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Inbox Users Rejoice: Leak Shows Best Features Could Show Up in Gmail App

By Laura Tucker
Inbox Users Rejoice: Leak Shows Best Features Could Show Up in Gmail App Featured Image

There are many different ways to check your Gmail. A good amount of people use the Inbox app to access it. They were hit with the news last year that Inbox was ending sometime this year, devastating people. These people can now rejoice with the news that some of the best features of the app will now be coming to the Gmail app.

New and Improved Gmail

I’ll admit, I was one who was devastated. I really enjoyed the way Inbox organized everything for me to keep me at Inbox Zero, or at least as close as to what kept me comfortable with it. No other email app I found could organize in that way for me.

I weaned myself off Inbox right when I found it was ending and have resorted to using the Gmail app and subscribing to an expensive service, Sanebox, to get the same reasonable amount of organization. But I still long for Inbox.

But as we found out with the announcement that Google would be shutting down Inbox, it was only a testing ground for Google to try new features. Once they found all the features everyone liked in Inbox, they infuriatingly shut it down. But it turns out, those features look to be coming soon to the Gmail app.

news-gmail-inbox-features-screenshot

BGR reports that a Reddit user first noticed Inbox features in an internal Gmail for Android version. The screenshot provided showed that both reminders and the organizational tool “Bundles” were in this app. It also appeared that only pinned items would appear in the feed.

There will also be the ability to “mark all as read” in Gmail eventually. Frankly, this isn’t a new and innovative feature. That’s something that should have been included in the app years ago. This is one of the reasons I didn’t like the Gmail app for so long: it just wasn’t updated enough. It’s similar to the way I feel about the Mail app in iOS.

The Future of the Gmail App

It’s unknown when the version of Gmail with Inbox features will launch, but the thought is that it could be at Google I/O, the company’s annual developer conference, May 7 to May 9. But Inbox officially leaves in March. If you haven’t weaned yourself off it yet, it means you may only be heartbroken for a few months before help is on the way.

The person who initially provided the screenshot that’s floating around seems to be a Google engineer who’s working on the app or some form of it. There’s no beta version of it, at least not yet.

This gives us nothing solid but definitely leaves some hope that Google didn’t totally lose its senses when it decided to eliminate Inbox. Have you weaned yourself from the app yet? Have you found an alternative, or do you think you can wait for the improved Gmail app with Inbox features? Let us know your thoughts on it in the comments.

Image Credit: Gmal via BGR

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Laura Tucker Avatar
Laura Tucker
Laura has spent more than 20 years writing news, reviews, and op-eds, with the majority of those years as an editor as well. She has exclusively used Apple products for the past 35 years. In addition to writing and editing at MTE, she also runs the site’s sponsored review program.

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