group Gmail accounts together, you can then set a master password for all of them?

Yes, I know there are scripts and plugins that will do this, but unfortunately I don't use Firefox regularly. And yes, I know programs like 1Password do this fairly well, but I want to be able to do it easily when I'm not on my home computer and even that involved too many clicks for my taste.

Come on Gmail. Help me get organized. I promise a nice post or 12 in return.

Thanks.


5 comments:

fourlittlebees said...

OMG you got me laughing with this one. No, I don't think we are supposed to have several accounts, and I have free accounts on top of Google Apps for small business accounts to make it even MORE fun to remember them all.

But I was thinking of that myself when people started citing the number of email accounts on each free service with re: to Microhoo and thinking "Well, I account for at least 12 of those Yahoo accounts, many of which I've abandoned but still use the IM for..."

Charbarred said...

I completely agree. A simple drop down at the top of the screen to select your account would kick ass. They have nothing to lose from it. On the contrary, I now use Outlook in order to work with all my account. If I had an account switcher on the web interface I'd be more likely to use the web interface and maybe even look at the adwords.

Rob said...

Why not just use Thunderbird to access them through IMAP?

MG Siegler said...

@fourlittle - yeah, I wonder how many accounts sit unused on all these services...

@charbarred - yeah I used to use outlook back in the day (when I still had a PC), but it hardly did it for me. I really like the idea of using the same thing (a web app) no matter where I am.

@rob - see above. I certainly could, have thought about it, but I simply prefer doing it all in the browser.

Baxter Tocher said...

If you're using Windows, RoboForm does this kind of thing in a heartbeat, on any web page:

http://www.roboform.com/