Official Gmail Blog
News, tips and tricks from Google's Gmail team and friends.
Sharing travel plans and memories with Inbox by Gmail
December 14, 2015
Posted by Victor Anchidin, Software Engineer
The holidays are full of traveling, get-togethers and sharing memories. Now Inbox is making all of these things a bit easier, with an update to
Trip Bundles
and mobile attachments.
You've told us
how
much
you
love
that Trip Bundles summarize all of the important info about your trip. So, starting this week, you'll be able to share those summaries with friends and family with one tap.
You can also add emails to a trip (a top feature request!) using the
Move to...
menu, and view trips offline—perfect for when you're on a plane or using spotty WiFi.
While you're traveling, you might end up taking a lot of photos. Improved mobile attachments give you quick access to your recent photos, and let you attach multiple photos at once.
These new features will be rolling out over the next week. Happy holidays!
Add to-dos to your Google Calendar using Reminders
December 7, 2015
Posted by Vijay Umapathy, Product Manager
Our calendars should help us make the most of our time — scheduling meetings at work, remembering brunch with friends, and keeping track of all our other commitments. But often our to-do list is elsewhere, separate from the Calendar that organizes our day, and we end up overcommitted or miss something important because we forgot to check our list.
Now there's a single way to manage your day: starting this week, you can create Reminders in Google Calendar to keep track of your to-dos alongside your scheduled events.
Reminders stick around
You might already create calendar entries to remind you to call the doctor or pick up groceries on the way home. But while those entries come and go, Reminders stick with you over time so you can track them until they are actually done. If a Reminder isn't completed, it will appear at the top of your Calendar the next day. And the next. When you do finally call the doctor or pick up those necessities, just swipe the Reminder away ... and you're onto the next to-do.
Reminders help with the details
Another way Reminders are more useful than events is that Calendar adds things like phone numbers and addresses automatically. So if you add a Reminder to make a call or run an errand, the number or address will be right there when you need it. Just like
Inbox by Gmail
, Calendar uses information from your contacts, as well as Google's knowledge graph to provide this extra bit of help.
Reminders work across Google
You can also create Reminders from Inbox, Keep, and Google Now. This means you can create a Reminder when you're checking your email and it will show up on your calendar right away. Plans change? Just move the Reminder to a better time. Or if your hands are full, you can record your Reminders in Google Now一like, "Ok Google, remind me to buy birthday candles"一then mark it as done later in Calendar.
Reminders will be rolling out this week with the latest versions of Calendar on
Google Play
and the
App Store
. And don't worry, we're working on bringing Reminders to the web as well.
Computer, respond to this email: Introducing Smart Reply in Inbox by Gmail
November 3, 2015
Posted by Bálint Miklós, Software Engineer
With the holidays approaching and emails coming in at a furious pace, we can all use a little help. Inbox is already on hand
assisting you with the next step
,
organizing your trips
, and
even suggesting reminders
.
But when you're checking email on the go, it can be cumbersome and time-consuming to reply to all or even some of them. What if there was a way for your inbox to guess which emails can be answered with a short reply, prepare a few responses on your behalf and present them to you, one tap away?
Well, starting later this week, Inbox will do just that with Smart Reply.
Smart Reply suggests up to three responses based on the emails you get. For those emails that only need a quick response, it can take care of the thinking and save precious time spent typing. And for those emails that require a bit more thought, it gives you a jump start so you can respond right away.
There's actually a lot going on behind the scenes to make Smart Reply work. Inbox uses machine learning to recognize emails that need responses and to generate the natural language responses on the fly. If you're interested in how Smart Reply works, including how researchers got machine learning to work on a data set that they never saw, you can read more about it on the
Google Research Blog
.
And much like how Inbox gets better when you report spam, the responses you choose (or don't choose!) help improve future suggestions. For example, when Smart Reply was tested at Google, a common suggestion in the workplace was "I love you." Thanks to Googler feedback, Smart Reply is now SFW :)
Smart Reply will be rolling out later this week on both
Google Play
and the
App Store
in English. If you've got a lot of emails on your plate, now's a great time to try
Inbox
and get through them faster than ever.
New Calendar illustrations in 30 languages
October 16, 2015
Posted by Stella Schieffer, Product Manager
Your calendar is more than just a list of dates and times — it’s your life! That’s why Calendar adds illustrations to many of your favorite events automatically.
Today we're improving these illustrations in two ways. First, you'll find over a dozen more of them for events like weddings and Halloween parties. Second, illustrations will now appear in 30 languages--from Dutch and Finnish to Catalan and Korean--giving our global community of users a new way to celebrate their day.
You be the artist
We’ll be making more illustrations soon, and we want your help creating them. Just tweet a photo of an event you love with the hashtag #makethemost. We’ll select our favorites as inspiration for the next set of Calendar illustrations.
Stay in control with Block and Unsubscribe
September 22, 2015
Posted by Sri Harsha Somanchi, Product Manager
Sometimes you get mail from someone who’s really disruptive. Hopefully it doesn’t happen often—but when it does, you should be able to say, “Never see messages from this person again.” That’s why you can now block specific email addresses in Gmail—starting today on the web, and over the next week on Android. Future mail will go to the spam folder (and you can always unblock in Settings).
In addition, the unsubscribe option is now making its way to Android, so you’ll be able to opt out of eligible mailing lists directly from the Gmail app. It’s perfect for those newsletters you subscribed to a while back but don’t read any more.
So try block or unsubscribe when the situation calls for it. And stay in control of your inbox.
Inbox by Gmail: Snooze to just the right time
July 16, 2015
Posted by Vijay Umapathy, Product Manager
Wouldn’t it be nice if your concert ticket appeared at the top of your inbox just before the event started, or your hotel confirmation came back right before you needed to check in?
Starting today, Snooze in Inbox is getting a bit more convenient—when you snooze an email that has dates and times (like event confirmations or shipping notifications), you’ll get a one-tap option to snooze to exactly the right time, like the day of your concert or the morning your package will arrive.
You'll see these new Snooze options on most of these types of emails:
Package tracking updates
Restaurant and event reservations
Calendar invites
Flight confirmations
Hotel reservations
Rental car reservations
So next time, try snoozing that email to the day before the event. Then sit back and relax, knowing your email will come back at just the right time.
The mail you want, not the spam you don’t
July 9, 2015
Posted by Sri Harsha Somanchi, Product Manager
The Gmail team is always working hard to make sure that every message you care about arrives in your inbox, and all the spam you don’t want remains out of sight. In fact, less than 0.1% of email in the average Gmail inbox is spam, and the amount of wanted mail landing in the spam folder is even lower, at under 0.05%.
Even still, Gmail spam detection isn’t perfect. So today we’re sharing some of the new ways we are supporting the senders of wanted mail, and using the latest Google smarts to filter out spam.
Getting the mail you do want with Gmail Postmaster Tools
Gmail users get lots of important email from companies like banks and airlines—from monthly statements to ticket receipts—but sometimes these wanted messages are mistakenly classified as spam. When this happens, you might have to wade through your spam folder to find that one important email (yuck!). We can help senders to do better, so today we’re launching the
Gmail Postmaster Tools
.
The Gmail Postmaster Tools help qualified high-volume senders analyze their email, including data on delivery errors, spam reports, and reputation. This way they can diagnose any hiccups, study
best practices
, and help Gmail route their messages to the right place. For you, this means no more dumpster diving for that confirmation code ;-)
Google smarts for less spam
Since
the beginning
, machine learning has helped make the Gmail spam filter more awesome. When you click the “Report spam” and “Not spam” buttons, you’re not only improving your Gmail experience right then and there, you’re also training Gmail’s filters to identify spam vs. wanted mail in the future. Now, we are bringing the same intelligence developed for Google Search and Google Now to make the spam filter smarter in a number of ways.
For starters, the spam filter now uses an
artificial neural network
to detect and block the especially sneaky spam—the kind that could actually pass for wanted mail.
We also recognize that not all inboxes are alike. So while your neighbor may love weekly email newsletters, you may loathe them. With advances in machine learning, the spam filter can now reflect these individual preferences.
Finally, the spam filter is better than ever at rooting out email impersonation—that nasty source of most phishing scams. Thanks to new machine learning signals, Gmail can now figure out whether a message actually came from its sender, and keep bogus email at bay.
Ultimately, we aspire to a spam-free Gmail experience. So please keep those spam reports coming, and if you’re a company that sends email, then check out our new
Postmaster Tools
. Together we can get the wanted mail to the right place, and keep the spam where it belongs.
Express yourself in email: hundreds more themes, plus emoji
June 30, 2015
Posted by Gaurav Vijay, Software Engineer
Your inbox is home to some of your most meaningful and entertaining messages—from that acceptance letter, to those throwback photos—so we think it’s important for Gmail to feel just as personal (and fun!). That’s why we offer lots of ways to customize your experience—from
inbox categories
, to
email formatting
, to
shareable selfies
—and why today we’re expanding your options with additional themes, and emoji.
A wider selection of themes
Themes can help you dress up your inbox, as well as distinguish between your home and work accounts, so they’ve been an important part of Gmail since they first appeared in
2008
. Starting today there are hundreds more high-res options available (photographed by some fellow Googlers!). And of course, you can always
upload your own
.
Once you’ve found the right photo, you can now use editing tools like blur, vignette, and text background to make your image and messages look great together.
Emoji all the things
Sometimes you just can’t find the words to express how you’re feeling over email
. But fret no more, because today’s Gmail update includes emoji for just about every occasion
.
Excited about this weekend’s barbecue? Finalize the menu, dress code and after-dinner plans with just a few characters:
. Running a few minutes late? Let your friend know you’ll be there at
. Whatever the situation, sending emoji is now a piece of
.
All of today’s web updates are rolling out over the next few days, so check back soon if you don’t see them yet. Once you do, definitely share your favorite themes and emoji with us on
Google+
,
Twitter
and
Facebook
!
Inbox by Gmail: Say adios to “Oops” with Undo Send
June 24, 2015
Posted by Phil Sharp, Product Manager
That moment when you press send and immediately realize you made a terrible mistake. But it's too late. We all need to travel back a few seconds every once in a while, so with Inbox you can take back an email right after sending. Undo Send in Inbox launched a
few weeks ago
, and now it’s available on
Android
,
iOS
and the
web
. So enjoy those second chances!
Google Calendar for iPhone: more ways to stay on top of your schedule
June 23, 2015
Posted by Stella Schieffer, Product Manager
Since the new Google Calendar app
arrived
, you've given us lots of great feedback that has guided
our
updates
. Starting today, you'll see improvements to
Google Calendar on iPhone
that follow the recent improvements to the
Android app
.
To start, you can now see more events at a glance with 7-day week view and customize your calendar with week numbers on iPhone.
You can now also add Google Drive files, like Docs and Sheets or pictures and PDFs, directly to events on your iPhone and Google Calendar on the web, just like you can on Android. Drive will even check if everyone has access to the files and if not, ask you if you'd like to share with them.
Sometimes, getting notified of an upcoming event isn’t enough—you might need to contact other attendees, or figure out the best way to get there. With interactive notifications on the iPhone, you can now email guests and view maps with one tap.
We have a lot more improvements based on your feedback coming, so stay tuned!
P.S. If you're a developer, you can now add Drive files, including Docs, Sheets and Slides, to Google Calendar events created through the
Calendar API
.
New ways to add Reminders in Inbox by Gmail
June 17, 2015
Posted by Dave Orr, Google Research Product Manager
(Cross-posted from the
Google Research Blog
)
Last week, Inbox by Gmail
opened up
and improved many of your favorite features, including two new ways to add Reminders.
First up, when someone emails you a to-do, Inbox can now suggest adding a Reminder so you don’t forget. Here's how it looks if your spouse emails you and asks you to buy milk on the way home:
To help you add Reminders, the Google Research team used natural
language understanding technology
to teach Inbox to recognize to-dos in email.
And much like Gmail and Inbox get better when you report spam, your feedback helps improve these suggested Reminders. You can accept or reject them with a single click:
The other new way to add Reminders in Inbox is to create Reminders in Google Keep—they will appear in Inbox with a link back to the full note in Google Keep.
Hopefully, this little extra help gets you back to what matters more quickly and easily. Try the new features out, and as always, let us know what you think using the feedback link in the app.
Trip Bundles in Inbox by Gmail
June 8, 2015
Posted by Thijs van As, Product Manager
I frequently travel to Mountain View and Seattle and always have a mess of related emails at the end of my trip. For example, last time the final tally was four about my flight purchase, five about my hotel reservations, one rental car confirmation and five check-in reminders. The challenge is: I often need an important bit of information quickly—a flight confirmation number or hotel address—but the details are buried in email, making them hard to find.
Just a
couple weeks ago
,
Inbox
added Trip Bundles to improve this experience—whether you’re traveling up and down the West Coast, or flying across the pond. Now, all of your emails about a trip are bundled together and available the instant you open Inbox.
When it's time to fly, Inbox will even update your flight status so you'll know if your trip is on time or if your gate has changed.
You can open the bundle to see all your emails related to that trip, with the most important information (like flight times) right at the top.
Each section in the bundle gives you all the details about your flight, rental car, hotel or restaurant reservation. And when there are multiple emails about the same reservation, Inbox is smart enough to only show you the most up-to-date information.
Finally, if you want to take a look at your upcoming trips or take a trip down memory lane, just tap on Trips in the app menu.
Safe travels!
Thanks to you, Inbox by Gmail is now open to everyone
May 28, 2015
Posted by Alex Gawley, Director of Product Management
Back in October we
introduced
a new type of inbox—one that works for you. Since then you’ve told us what you like best about Inbox by Gmail, as well as how we can make it better. And we want to say thank you.
Because of your feedback, we’re improving many of your favorite features, and launching your most highly-requested ones. So sit back, relax and enjoy all the updates.
More ways to stay organized with Trip Bundles
For starters, you’ve mentioned how much you like seeing key information at a glance, like when your package is arriving. So today Inbox is adding Trip Bundles: All of your emails about a trip will now be bundled together and the most important details (like flight times and hotel reservation numbers) will be available the instant you open Inbox.
More control with Undo Send, Swipe to Delete and Signatures
Being able to control your inbox, like
setting your custom Snooze times
, is also something you’ve told us matters. So today Inbox is helping you be more productive:
With Undo Send—now for the first time on your phone—you can take back an email right after sending in case you spotted a mistake, or have second thoughts
If you’d rather get rid of messages, you can make ‘Delete’ the default swiping action
If you want to personalize your sent messages, you can now add a custom signature
More ways that Inbox saves you time
You’ve also let us know how much you appreciate a little extra help every now and then—like when Inbox adds phone numbers to Reminders, or finds that flight time in under a second. Today Inbox is adding a few more ways it can be of service:
When you create Reminders in Keep, they’ll now appear in Inbox
When someone emails you a to-do, Inbox might suggest adding a Reminder so you don’t forget
When you get an email from HotelTonight or Eat24, you can now open your reservations and food orders within their app, directly from Inbox
Reminders created in Keep now appear in Inbox
Open your order or booking directly from Inbox
No more invites: Inbox is now open
Finally, you’ve asked for invites. And we’d like to say yes to all of you, all at once. So as of today, Inbox is open to everyone—no invitation required. All your Gmail messages are ready and waiting. So if you haven't tried Inbox yet,
download the app
today, and start getting back to what matters.
p.s. While we’re still in the early stages of bringing Inbox to work, today we’re also expanding the
Inbox early adopter program
so any Google Apps for Work customer who wants to join can do so.
Time is on your side—welcoming Timeful to Google
May 4, 2015
Posted by Alex Gawley, Director of Product Management
With the proliferation of mobile phones and greater access to technology, it should be easy to get things done quickly and effortlessly. That’s why with tools like Gmail, Inbox, Calendar and Docs, we’ve built smart features to help you organize your life and take the work out of work—Inbox makes it easy to
get started
on your to-do list, Calendar
automatically adds
events from your Gmail, and Search gives you
simple, concise answers
about information that’s important to you.
But even as these tools have simplified our lives, we’re still inundated with too many updates, information and everyday tasks. And we still have to do a lot of logistical work ourselves—like deciding to what time exactly we should snooze that Reminder in order to get it done in time for Mom’s birthday, or figuring out when to work on that presentation so that it’s ready for next week’s sales pitch.
Today we’re excited to announce that
Timeful, Inc.
is joining the Google family to help make getting things done in your life even easier.
The Timeful team has built an impressive system that helps you organize your life by understanding your schedule, habits and needs. You can tell Timeful you want to exercise three times a week or that you need to call the bank by next Tuesday, and their system will make sure you get it done based on an understanding of both your schedule and your priorities. We’re excited about all the ways Timeful’s technology can be applied across products like Inbox, Calendar and beyond, so we can do more of the work for you and let you focus on being creative, having fun and spending time with the people you care about.
Welcome Timeful!
Smartbox by Inbox: the mailbox of tomorrow, today
April 1, 2015
Posted by Merrill Anovick, Project Manager
Mail is a wondrous thing. From the early days of the
homing pigeon
to the herculean efforts of the
Pony Express
, mail has connected us for generations. The advent of email brought the world even closer together. And yet, despite this leap forward, physical mail still just sits there. In a box. All day.
So today we’re excited to introduce Smartbox—a better, smarter mailbox that fuses physical mail with everything you love about the electronic kind:
Smartbox is currently in field trial—stuck in the ground, in a field—for
Inbox by Gmail
customers. If you’re not yet using Inbox, simply email
inbox@google.com
anytime before April 2 to be invited, and to reserve your spot on the Smartbox waitlist.
Custom Snooze in Inbox by Gmail: Rise and shine...on your time
March 31, 2015
Posted by Vijay Umapathy, Product Manager
As our lives change, so do our schedules. "Morning" probably means something different to a college kid than, say, a parent with a newborn baby. Whatever your schedule is, your inbox should adapt to your day (and not the other way around).
So starting later today, you'll be able to customize your morning, afternoon and evening Snooze times in
Inbox
. You don't even have to do any work: Inbox will adapt to your preferences. If you snooze to a custom time of 7:30AM, you'll see a prompt asking if you'd like to change your morning time to 7:30AM. One tap and you're all set!
When you update your morning, afternoon, or evening times, the rest of your snooze options will also adapt. ”This evening,” uses your evening time, while “Tomorrow” and “Next week” use your morning time. Of course, if you prefer, you can also manually change your snooze times using the new Snooze settings.
Custom snooze was one of your most highly requested features, but we’ve also been listening to the rest of your feedback. You've asked us for quick access to Contacts from Inbox on the web, and now it's just a click away:
We hope these small improvements help you tackle your email faster and get back to what matters. In the meantime, we’re also working to add easier access to delete as well as signature support in Inbox, two features you’ve told us you want. So stay tuned!
All your mail, together in one place
March 30, 2015
Posted by Régis Décamps, Software Engineer
These days, many of us have more than one email address. If you’re a student, you may have one account for school, one for a campus group you lead, and one for your blog. If you’re a parent, you might have one for family and one for your business. However many email addresses you have, today’s improvements to the Gmail app for Android make it easy to manage all your mail from all your accounts (yes, even @yahoo and @outlook) while you’re on the go.
All your inboxes in one place
Starting today you’ll be able to view all your mail at once, regardless of which account it’s from, using the new “All Inboxes” option. This way you can read and respond to all your messages without having to hop between accounts.
Conversation view
You’ve told us threaded conversations are one of your favorite Gmail features because they keep your messages organized and give you all the context you need to reply to those
long
email threads. Now messages from your Yahoo, Outlook.com and other IMAP/POP accounts will get the same special treatment, appearing neatly stacked as one conversation.
Smarter search
Search is the cornerstone of Google, and of Gmail. The new Gmail app for Android has better auto-complete, so you can find what you need even faster.
And a few other cool things…
Today’s update also includes more responsive animations (like when you open and close a conversation), larger attachment previews to help you see what’s inside, and the ability to save to Drive with a single tap.
We hope these updates make it a little bit easier to manage mail from all your accounts (Gmail or otherwise!). Look for the update on Google Play as it rolls out over the next few days.
Google Calendar for iPhone. It's about time.
March 10, 2015
Posted by Robin Züger, Product Manager
Today we’re bringing the
new Google Calendar
to iPhone.
Just like on Android, you’ll get the following features:
Events from Gmail
, which turn emails into Calendar events automatically
Assists
, which make suggestions that save you time creating events
Schedule View
, which makes your calendar easy to scan and lovely to look at
Plus,
Google Calendar for iPhone
works with all the calendars you've already set up on your phone.
Of course if you're on Android, then definitely check out the recent improvements we made to
Google Calendar for Android
. Either way you can now spend less time managing your day, and more time enjoying it.
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