Quickly add a Gmail/MobileMe account to Mail/iCal/iChat

By Richard Mallion
One of the nice features of Lion is that we have a nice new system preference pane “Mail, Contacts & Calendars” to easily add new email accounts to Mac OS X.
Safari has has a feature which will automatically setup Mail, Ical and iChat for you.
When you first login into your gmail or MobileMe account using Safari you will prompted if you want to use your native applications with for gmail account:

 
 
 
 
If you click add you will then be prompted which application you wish to setup:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Choosing to add will automatically setup the selected apps with your gmail.MobileMe credentials.
This is a one time only option. If you choose not to setup your native apps, Safari will not ask you again on subsequent logins. However you can reset this. Safari maintains a list of domains not to setup in its main preference file “com.apple.safari.plist” found in your home>Library>preferences folder. Just edit this file and remove the entry for google.com or me.com as shown below.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
This tip also works for Mobile Me.