Your phone sends untracked email unless you ask

Not automatically. An email you write and send in the Gmail app on your phone goes out exactly as you typed it, with no tracking image and no tracked links, unless something put them there before you tapped send. Tracking feels automatic on a computer because a browser extension sits inside Gmail and adds the image to every message. That extension stays on your desk. There are three ways to get a tracked email out of a phone, and each one asks something different of you.

Why the extension stays on your desk

A Chrome extension runs inside Chrome on a computer. The Gmail app on an iPhone or an Android phone is its own app, not a web page, so the extension that tracks your desktop email never loads there. Mailtrack says so plainly in its troubleshooting guide for smartphones: emails sent from your Gmail app will not be tracked automatically.

Route one: a Gmail add-on

Google lets developers build add-ons that appear inside the Gmail app. When Google expanded what they can do while you write, its developer blog post said these compose actions work in Gmail across mobile and web once you authorize them. That is how a tracker reaches your phone at all.

Google's guide to extending the compose UI also explains the catch. An add-on shows its panel when you start a draft with the add-on already open, or when you open the add-on while writing. It changes the draft when you tap something in that panel. Google describes the compose action itself as the step that only makes the panel appear. Nothing in that design runs by itself at the moment you press send.

Mailtrack's add-on shows what that means day to day. Its troubleshooting guide says you must enable tracking on each individual email by opening the three dot menu, choosing Insert from Mailsuite, then Track email. Its add-on explainer warns that the add-on will not work unless Mailtrack is also installed in Chrome on your computer. Its setup page adds that Gmail add-ons do not run on an iPad, an Android tablet, or a Samsung Fold in tablet mode, and its comparison table lists push notifications as a feature of its app, not of the add-on.

Route two: the tracker's own mail app

Mailsuite now steers people away from its own add-on. Its guide to the Mailtrack mobile app calls the standalone app more complete and more reliable. You sign in with your Google account, write in that app instead of Gmail, and every email sent from it is tracked automatically.

The cost is a second inbox habit. Tracking only covers what you write in that app. A quick reply sent from the Gmail app on the train still goes out untracked, and you will not notice until you look for an open that was never possible.

Route three: a composer in your phone's browser

The third route skips both apps. Some trackers offer a web composer that sends through your connected Gmail account and adds the tracking on their server before the message leaves. It works in any phone browser, needs nothing installed on the phone, and the email still comes from your own address. Writing in a browser tab is a little clumsier than the Gmail app, but there is no per message step to forget.

Pick the route by the emails that need watching.

Decide which emails need it

Most email sent from a phone does not need tracking. A reply in a live conversation already has its signal coming: the next reply. The emails worth watching are a smaller set.

• A first email to someone new, where an open tells you the address works and the subject line got a look.
• A proposal, quote or contract, where knowing it was opened tells you when to follow up.
• A follow-up after a long silence, where an open tells you the thread is still alive.
• Everything else, which can go out from whichever app is in your hand.

If those few emails mostly start at your desk, the desktop extension covers them and the phone does not matter much. If they start on the road, choose a route that tracks by default, because a route that depends on remembering will miss the important one.

What Fast Mail Tracker does today

Fast Mail Tracker has no phone app yet and does not track email you send from the Gmail app. Our extension tracks what you send from Gmail in Chrome on a computer. On a phone, open the dashboard in your browser: at phone width it switches to a mobile layout with a compose button in the bottom bar. That composer sends from your own Gmail account, with switches for open tracking and link tracking on each message, and the tracking is added on our server so there is nothing to insert by hand. Open alerts arrive as an email in your own Gmail inbox, so you see them in the Gmail app wherever you are.

Fast Mail Tracker is in early access while Google's security review completes, so places are limited; if you want your important emails tracked from your desk or your phone browser, the install button below is the place to start.