Here Are the Top New Features That Google Added to Gmail Today (and Failed)
Google has been rumored to be working on some updates for the web version of Gmail for some time now, and the company is officially moving from tease to truth by making an announcement this morning .
While the company’s blog post is about its version of Gmail for G Suite, Google representatives have confirmed that regular Gmail users will receive the same updates. Here’s a quick overview of what you can play with today if you choose the new version of Gmail. You can do this by clicking on the settings icon in the upper right corner of Gmail and choosing the “Try a new Gmail” option.
Hover Actions
As the name suggests, you can now hover over messages in your inbox and perform various actions without even opening the email directly — for example, RSVP for events, marking a message as read, archiving it. or postpone for later. (More on this in a moment.)
Brand new sidebar
You can now click on the tiny icons in the all-new right sidebar to open your Google Calendar, write new notes in Keep, enter tasks in Tasks, or access other installed Gmail add-ons. …
And, yes, Tasks finally has its own dedicated mobile app for Android and iOS , which Google is also launching today.
Hello to postpone and smart answer
The sound you hear this morning is Boomerang screaming into the bathroom mirror. This is because Google mainly integrates the functionality of this add-on directly into Gmail. Now you can “snooze” messages, which will temporarily delete them from your mailbox until a set period of time. In other words, if you’re busy right now but don’t want the message to get lost in your email flow, put it aside so you can definitely see it later.
Smart Reply should be a little more familiar to anyone who has used the Google Inbox by Gmail app. In short, Gmail now offers quick replies that you can trigger by simply clicking on them, rather than typing them, depending on the context of the email you’re viewing (and the language you usually use when replying to messages).
Various settings
You can now add recipients to your emails directly from the body text. When entering your message, enter “+” and start spelling the contact’s name. That’s all. It’s like tagging a friend in a Google Plus post – you’re still using Google Plus, right?
Google has also updated the tip for your contacts. To preview your new design, simply hover your mouse over the person’s name, email address, or image / icon. In addition to viewing important statistics about a person, if you’ve already filled out this information in Google Contacts , you can click the icons to send them an email, schedule an event with them, send them a Hangouts message, or start a video chat with them.
What you can’t play with (yet)
Google isn’t quite ready to launch all of its new Gmail features just yet. A number of rumored (and possibly more explicit) updates are still being prepared for several weeks, including:
- Offline Gmail Support – You can search, write, reply, delete and archive messages in 90 days. Yum.
- Confidential Mode – Set expiration dates for previously sent messages or simply revoke them entirely. You can prevent recipients from forwarding, copying, downloading or printing messages, and you can also require recipients to authenticate with text messages before reading your email. In other words, you can prevent a compromised account from reading a confidential email even if it’s in their inbox.
- Nudge – Gmail will encourage you to spy on messages you’ve ignored for too long. All this is done automatically from your … er … “name”. We think “whining” was too strong a description.
- Serious safety warnings. Now you have no excuse if you were tricked into providing your credit card details with a suspicious email: