MailTrack for Chrome tracks if Gmail emails are read: here is how it works

MailTrack is a free browser extension for the Chrome web browser that tracks if recipients have read email messages that you sent using Google's email service Gmail.
The Chrome extension is available on the official Web Store and can be installed right from there. Once you have added it to Chrome, you are asked to link it to your Gmail account in the next step. If you are not signed in, you need to do so to complete the set up process.
The extension works in the background from that moment on. If you open the Gmail web interface, you will notice that it adds read indicators to some emails that resemble WhatsApp's indicators that are displayed when you sent messages using the mobile app.
Two green checkmarks indicate that a message has been read, and while checkmarks are displayed for messages that have been sent, they won't benefit from the feature because of how it works.
You do not need to do anything on your part to track whether your emails are read by recipients or not. Note that this only works if you compose them on Gmail directly, and not if you use third-party software or services to do so.
The interesting part here is how the tracking works. MailTrack uses remote content, a 1x1 pixel to be precise that it embeds into each email that you sent using Gmail.
When the recipient reads the email, the pixel gets requested and MailTrack notifies you about that. There are two issues with this approach:
- Remote contents are blocked by default in some programs and on some email service websites. Thunderbird for instance blocks it which means that MailTrack cannot track if the email was read or not unless the remote contents are loaded explicitly by the user.
- The message uses HTML code. If the recipient reads all messages as plain text, the tracking won't work either.
If the remote contents are loaded automatically or on user request, the hit to the image is recorded and you will see that it was read on Gmail.
It is interesting to note that MailTrack tracks every time an email gets opened. When you hover over the confirmation icon on Gmail, you will receive a date and time list when that email has been opened by the recipient.
According to the company, it is never accessing email contents or keeping copy of emails on company servers.
While MailTrack may look like a great idea to get read confirmations on Gmail, it is a problematic extension for several reasons.
Privacy comes to mind first and foremost. Tracking read emails is not that different from being tracked by companies on the Internet. If you dislike that, it seems almost hypocritical to use such an extension.
It is also possible that recipients notice that they are tracked by you which may impact your personal or business relationship.
Note: Mailtrack adds a signature to all emails by default. You can disable it on the dashboard on the developer website. The signature displays "sent with MailTrack" on emails which is another hint for the recipient that the email may be tracked.
You can uninstall MailTrack at any time in the browser. Since you have given it permissions, you may want to remove those as well when you remove it. This is done on the account security page of your Google account.






You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?
I think its thunderbird
It is Mozilla Thunderbird.
Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.
If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.
THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!
Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…
Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.
This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)
Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.
You are a god – thank you!
thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)
Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers
Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
Thank you
Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)
Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.
I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!
Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007
Great tip! Thanks!
Worked for me, too – thank you!!!
It’s Worked for me, too
thank you very much!
I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!
Thank you so much. Solved!
Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
Thank you again. M
This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.
Thanks.
Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.
Thank you, this worked !!!!
Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!
Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!