The inbox has become a digital battlefield. While new apps like Mailbox
have cropped up to help us achieve lofty goals like inbox zero, old
standby Gmail has remained largely unchanged. But today, Google
introduces a new look for its inbox designed to automatically organize
some of that email chaos.
In this new update, Google sorts your emails into up to five
categories which appear organized in tabs across the top of your inbox:
Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates, and Forums. “Primary” is the bulk
of what you’re actually interested in reading: messages from friends,
coworkers, family, and other potentially important contacts. “Social”
lumps together your Twitter, Facebook, Quora, and whatever other social
network email notifications. Under “Promotions,” you’ve got deals from
organizations like OpenTable and Living Social. The “Updates” tab
collects things like receipts, online statements, and bills. And lastly,
the “Forums” tab houses emails from any forums or listservs you belong
to.
You can choose which of the five tabs you want displayed, but
unfortunately for now, you can’t make custom tabs — you’ll have to stick
with folders and labels if you want to organize incoming emails more
specifically.
For someone switching from the classic Gmail view, the new layout is a
subtle visual change. However, I’ve been using it a bit and it’s
already improved my work flow. The tabs make it much easier to sort
through “must read” emails efficiently, and batch delete spammy trash
you don’t really care to keep.
However, Google’s algorithmic decisions of what emails from what
sender go in which tab is a bit of a mystery. Most of the spam emails
that make it past Gmail’s spam filters were lumped into Promotions, for
example. And some general office-wide emails and notifications from
Strava fell under the Updates tab rather than Social or Primary, which
prompted me to switch off that tab so as not to accidentally miss any
important emails.
If emails are sent to the wrong category though, you can easily drag
and drop them to the appropriate one, or set it so that emails from
specific senders always funnel into a certain tab.
The Gmail redesign isn’t revolutionary. It still looks like Gmail,
and if you don’t dig the tabbed situation, you don’t have to use it. But
for someone that hasn’t meticulously set rule after rule ensuring
emails are automagically sifted into appropriate folders as they arrive,
the tabs are a big step towards achieving email sanity. And the update
does appear to be an important stepping stone in Google getting more
intelligent about understanding the different types of emails we get,
and how to classify them, so that future redesigns can make email
management even more streamlined and painless.
The new inbox design is rolling out for desktop users over the next
few weeks. The new look in the Gmail apps for iOS or Android devices
will be updated over the next few weeks, as well.
Here’s a video demo:
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