How can I set Mac OS X Lion to use browser GMail as a default mail app?

Question

I have set up Chrome (my primary browser) to use gmail when I click an email link. However, when I right-click a file on the desktop and select "New Email with Attachment" OS X launches Mail.app. Is there a way to make it open a gmail compose window tab in my browser instead?

Answer 1

The New Email with Attachment service is a feature of Mail. It is built into Mail, and Mail provides it as a service to other applications.

I wonder if you could use this but modify it to point to the code written below (the method you are using to make this work in Chrome)?

Answer 2

There are different instructions for different browsers here.

As an example, this is for Chrome and Opera:

• Launch a new browser window and open up Gmail
• Open the Javascript console by hitting Command+Option+J and then paste in the following:

navigator.registerProtocolHandler("mailto", "https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s", "Gmail");

and a bit of clarification from further down the page...

*After entering CMD+OPT+J, notice to the right of the “x” where you can close out, a series of choices: “Elements, Resources, Network…etc…Console”. Click the “Console” and paste the code to the right of the “>” symbol and then close out. Then, as the above directions show, Gmail will then prompt to accept the confirmation at the top of the browser window.

Accept the confirmation at the top of the browser window and try out a mailto link

Check out the link though if you're using a different browser.