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Is there any web browser that can display the desktop version of Gmail on an Android phone?

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The stock browser and Chrome both seem to force you to use the mobile version of Gmail (selecting Desktop View or Request Desktop Site, respectively, simply reloads the mobile site), but in Firefox, if you select Request Desktop Site, you actually get the desktop version.

OP comment:

It seemed to work at first but then I realized the chart box doesn't work. It's there any way to make it work correctly?

Any time you request a desktop site in a mobile browser, there's a good chance that the rendering will be messed up or difficult to navigate, and some advanced features won't work. That's because you're (deliberately) requesting a version of the site that's not designed for the browser you're using.

There's not much tweaking you can do from the browser's end to "make it work correctly", because the problem is not that the browser is misbehaving, it's the the features were developed for desktop browsers and tested with desktop browsers. Any tweaking to make features work with a mobile browser would have to be done by the site developers.

But that's why there are different desktop and mobile versions: so that each version can be tailored to the behavior and feature sets of the browsers it's designed for, rather than having one version try to satisfy all types of browsers with the same code. And if a mobile site already exists, that's all the less of a reason for the developers to strive to make the desktop version mobile-friendly.

So, this is actually a different question. The answer to the question "is there any web browser that can display the desktop version of Gmail on an Android phone?", in the sense that it will do what you ask it to do and load the desktop version rather than forcing you to use the mobile site, is yes. Firefox will do that.

But the answer to whether you can make all features of the desktop site function correctly in a mobile browser, is that there's nothing any browser (mobile or desktop) can possibly do to force the design of a web site to conform to its own capabilities.

It's a similar situation to using Chrome or Firefox to browse a site that's designed exclusively for Internet Explorer, using some of IE's non-standard features. There's nothing you can configure in the browser to fix the fact that the developers implemented features it doesn't support.

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  • It seemed to work at first but then I realized the chart box doesn't work. It's there any way to make it work correctly?
    – user541686
    Commented Oct 27, 2014 at 21:43
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    I'm not sure what "chart box" you're referring to, maybe you mean "chat box"? In any case, whatever doesn't work, doesn't work. The problem isn't with the browser, it's that you're using a mobile browser to request a version of the web site that's designed for desktop browsers. If a site has features that aren't supported by mobile browsers, there's nothing you can tweak to make it work. The site developers would have to do that. But they're not likely to do so, because they already have a version optimized for mobile browsers.
    – Adi Inbar
    Commented Oct 27, 2014 at 23:25
  • Sorry that was a typo, I meant chat box. Hmm ok I see, thanks.
    – user541686
    Commented Oct 28, 2014 at 0:29
  • Actually there's something you can do to fix the desktop version of a site to work better with mobile, namely you can write a Greasemonkey script to modify the page to your liking. This is likely more hassle than is worth though.
    – Lie Ryan
    Commented Aug 3, 2015 at 2:30
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I suggest you use Opera Mobile browser (not Opera Mini). Not just Gmail, even sites like Facebook and Stack Overflow are shown like desktop and purely like desktop. It also uses Chromium as its engine similar to what Google Chrome uses.

You have to switch off the "Speed mode", and in the setting page you have to select the "Desktop view" so that all sites will be visible as in desktop mode.

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Chrome works perfectly.

  1. Select "request desktop site" in the Chrome options

  2. Hit the Menu icon in Gmail (near the top left), scroll to the bottom of the list of labels, and switch to "Desktop"

enter image description here

  1. Scroll to the bottom of the page and switch from "basic HTML" to "standard"

enter image description here

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In Chrome go to settings then accessibility and tick Force Enable Zoom. Use your fingers to increase size. Text will scale nicely but images are those from the mobile site...

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  • It will still be the same mobile site that has zoom in functionality to it. But it's not what it's displayed like in a desktop right?
    – Lucky
    Commented Sep 30, 2015 at 14:30

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