A small Manifest V3 Chrome extension that makes the Gmail™ inbox list calmer and more minimal — Notion-style label pills, time-section headers, and keyboard "hover-to-act" shortcuts — plus a tiny settings page to configure it.
It is inspired by the calm, text-first feel of Notion Mail, but stays a local Gmail overlay: no new mail client, no migration, no server.
It only restyles and adds shortcuts to the message list. The sidebar, reading pane, search, and compose are left alone. No build step, no dependencies, no network access.
- Calmer list (CSS). Pure white rows (read mail is dimmed by content opacity, never a background tint), no separator lines, one-line subjects, gray right-aligned dates, Gmail's own labels turned into right-aligned pastel pills, an unread accent dot, and a green Today tag on today's mail.
- Time-section headers (tiny JS).
Yesterday/Last 7 days/ … are drawn with a data-attribute + CSS::beforeon the existing row — no<tr>is ever inserted or reordered, so clicks always open the right message. The script only sets attributes (idempotent, insiderequestAnimationFrame), so it can't storm or flicker. - Hover-to-act (tiny JS). Press a key while the cursor is over a row to run that action on the hovered mail — no selecting first. It just clicks the per-row control Gmail already provides, so it stays a pure event listener with no DOM mutation. Archive/delete remain reversible (Gmail's undo toast still appears).
- Chrome cleanup (CSS). Optionally hides the Gmail wordmark and, when the sidebar is collapsed, the user-labels section — expand the sidebar and the labels come back. Uses a CSS container query on the nav width, so it's reactive with no JS.
- Settings popup. Click the toolbar icon to remap shortcuts and toggle behaviors.
Stored in
chrome.storage.syncand applied live (no Gmail reload).
Defaults — all remappable in the settings popup. Hover a mail row, then press:
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
e |
Archive |
Backspace (or #) |
Delete |
u |
Mark read / unread |
s |
Star / unstar |
b |
Snooze |
x |
Select (check the row) |
If you're not hovering a row, the keys fall through to Gmail's normal behavior. Archive/delete/read/snooze use Gmail's hover toolbar, which renders ~150 ms after you settle on a row — if nothing happens, the row hadn't finished hovering; re-press.
- Open
chrome://extensionsand enable Developer mode. - Click Load unpacked and select this folder.
- Open or refresh Gmail.
After editing the source, click Reload (⟳) on the extension card in
chrome://extensions, then hard-refresh Gmail (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+R). A plain Gmail
refresh re-injects the cached files; only reloading the extension makes Chrome
re-read them from disk.
- Requests a single permission:
storage(to save your shortcut/behavior settings). - Runs only on
https://mail.google.com/*. - Makes no network requests and sends nothing anywhere. All settings stay in
chrome.storage.syncon your own Google account. - See PRIVACY.md for the Chrome Web Store privacy statement.
The design is CSS-first: almost everything is styling that targets Gmail's own
list elements in place. The only JavaScript sets a few data- attributes for the
time-section headers and listens for the hover-to-act keys — it never inserts,
reorders, or rebuilds rows, which is what keeps clicks landing on the correct mail and
the list free of flicker.
Gmail ships obfuscated, localized class names (.zA, .bog, .at, the hover-toolbar
labels like Archiver / Supprimer, etc.). This extension was built and verified
against a French Gmail; a Gmail redesign or a different UI language may rename
those hooks and need a small nudge. It's an unpacked developer extension, not a
Web Store listing.
MIT © 2026 Baudouin A.
Gmail is a trademark of Google LLC. Use of this trademark is subject to Google Permissions. Focused Mail is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Google.
Notion Mail is a product of Notion Labs, Inc. Focused Mail is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Notion.