Can Gmail be my mail preference?

This answer will work with: EL Capitan or with MacOS Sierra.

Yes.

You can use gmail.

If you have another account that you have, for example if you have iCloud enabled on your Mac for Internet accounts you can easily disable the email for that account that you have enabled on your mac.

It is very easy and simple to do,

First you need to go to Mail, go to the Mail Drop down list right here:

Then, Select Accounts and it will automatically go to your internet and accounts pane in system preferences.

A pane means a subject that you want to make changes on your mac.

Once you went to the Account Preferences.

Select the email account provider that you want to want to disable,

Then you select it, than you unselect this:

Then it will not appear anymore in your Mail.

It will not no longer have that account that you just unselected from System preferences.

But you also need to remember that you can re-activate it anytime. You should do it when you don't have much storage left on your mac. Then you can just go on the email website till you put it back the account on your mac.

Everything on the account should be left saved.

Tip:

If you are using iCloud mail and you disabled it, then go to icloud.com then go to email and there you can view your email's that are put in iCloud.

If we open apple mail application , take cursor on top left menu bar , next to apple logo click on mail then on add account .

A window appears , choose a mail account provider so select the box of google and click on continue .

Another window appears so enter your web mail address ( complete correct gmail address ) and click on next .

It will prompt to enter password , so enter the correct password .

A window appears this account already exists you are already signed into this account , this error will definitely show because your mail application is already configured with webmail ( gmail ) and you are adding it for the second time .

There is no point of adding mail application again and again .

And what about contacts ( address book ) what issues are you facing please try to explain .

If you are looking how to create a gmail account a link Create a Gmail account - Gmail Help

And if you want to configure web mail ( gmail ) to the apple mail application .

Click on mail application from the dock and take cursor on top menu bar : macOS Sierra: menu bar

And add the account : Mail for Mac: Set up Mail with your email accounts

Are you referring to not using the Apple's Mail application? Or Apple e-mail such as iCloud.com? To change a default mail application, open Mail preferences & the General tab. Put your default email reader there. You can't use webmail as a default email reader if that's what you wish to do.

Clarify if this is not what you are talking about.

Apple email and Mail are 2 different things. Mail is an application.

I didn't mean System Preferences, but preferences for the Mail application. Open the Mail application and choose preferences under in it's menu under Mail.

You can't set webmail as a default email reader. You can add a gmail account to an application such as Mail, Outlook, etc.

You say you have problems with apple email. Exactly what problems do you have with it? Just sending? In order to set up apple email, you only have to sign into iCloud and enable Mail in the preferences. The account will be setup automatically for you in the Mail application. If it doesn't work correctly, you need only sign out of iCloud in System Preferences, then sign back into iCloud and re enable services including Mail.

If you wish to set a default mail account to send from, open Mail preferences and the composing tab. You can set the default sending account there.

I 'll give an example , suppose I am out of my town and I visit to a cyber cafe ( where people come and do browsing for hours and that is a paid service ) or go to a friends place and use his computer .

I 'll open webmail and enter webmail ( gmail address ) and password , my web mail account will be opened after viewing the mail or suppose I send a mail to anyone and after that sign out the webmail account .

And then come at my place , and open apple mail application a mail from google will come in inbox that this mail address was opened at the time ...

This is an indication and google is verifying and sending a mail in inbox to user for security reason and apple mail application is just a configuration to gmail services , it's a normal behaviour .

And if you use some one's else mail by borrowing his email address and password he is the administrator and what ever he send or you use his mail address to sent mails from his browser and if the person is using Mac computer and his webmail ( gmail ) is configured with apple mail application , google will sent mail to his inbox and will never sent mail to you .

Reading between the lines here, I don't think the issue is in configuring Mail.app to access/manage your Gmail account, it's that you want to be able to click on mailto: links in other applications and have them open in your web browser (using Google's web interface to their mail service at http://mail.google.com/ ) and not in any email-specific application.

That can't happen, and won't happen. The OS supports application targeting such that any given URL scheme can be directed to a specific application - usually mailto: links go to Mail.app (or Outlook.app if you're unlucky), http: and https: links go to Safari/Chrome/Firefox; file: links go to the Finder, etc.

There just isn't a way for Safari (or any web browser I checked) to interpret mailto: links as needing to go to log into a specific web site and click some arbitrary button/link to create a new message. mailto: links can only be sent to an email-specific application.

However, I don't think all is lost. There's nothing to say you have to get or read any of your email in Mail.app. You should be able to configure your Gmail account in Mail.app (which it sounds like you've done) and just use this for outgoing mail (turn off the option to check for new mail automatically). In this way mailto: links go to Mail.app where you can send your message, and you can continue to use your web browser to manage all other aspects of your mail life.

(I'd also look into what's stopping you using Mail.app for your day-to-day mail activities, but that's a whole different issue 🙂 )