Gmail Will Finally Make It Easier to Track Incoming Packages
Another fall, another shopping season. Ahead of this year’s holidays, Google announced several additions to Gmail that will make it easier to track purchases and potential savings, including a tab that will finally organize all your inbox in one convenient place.
While you’ll still see “packages due in 24 hours” at the top of your main inbox, if you want an overview of all your incoming deliveries, at least for accounts linked to your Gmail, that’s what Gmail’s new “Shopping” tab is for. On both mobile and the web, you’ll find it in the left-hand vertical bar, next to buttons like “Important” and “Shipped.” Clicking on it will reveal a “simple, organized” list of all the packages you’re due to receive soon, with tracking and “See more” buttons next to each. Scrolling down a bit, you’ll be able to manually sort through all your shopping-related emails, including receipts and delivery updates, so you can also keep an eye on any packages that are later in the day, or just more easily view the data Google uses to populate your package list. Here’s what it’ll look like.
The feature is similar to Gmail’s existing order tracking feature , but while it automatically uses your package tracking information to add updates to your main feed, it aggregates all your package and delivery information in one place so you don’t lose track of it. Google says it’s rolling out the feature globally today, so you’ll be able to try it out soon.
As for purchases you haven’t made yet, Google is also making some small changes to the existing “Promotions” tab. The company says you’ll soon be able to sort it by the deals Gmail thinks are “most relevant” to you. You’ll also supposedly get helpful “hints” about upcoming and urgent promotions, though Google hasn’t specified what exactly those will look like.
The company also didn’t say exactly how it would determine which offers are relevant to you, though it did mention that the feature would prioritize brands “you engage with the most.”
The optimist in me wants to believe this could be useful, though the realist in me knows I almost never check the Promotions tab anyway. It’s too promotion-focused, and while I appreciate that emails aren’t going into the rest of my inbox, that’s about all I like. It sounds like the same thing, only with potential data collection and extra unwanted notifications. I reached out to Google for more details on how the “most relevant” sorting in the Promotions tab works, but for now the company says you’ll still be able to sort by “most recent” if you prefer the Promotions tab as it currently is.
I’ll update this post once I get a response, but for now you have a little time to prepare for this change. Google says the Promotions tab update should start rolling out “in the coming weeks,” and even then it will only be available on mobile.