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Unity mail

Unity Mail is a Unity-specific application to display the email unread count on the Unity launcher.

A new Unity Mail version (0.8.5) was released today for Ubuntu 11.04 (the 0.8.x series was already available for 11.10) which adds some of the features some of you have requested, such as: Messaging Menu support, an improved configuration dialog which allows you to set custom URLs, custom mail check interval, turn on/off the notifications and more.

The new version also comes with many new translations and bug fixes.


For now, Unity Mail only displays the email subject in the Messaging Menu and the envelope icon doesn't turn green. Even though this can be considered a bug, I for one like it this way because you already know that you got new emails by looking at the Unity Mail icon on the Unity Launcher so you can use the Messaging Menu just for checking out the email subject. However, an option to enable/disable this behavior will be added in a future release. Update: a version which includes this feature was already released and is available in the PPA.

Unity Mail Ubuntu Messaging Menu


Unity Mail features:
  • Display unread email count on the Unity launcher
  • Customizable Unity quicklists to compose new email, inbox, etc.
  • Works with any IMAP4 server (Gmail configuration is added automatically)
  • Multiple accounts support
  • NotifyOSD notifications
  • Ubuntu Messaging Menu integration


Install Unity Mail


To install the latest Unity Mail in Ubuntu, use the commands below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mitya57/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install unity-mail

Once installed, search for "Unity Mail" in Dash and drag it to the launcher. Then, right click it and select "Change account details" to add your email information and tweak various settings.

Note: to set a custom command for a quicklist item, enter URL starting with "Exec:" (example: 'Exec:thunderbird -mail').

As usual, remember to report any bugs you may find @ Launchpad.

Thanks to Dmitry for the info!