Thread Context Cards is a Chrome extension that adds inline hover cards to Gmail. When you hover over a sender's name, a card appears showing recent email threads, attachments, calendar events, Drive files, links, and email statistics — everything you need to respond with full context.
Click the "Add to Chrome" button anywhere on this site. You'll be taken to the Chrome Web Store listing. Click "Add to Chrome" and the extension will install automatically. No account creation or credit card is required for the Free tier.
Almost. After installation, the extension needs you to sign in with your Google account to grant read-only access to Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and Contacts. This one-time setup takes about 30 seconds. After that, just open Gmail and hover over any sender name.
No. The extension works with any Gmail account — personal @gmail.com addresses and Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) accounts both work perfectly.
No. The extension only reads thread metadata — subject lines, snippets (the preview text you already see in your inbox), and attachment names. Full email bodies are never requested, stored, or transmitted anywhere. All API calls use the gmail.readonly scope, which explicitly prevents modifying or deleting any data.
All data is cached locally in your browser's IndexedDB storage. This is temporary and automatically expires — most data is kept for up to 60 minutes, and contact information for up to 24 hours. Expired cache entries are pruned every 15 minutes. No email data is ever uploaded to any external server.
If you sign in via the settings page, the extension logs anonymized usage metrics — how many cards you view per day/month, which sections had data, and response times. This is stored in Firebase Firestore and is used solely to improve the extension and manage rate limits. You can opt out at any time by disconnecting your account in settings. See our Privacy Policy for full details.
Yes, at any time. You can sign out from the extension's settings page or popup, which revokes the OAuth token. You can also visit your Google Account permissions page to revoke access for the entire extension. Uninstalling the extension also removes all locally cached data.
No. The extension only activates on mail.google.com. It does not read, modify, or track your activity on any other website. Its permissions are limited to Gmail, Google's API endpoints, and Chrome's storage APIs.
The card is organized into tabbed sections. Depending on your settings, it can show: a timeline of recent emails and meetings, email threads, attachments, upcoming calendar events, past meetings, Drive files shared with the contact, links extracted from emails, and email volume statistics (threads this week/month, average response time). You can enable or disable each section in the settings.
The card appears after a 300ms hover delay (configurable). Core data — contact info, threads, events, and Drive files — loads in under 1 second in most cases. Additional data like attachments and links loads progressively in the background and appears as it becomes available. Cached data appears instantly.
Yes. Clicking a thread opens it in Gmail. Clicking a Drive file opens it in a new tab. The card also has Compose and Schedule buttons to quickly start a new email or create a calendar event with that contact.
Yes. Open the extension's settings page by clicking the gear icon in the card footer or right-clicking the extension toolbar icon and selecting "Options". You can toggle each section on or off, set the maximum number of threads to show, and adjust the cache duration.
Yes. When you hover over a Drive notification email (from addresses like drive-shares@google.com), the card automatically detects it and shows a "Shared with you" tab listing the files that were shared with you.
The extension is built for Chrome (Manifest V3). It also works on any Chromium-based browser including Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi. Firefox support is planned but not yet available.
The Chrome extension works only on desktop browsers. There is also a Google Workspace Add-on version that works in the Gmail sidebar on both desktop and mobile (iOS/Android). The add-on provides a similar experience but in the sidebar rather than as a hover card.
Thread Context Cards is designed to be lightweight and non-intrusive. It uses a shadow DOM to isolate its styles from the page. However, like any extension, conflicts are possible with other extensions that heavily modify the Gmail DOM. If you experience issues, try disabling other Gmail extensions temporarily to identify the conflict.
Yes. The Free tier gives you up to 100 context cards per day and 1,000 per month, with access to all core features: threads, attachments, calendar events, Drive files, links, timeline, and email statistics.
Pro ($8/month) removes all usage limits — unlimited cards per day and month. You also get priority support. Subscribe via Patreon to unlock Pro.
Contact us at burhanmujahid750@gmail.com and we'll work something out. We're happy to adjust limits for power users, early adopters, and anyone who needs a bit more headroom.
Yes. The Enterprise plan ($20/user/month) includes everything in Pro plus multi-account support, team shared inboxes, advanced analytics, SSO/SAML, and dedicated support. Email us for details.
The extension uses the Gmail API (threads.list, threads.get), Google Calendar API (events.list), Google Drive API (files.list), and People API (searchContacts, contactGroups.get). All requests are authenticated via OAuth 2.0 with read-only scopes.
Yes. To minimize API calls and improve performance, the extension caches responses locally in IndexedDB. Thread and attachment data is cached for up to 60 minutes, calendar events for 30 minutes, and contact information for up to 24 hours. Expired entries are automatically pruned every 15 minutes.
If you're offline or an API request fails, the card will show any cached data it has. If no cached data is available, the card will display an appropriate message. The extension degrades gracefully and will never crash or freeze Gmail.
You can email us directly at burhanmujahid750@gmail.com. For feature requests, bug reports, or general feedback, we're always happy to hear from you. We typically respond within 24 hours.
You can support development and get Pro access by subscribing via Patreon. Your support helps fund ongoing development, server costs, and new features. Even a positive review on the Chrome Web Store helps immensely.
Right-click the extension icon in Chrome's toolbar and select "Remove from Chrome". Alternatively, go to chrome://extensions, find Thread Context Cards, and click "Remove". All locally cached data will be automatically deleted by the browser.