Setting Gmail as the Default Email Application in Linux

April 26, 2009 by Isaac

Yesterday I was searching for a way to make GMail my default email provider, so that when I click on "mailto" links GMail opens. In Windows this is pretty easy, but I couldn't figure it out for Linux. So, bring on Google search. I found this web page which explains it succinctly. While I don't run Ubuntu, the same method worked for Arch Linux.

Essentially:

Go to System->Preferences->Preferred Applications
For "Mail Reader" choose "Custom" and enter this (we'll create the script later):
```
/home/username/bin/open_mailto.sh "%s"
```
The above script will be triggered anytime you click on an email link. Now, let's create the actual script. Note: This is a modified script from the above web site. It is based on some of the comments posted about the artice and then refined a little. This script will properly handle subject, cc, to, body, and most any proper email tag that you can throw at it. One other difference is that it can handle parenthesis.
```
#!/bin/sh
uri=`echo "$1"| sed -e 's/subject=/su=/' \
     -e 's/^mailto:$[^&?]\+$[?&]\?$.*$$/\1\&\2/' \
     -e 's/(/%28/g' -e 's/)/%29/g'`
firefox -remote "openurl(https://mail.google.com/mail?\
view=cm&tf=0&to=$uri,new-tab)"
```
Finally, change the mode of the script so that it can execute:
```
chmod 755 /home/username/bin/open_mailto.sh
```