It was Mailbox, and it seems to have been the first one to implement snooze for emails. Interestingly enough, before Inbox came out, another email app picked up steam and launched in 2013. What were some of the key features of Google Inbox?īesides the colorful and interactive design, Inbox was the first to bring the magic of snooze to emails. It would also organize invoices, and so on. These bundles presented an overview of your plans for upcoming and past trips through these cards.
GOOGLE INBOX APP STAR SERIES
So, on top of categorizing your emails, Inbox would let you interact with them through a series of cards with relevant actions, accessible at a glance.įor example, if you were a traveler, Inbox automatically compiled all travel-related confirmations and created interactive trip bundles. They created this design system to help developers and designers build more streamlined experiences within Google's Android, iOS, and the web ecosystem.Īmong other things, it made index cards pretty relevant and interactive in the user interface. The Material Design line of thought that Google also came up with that year dominated Google Inbox. With these integrations, Google aimed to be the go-to productivity app for many, as it seamlessly integrated email with reminders, billing, social, and more. Those two Google projects morphed into Tasks and Google Assistant, respectively. Maybe it was the charm of the first time seeing how machine learning organized our emails.īut Inbox also had a series of integrations with other Google tools, like Reminders and the ever-intrusive, ever-helpful Google Now. Inbox innovated with this intelligent grouping of emails, and it felt valuable and intuitive back then. The view of messages grouped in Bundles was way more inviting than the overwhelmingly plain list of messages on Gmail's default view.īundles were those categories that Gmail now gives by default, such as Promotions, Social, Updates, and so on. At first sight, it was colorful but not annoying. It had its mobile app and worked on desktop too. Inbox was its own stand-alone email service, independent from Gmail. So, ten years later, they set out to rethink it and came up with Inbox. Gmail standardized the email experience for a decade, to the point where it started to feel stale and lifeless.
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The email client that just swallowed all competitors and became the norm, maybe along with Outlook. But back in 2014, Google still found room for innovation and came up with Inbox. Of course, none of us expect to reinvent the wheel. It's a tricky mix of filters, labels, categories, stars, and rules that only the true warriors of productivity manage to tame.Īt this point, we've succumbed to it. Honestly, the process of customizing and fine-tuning Gmail to work for you and not against you is more cumbersome than it should. That red badge on Gmail's icon with a four-digit number of unseen emails is likely an anxiety trigger.īut you do you. But, please don't have hundreds or thousands of emails sitting there, unread, untouched. Some deal better with email than others, and that's alright. Achieving the so-called "Inbox Zero" sounds like reaching Nirvana or being enlightened. Still, simple as it is, receiving and sending emails can become an actual burden amid our frantic, digital lives. I guess there can only be so much innovation when it comes to email.
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One that was good and ultimately got sacrificed to make Gmail what it is today. So, let's remember yet another addition to Google's prolific list of deceased projects and companies. And, somehow, they felt more organic and fresher than now on Gmail. If you think the Gmail app is friendly enough these days, know that it is primarily thanks to Inbox.įeatures like snoozing messages, auto-generated bundles, or the somewhat creepy but helpful suggestions of smart replies were first implemented on the Inbox app. Back to square one, to traditional and burdensome email. And then, of course, Google turned it off. It almost got me to enjoy email altogether. There was also a general outcry when it shut down. Many people did, and most reviews were positive to prove it.