How to Get TrueNew Message Counts in Mailplane

Do you ever leave unread messages in your Gmail inbox? If so, then you might be interested in the “TrueNew” message count that was introduced with the MailRoom app for iPhone. In short, TrueNew lists how many new unread messages you have.

I’ve come to rely on this feature heavily in Mailroom, and was recently poking around for a similar solution in Mailplane, which is my desktop Gmail client of choice. While this feature isn’t officially supported, you can hack it into Mailplane pretty easily.

Here’s how:

1. Quit Mailplane
2. Download and install SIMBL
3. Download the TrueNew Count SIMBL plugin and unzip
4. Put TrueNewForMailplane.bundle in ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins
5. Restart Mailplane

That’s it. When you Mailplane restarts, it should now have the TrueNew count in the left sidebar of the Gmail interface. Unfortunately, this plugin doesn’t seem to support TrueNew in the Accounts drawer, which is where it would be really helpful.

The reason for this is that, if you use Mailplane to manage multiple accounts, you want to see if there are any “TrueNew” messages waiting to be read before you bother switching accounts. This is how it works with Mailroom, and it would be fantastic if you could do the same thing in Mailplane.

For now, I guess I’ll have to just rely on my memory of the “unread” count the last time I logged in. In the future, I’m hoping that the Mailplane developer will provide official support for “TrueNew” in the Accounts drawer, where it really belongs.

Topic(s): Technology & Gadgets
Keyword(s): apple, gmail, google, mac, mailplane, mailroom