Show All Messages and Events in Google Notifier

If you use Google Notifier on your Mac to keep tabs on your Gmail messages and Google Calendar events but are disappointed by the limit of messages/events the Notifier shows before banishing the rest to a “View more…” submenu, this hack’s for you. MacInformant points to this useful Easter egg divulged by David Phillip Oster, one of the official Mac Software Engineers at Google, to change the limit to any number you’d like:

1. Pull down the Notifier menu (either Calendar or Gmail), hold down Command and Option, and click Preferences on the menu. You’ll see a hidden settings editor.
2. Enter MaxMessagesOnMainMenu in the Key field (upper and lower case must be entered as shown) and 20 in the Value field, then click Set.
3. Quit Notifier and start it up again.

Now, when you pull down the Notifier menus, you’ll see all of your messages and events at a glance, without submenus. If you want to change the limit again, perhaps back to the default, just open the hidden settings editor and change the value to whatever you want.

Like the folks at MacInformant, I’m on a Mac too, so I don’t know if this works under Windows. Windows users, does Command-Ctrl do the trick?

Related:

• Google Hacks, 3E