Running Google Inbox as a Mac App

Google Inbox is great, but I couldn’t get used to opening a browser every time I wanted to check my email. Here are some steps to get Google Inbox running as a Mac app in Fluid with unread or total badges via userscripts.

Note: Fluid is free, but if you want dock badges you’ll need the premium version which is $4.99.

Step 1:Download

Download FluidApp (http://fluidapp.com/). Fluid is an app that lets you wrap websites in a native OS X wrapper. The cool part is the paid version which allows custom styles and scripts.

Step 2: Setup

Point Fluid to https://inbox.google.com (I recommend the icon from this other great guide.)

Step 3: User Agent

Set the User Agent to Chrome (Inbox doesn’t work in Safari).

From here, you’re done if you have the free version of Fluid. Just give it a refresh and you should have a fully working dock icon without badging.

Step 4: Badging (Requires Paid Fluid)

In the menubar, go to Window -> Userscripts.

In the table on the left, add a title for your script. I named mine “Inbox”. In the table on the top right, add a pattern entry with the pattern “*inbox.google.com*”.

In the script area, copy and paste my userscript which you can find here.

Unread count is on by default. If you’d like total email count (like Mailbox) swap out line 47 of the script.

Step 5: Refresh

Give Inbox a good ol’ CMD + R or quit to refresh and you’re done!

Badges should show up as emails come in, as long as you’re on the Inbox tab.

One caveat is that the script can only scrape the unread or email count if you’re looking at the Inbox— on other tabs it shows ‘?’ as your badge as a reminder to switch back.

Enjoy!