How to see inbox status across multiple Gmail accounts at a glance?

Question

I have several Gmail accounts I use regularly (for personal and different businesses). I love how in the Gmail iPhone app I can see how many unread inbox emails I have in each account at a glance in the main screen with an icon and unread inbox email badge counter for each account. I miss being able to do so when I'm on the web. Changing between each account just to check whether I have new mail is, comparatively speaking, slow and unreliable. So -- any way to get a similar at-a-glance view across multiple accounts on the web?

Note the accounts include personal Gmail and multiple Google Apps for Business accounts.

Answer 1

Here are three possible approaches:

With addons

If you want to there are some browser addons that will sign into multiple accounts and give notice of new emails. There are also some applications you can run directly on your pc/mac that will do similar.

No addons

For a pure solution (no extra addons/apps):

If you use Chrome you can set up different users now in Settings. Once you have two or more users, each of them can be signed into Gmail. Each user has her own window, with different histories, cookies, accounts etc.

In each Gmail account, you will want to set up the Unread message icon feature (see Settings > Labs). You can then minimise all the other windows and the icons will update in your taskbar (if you have a taskbar). I have used this to manage three or four accounts that I needed to access regularly.

Use mobile site on desktop

Another handy trick is to login to m.gmail.com as it's much faster loading than the main site.