A Gmail desktop app for Windows

Search for a Gmail desktop app for Windows and you land in a strange market. There is no official app from Google. Most of what ranks is a traditional email client that talks to Gmail over IMAP, redraws your inbox in its own style, and usually charges a yearly fee. Good software, often, but it is not Gmail. Here is the field, honestly, and where Smails sits in it.

The four ways to run Gmail on a PC

1. A browser tab, or Chrome's "install as app". Free and fine for one account. With two or more you are into profiles, incognito windows and replying from the wrong address. Notifications depend on the browser staying open.

2. A full email client. Thunderbird, eM Client, Mailbird, the new Outlook. They connect over IMAP and give you a unified inbox across every account, which is a real advantage if you want one list. The cost is that Gmail's labels, filters, search operators and keyboard shortcuts are replaced by the client's own, and most of the paid ones renew every year.

3. An Electron multi-app browser. Shift, Wavebox and friends put Gmail next to forty other web apps in a tabbed window. Great breadth, Chromium-sized footprint, subscription pricing. Our Shift alternative page is the long version of that trade-off.

4. A native shell around the real Gmail. This is Smails. A small Windows app that loads Gmail's own web interface for each account, with a sidebar to switch between them. Nothing is rebuilt, so nothing is missing. It is the same approach as our Gmail desktop app for Mac, and one licence covers both.

Which one should you use? Three questions.

Pick the honest answer and we will tell you honestly, including when Smails is the wrong choice.

What Smails for Windows actually does

• Every Gmail and Outlook account in one window. A thin sidebar, each account in its own isolated, signed-in session, with an unread badge per account. The same idea as multiple Gmail accounts on a Mac, on Windows 10 and 11.
• The real Gmail and the real Outlook. You sign in on Google's or Microsoft's own login page inside the app. Your mail goes straight between your PC and the provider. Smails never sees your password and has no server in the middle.
• Links open in your default browser, not trapped inside the app.
• It remembers your window and your zoom. Reopens at the size and position you left it, and the zoom you set with Ctrl and the mouse wheel survives a restart.
• One licence, two devices. Pro activates on up to 2 devices, so a Windows PC at work and a Mac at home is one $9.99 payment, not two.

Where it loses

No unified inbox: accounts stay side by side on purpose. No iOS or Android app. If you live in a dozen non-Google, non-Microsoft IMAP accounts, a traditional client is the right tool and we would rather say so than sell you the wrong one.

Pay once

Free with one account, no card. A one-time $9.99 unlocks unlimited accounts with free updates, and a full refund if it is not for you. There is a whole page on why an email app without a subscription has become unusual, and the five-way comparison table if you want Smails next to the named apps.

Gmail on Windows, four approaches compared