Nostalgic app plays “you’ve got mail” alert for new Gmail messages

Install for a wave of nostalgia

Do you remember the days of squealing dial up through AOL? Do you remember logging in and being greeted by the yellow running man? And do you remember getting three to four emails per day and perking up every time you heard “you’ve got mail” from across the room?

If you look back to those days with nostalgia, but not so much that you’d go back to crappy dial up, enter the “You’ve Got Gmail” app for the Chrome browser which plays the old AOL “You’ve got mail” sound to alert you of a new Gmail message.

We noticed that the “bling” sound is missing from the alert, but it’s a fun walk down memory lane – one of us is actually going to keep it on our work computer not only for fun but to make other people wonder if they’ve broken the time-space continuum.

All you have to do is click the blue “Add to Chrome” button on the top right of the page, log in to Gmail, and as the developers note, “imagine yourself in 1998, hoping nobody picks up the phone while your 14.4K modem howls.”

Don’t worry, there’s a mute button for the app

But since it’s not 1998 and you get 800 emails a day, you can silence that bad boy by clicking the icon for a mute option. They’ve thought of it all!

One user reviewed the app, succinctly sharing our view on it: “This is sadly my favorite app. It gets to my computer before my actually [sic] phone even gets the message. And that blast of nostalgia to my face is invigorating.”

Invigorating, indeed. Go check out the app, add it to your Chrome browser, and try your hardest not to dig in your closet for those oversized Tommy Hilfiger tops or tubes of brown Revlon lipstick.

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