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How To: Gmail as default mail client Ubuntu

If you press on a e-mail address on the internet it will open your default e-mail client. This is fine and handy but not if you are a Gmail user like myself.

I was thinking that this should be easy to accomplish for Gmail and i did some research. Bellow you can find the instructions how to do this.

First open up your terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) and create a new file with your favorite editor:

vim .mail.sh

Now paste the following in tho this file for Chrome:

#!/bin/sh

google-chrome "https://mail.google.com/mail?view=cm&tf=0&to=`echo $1 | sed 's/mailto://'`"

For Firefox:

#!/bin/sh
firefox "https://mail.google.com/mail?view=cm&tf=0&to=`echo $1 | sed 's/mailto://'`"

Now save the file, and go to System -> Preferences -> Preferred Applications and change your mail reader to custom. In the command field but the following:

/home/peter/.mail.sh %s

of course, change my name to the name of your home folder.

All done! If you open up your browser, press a e-mail link you will notice that Google Chrome or Firefox will open up, with a new compose message, filled in with the right e-mail address you pressed. This will also work if you use Gnome-do with Google Contacts synced!