6 ms·

Gmail app for iOS available in the App Store (again)

58 points by cleverjake 15y ago

davidcollantes 15y ago
Right now, using the built-in mail app on iOS I get email, calendar, and address book synchronization. The new Gmail app offers only email, right? Why should I use it instead then? Could someone explain that? Thanks!
- cleverjake 15y ago
  "Priority Inbox and one-click starring of messages. Other possibilities include some of the stuff Google is about to roll out for Gmail proper: like contact icons, better threading, and deep searching functionality. Maybe there will even be some Google+ integration, which Google is also hard at work on for Gmail." -- MG Sigler
- pwthornton 15y ago
  Search is the only reason to keep it around. It's a great way to search through your Gmail. The built-in mail app doesn't search that well, especially stuff on the server. Beyond that, I find the built-in mail app to be lightyears better than the Gmail app. I'll be using the built-in app as my main app, with the Gmail app on the side for certain searches. When Sparrow finally comes to iOS, I may switch to that. They get how to make a good Gmail app, unlike the people who make Gmail.
  - smackfu 15y ago
    Server-side search doesn't work at all with my GMail, set up as an Exchange account on my iPhone. It's the main reason I need to use the web app today.
- evandena 15y ago
  I really want priority inbox and bulk actions.
- iaskwhy 15y ago
  One reason to use this instead of Mail.app is that Mail.app seems to not be working with Gmail for a lot of people, myself included.
  - hollerith 15y ago
    When you set it up, did you choose Exchange Server (or some such) rather than Gmail like Google's own instructions tell you to?
    - iaskwhy 15y ago
      I followed Gmail's tutorial (which I cannot find right now) but I remember it was using Gmail and not Exchange. I believe my problem is related to the two steps authentication but there were so many other cases there and from the kind of people who would not now about 2 steps authentication.
rwc 15y ago
I'm disappointed Google didn't take advantage of their opportunity to go back to the drawing board on this one. The user experience of a web wrapper can't compare to a native app.
- natrius 15y ago
  The animations are choppy, but if the browser were more capable, I don't see what the barrier to a good user experience would be.
forbes 15y ago
I find the standard Mail app painfully slow over 3G for checking for mail. So far, the gmail app seems much, much faster. The UI will take some getting used to though.
ninjastar99 15y ago
Wow. Two weeks later and they STILL messed this up? I'm only getting sound / vibration notifications. Impressively bad. How many people are working on this project? Follow up question: how many people are working on testing this project?
DrHankPym 15y ago
I'd rather have a better Google Talk app for iOS.
- inexplicable 15y ago
  While I'm with you, I use https://imo.im/ https://imo.im/ on my iPad (no iPhone) and its been working pretty well so far.
- larrywright 15y ago
  Check out Verbs: http://verbs.im/ http://verbs.im/ - I've been using it for a little while now. I love it.
caillou 15y ago
I was really looking forward to using multiple accounts in this app. Unfortunately this is not supported. Yet?
- dh0913 15y ago
  Not that I could see. I installed it and looked for multiple accounts, but couldn't find anything.
inthewoods 15y ago
I can't get any notifications on the lock screen or via the pull-down....
weixiyen 15y ago
I get a blank loading screen for about 5 min, then some random sound on my phone. A lot of connection issues :( - sticking with the default mail app for now.
lparry 15y ago
Wow, I heard it was so bad that they pulled it, it must have really stank before cause its still terrible now. Horrid black colour scheme (aka 90's teenage webpage scheme), slow, unresponsive, menus flow past the edge of the screen. This doesn't really sell me if they're trying to show me what I'm missing by not using android.
joshbegley 15y ago
my main gripe with the built-in mail app is that it doesn't thread sent messages in the context of a conversation. also that you can't 'send as' all of the addresses in your gmail. was hoping they'd solve this with the gmail version...but yeah, still quite buggy.
zbowling 15y ago
Spoiler Alert: It sucks. It's a web view and it's an amazing hack to make a web view almost "feel" native but it fails. It doesn't fail nearly as hard as the Netflix app, but it's still not the greatest experience. If it wasn't for the fact I get push notifications I would probably uninstall it. When will people learn that using UIWebView's and faking the experience of native is only a 90% solution? Sure if gets you there quickly but it will cost you trying to hack around the bugs and edge cases to have an almost barely acceptable user experience (and most of those issues are often solved for you for free in the native toolkit). It's just generally a bad idea to write apps like this. Now when it comes to pure web apps, I hold out hope that we can have great experiences everywhere. I don't believe anything and everything needs an app (content, books, business websites, etc). That is were the mobile web fits in. But please don't try to use these kinds of frameworks wrapped in a UIWebView and try to ship it as a cough native cough app. This quote fits so well for these kinds of apps: “ The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time. ” - Tom Cargill
- cmelbye 15y ago
  If you use Google Sync and the native Mail client, you can get "push notifications" for your email too.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - blaenk 15y ago
    Is it just me, or do the notifications only work when the device is not locked? If I lock my device and I get an email, it doesn't vibrate and show me the notification. Either that or notifications aren't consistently sent.
    - cmelbye 15y ago
      Check your Notification settings. Settings -> Notifications -> Mail. Make sure "View in Lock Screen" is enabled.
pkamb 15y ago
Is there anything preventing some random developer from releasing a native iOS GMail app? I basically just want an "Archive" button and for it to always be in-sync with the cloud. Does anything like this exist?
- umjames 15y ago
  There's http://www.usemailroom.com/ http://www.usemailroom.com/.
- rkudeshi 15y ago
  Since iOS 4 (I think), if you use Apple's Gmail preset in configuring email on your iPhone, it automatically changes the delete button to an archive button. You can also manually setup your Gmail as an IMAP account and configure the delete button to send messages to Gmail's archive folder (this is useful if you have added custom email addresses to send from in Gmail)
- ansy 15y ago
  The included iOS email client does what you want. If you configure as Exchange the emails are pushed to you instead of pulled. Use m.google.com as the Exchange server. Also, the trash icon doesn't actually delete anything. It sends the message to your archive. This is the preferred way because it is push and also syncs the contact list with Google. Alternatively, if you configure the included client as Gmail it will use an archive icon instead of the trash can, but it is not push enabled. You will have to pull every 15 minutes. You wouldn't get the contact syncing. You may need to recreate your email account to get the behavior you want if you you made it as IMAP before Exchange and Gmail were options.
gkoberger 15y ago
I'm in the minority, however I actually like it. It's not perfect, but I don't seem to find the fact that they're using UIWebView nearly as "unusable" as everyone else does. My only complaint is that the push notifications don't let you show a banner, and they don't seem to be showing up in the Notifications Center or Lock Screen. All that happens is I get a sound and a badge.

58 points by cleverjake 15y ago

Right now, using the built-in mail app on iOS I get email, calendar, and address book synchronization. The new Gmail app offers only email, right? Why should I use it instead then? Could someone explain that? Thanks!

cleverjake 15y ago
"Priority Inbox and one-click starring of messages. Other possibilities include some of the stuff Google is about to roll out for Gmail proper: like contact icons, better threading, and deep searching functionality. Maybe there will even be some Google+ integration, which Google is also hard at work on for Gmail." -- MG Sigler
pwthornton 15y ago
Search is the only reason to keep it around. It's a great way to search through your Gmail. The built-in mail app doesn't search that well, especially stuff on the server. Beyond that, I find the built-in mail app to be lightyears better than the Gmail app. I'll be using the built-in app as my main app, with the Gmail app on the side for certain searches. When Sparrow finally comes to iOS, I may switch to that. They get how to make a good Gmail app, unlike the people who make Gmail.
- smackfu 15y ago
  Server-side search doesn't work at all with my GMail, set up as an Exchange account on my iPhone. It's the main reason I need to use the web app today.
evandena 15y ago
I really want priority inbox and bulk actions.
iaskwhy 15y ago
One reason to use this instead of Mail.app is that Mail.app seems to not be working with Gmail for a lot of people, myself included.
- hollerith 15y ago
  When you set it up, did you choose Exchange Server (or some such) rather than Gmail like Google's own instructions tell you to?
  - iaskwhy 15y ago
    I followed Gmail's tutorial (which I cannot find right now) but I remember it was using Gmail and not Exchange. I believe my problem is related to the two steps authentication but there were so many other cases there and from the kind of people who would not now about 2 steps authentication.

rwc 15y ago

I'm disappointed Google didn't take advantage of their opportunity to go back to the drawing board on this one. The user experience of a web wrapper can't compare to a native app.

natrius 15y ago
The animations are choppy, but if the browser were more capable, I don't see what the barrier to a good user experience would be.

forbes 15y ago

I find the standard Mail app painfully slow over 3G for checking for mail. So far, the gmail app seems much, much faster. The UI will take some getting used to though.

ninjastar99 15y ago

Wow. Two weeks later and they STILL messed this up? I'm only getting sound / vibration notifications. Impressively bad. How many people are working on this project? Follow up question: how many people are working on testing this project?

DrHankPym 15y ago

I'd rather have a better Google Talk app for iOS.

inexplicable 15y ago
While I'm with you, I use https://imo.im/ https://imo.im/ on my iPad (no iPhone) and its been working pretty well so far.
larrywright 15y ago
Check out Verbs: http://verbs.im/ http://verbs.im/ - I've been using it for a little while now. I love it.

caillou 15y ago

I was really looking forward to using multiple accounts in this app. Unfortunately this is not supported. Yet?

dh0913 15y ago
Not that I could see. I installed it and looked for multiple accounts, but couldn't find anything.

inthewoods 15y ago

I can't get any notifications on the lock screen or via the pull-down....

weixiyen 15y ago

I get a blank loading screen for about 5 min, then some random sound on my phone. A lot of connection issues :( - sticking with the default mail app for now.

lparry 15y ago

Wow, I heard it was so bad that they pulled it, it must have really stank before cause its still terrible now. Horrid black colour scheme (aka 90's teenage webpage scheme), slow, unresponsive, menus flow past the edge of the screen. This doesn't really sell me if they're trying to show me what I'm missing by not using android.

joshbegley 15y ago

my main gripe with the built-in mail app is that it doesn't thread sent messages in the context of a conversation. also that you can't 'send as' all of the addresses in your gmail. was hoping they'd solve this with the gmail version...but yeah, still quite buggy.

zbowling 15y ago

Spoiler Alert: It sucks. It's a web view and it's an amazing hack to make a web view almost "feel" native but it fails. It doesn't fail nearly as hard as the Netflix app, but it's still not the greatest experience. If it wasn't for the fact I get push notifications I would probably uninstall it. When will people learn that using UIWebView's and faking the experience of native is only a 90% solution? Sure if gets you there quickly but it will cost you trying to hack around the bugs and edge cases to have an almost barely acceptable user experience (and most of those issues are often solved for you for free in the native toolkit). It's just generally a bad idea to write apps like this. Now when it comes to pure web apps, I hold out hope that we can have great experiences everywhere. I don't believe anything and everything needs an app (content, books, business websites, etc). That is were the mobile web fits in. But please don't try to use these kinds of frameworks wrapped in a UIWebView and try to ship it as a cough native cough app. This quote fits so well for these kinds of apps: “ The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time. ” - Tom Cargill

cmelbye 15y ago
If you use Google Sync and the native Mail client, you can get "push notifications" for your email too.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- blaenk 15y ago
  Is it just me, or do the notifications only work when the device is not locked? If I lock my device and I get an email, it doesn't vibrate and show me the notification. Either that or notifications aren't consistently sent.
  - cmelbye 15y ago
    Check your Notification settings. Settings -> Notifications -> Mail. Make sure "View in Lock Screen" is enabled.

pkamb 15y ago

Is there anything preventing some random developer from releasing a native iOS GMail app? I basically just want an "Archive" button and for it to always be in-sync with the cloud. Does anything like this exist?

umjames 15y ago
There's http://www.usemailroom.com/ http://www.usemailroom.com/.
rkudeshi 15y ago
Since iOS 4 (I think), if you use Apple's Gmail preset in configuring email on your iPhone, it automatically changes the delete button to an archive button. You can also manually setup your Gmail as an IMAP account and configure the delete button to send messages to Gmail's archive folder (this is useful if you have added custom email addresses to send from in Gmail)
ansy 15y ago
The included iOS email client does what you want. If you configure as Exchange the emails are pushed to you instead of pulled. Use m.google.com as the Exchange server. Also, the trash icon doesn't actually delete anything. It sends the message to your archive. This is the preferred way because it is push and also syncs the contact list with Google. Alternatively, if you configure the included client as Gmail it will use an archive icon instead of the trash can, but it is not push enabled. You will have to pull every 15 minutes. You wouldn't get the contact syncing. You may need to recreate your email account to get the behavior you want if you you made it as IMAP before Exchange and Gmail were options.

gkoberger 15y ago

I'm in the minority, however I actually like it. It's not perfect, but I don't seem to find the fact that they're using UIWebView nearly as "unusable" as everyone else does. My only complaint is that the push notifications don't let you show a banner, and they don't seem to be showing up in the Notifications Center or Lock Screen. All that happens is I get a sound and a badge.