Google Notifier for Mac OS X is really handy. Having had it, I rarely miss emails to my Gmail account as it is really quick to see when a message comes in and if I need to address it immediately. However, this program connects to Gmail and authenticates over plain txt through HTTP. It also gets any emails messages over the same unencrypted method, whereby it pops up a nice growl notification of the email that was just delivered.

Horrified yet again at being let down by an application I love, I did some digging and found you can actually secure this. There is no option in the application … common devs WTF! However, you can edit the plist file manually and enable a variable to switch to HTTPS. Here is how you do it in Mac OS X:

• Double click “Macintosh HD” (or whatever your hard drive is called)
• Click your username under “Places” (we are navigating to your user’s home directory)
• Double click “Library” under your home directory
• Double click “Preferences”
• Find the file “com.google.GmailNotifier.plist” in this location and double click it, it should open in a program called “Property List Editor” which is a plist editor for this particular kind of file
• You will see a “Root” under the “Property List”, expand it (click the arrow next to Root) so you see all the “Child” variables to “Root”
• Highlight “Root” then click “New Child” then enter the name “SecureAlways” (without the double quotes)
• Make sure the “Class” section for “SecureAlways” says “String”, if not, use the pull down to change it as such
• Enter in for the value section of “SecureAlways” “1″ (without the double quotes)
• Quit and click “Save” when prompted
• If open, you will need to turn off, then turn back on the application

Now after having monitored my traffic, the entire application runs through HTTPS. I don’t understand you devs putting in these variables in, having the code to handle it, and then not having the option available in the application preferences! Common guys give us the warm fuzzy of knowing we are safe and secure!