Gmail Puts Unread Message Counts First In Tabs, Title Bars

If we had to guess, we’d say that Gmail’s latest Labs feature, putting an unread message count first in the title bar and tabs, was probably inspired by a certain Firefox add-on …

… but who are we to divine what craziness lurks in the minds of Google’s Gmail engineers? In any case, Gmail’s Labs section now has a “Title Tweaks” option you can enable to put a count of unread messages in parentheses near the front of your Gmail page title, making it visible in most browser tabs and at the top of stand-alone windows. It’s pretty much an official implementation of Gmail Inbox Display Unread Count FIRST, a Greasemonkey script written by our founding editor and Jon Ramsey, which was rolled into our all-in-one Better Gmail 2 Firefox extension.

Gmail’s official version, however, shows the full message number, and keeps the icon the same colour. Want a 10-message limit to manage your inbox guilt, along with coloured icons? Try the previously mentioned Gmail FavIcon Alerts script.

Note to Offline Gmail users: Your Labs changes, including Title Tweaks, may take a few minutes to take effect and, in this editor’s experience, cause browser instability. Save what you’re doing before enabling.