5 ms·

This. You can disable all smart features (which includes things like mail categories, AI auto-complete, and most things that look at your emails). Gear -> All

• mrweasel 11mo ago
  How many would turn them on if they defaulted to "Off"? Probably not enough to justify the development cost.
  • kvirani 11mo ago
    True but that is a function of ignorance too. There are plenty of good features in Gmail that are off by default, like undo / delayed send and keyboard shortcuts.
    • mrweasel 11mo ago
      "Enable delay send - Allows you to undo sending emails for 5 minutes", I'd argue that a lot of people would enable that pretty fast. Keyboard shortcuts probably would work like I'd expect, people like me would go "Hell no, no keyboard shortcuts in browser application EVER", and power users would opt into that in an instant.
      • dexterdog 11mo ago
        Allow you to undo sending for 5 minutes means email delivery is delayed by 5 minutes.
        • kelnos 11mo ago
          It doesn't have to be 5 minutes. It could be 15 seconds. I've used that feature (in Fastmail), and find it very valuable.
          • golem14 11mo ago
            I'm confused. Doesn't gmail offer an 'undo' for send by default ? At least for the last 5 years ? It's in General settings "Undo Send" and can be set up to 30 seconds ?
            • Izkata 11mo ago
              And before that it was under the Labs experimental features, I think I enabled it in the late 2000s.
• pera 11mo ago
  I really wished they would also let you disable those very annoying modal popups announcing yet-another-chatbot-integration twice a week: My company is already paying for your product, just let me do my work ffs...
• echelon 11mo ago
  > You can disable all smart features For how long? You don't own the platform. Google PMs may decide to roll it out to everyone at some point to hit numbers.
  • ctoth 11mo ago
    And this is generically true and always has been about every aspect of GMail? What would you suggest people do. Self-host? I'm just trying to understand why you posted this. It's generically true. Any company can change anything at any point. May as well just pack it up boys.
    • hdjrudni 11mo ago
      > I'm just trying to understand why you posted this. It's generically true. Any company can change anything at any point. May as well just pack it up boys. Yes, any SaaS can change any feature at any time. Some companies have different motives though. We're not paying for GMail. When customers pay a monthly subscription and can cancel at any time, you usually want to keep them happy. The internal motives are also different. Are employees promoted for just launching stuff? Are they running out of helpful features to launch?
    • skywhopper 11mo ago
      The point is to say that it’s bad and Google specifically can’t be trusted. It’s good to express disapproval of unethical business practices.
    • A_D_E_P_T 11mo ago
      You can't self-host these days -- your emails will get stuck in every kind of spam filter there is, and you'll always have cause to wonder if your emails are received by their intended recipients, or lost to the abyss. You've got to use either Gmail, Microsoft, Protonmail, etc. I don't love them, but Proton is probably the best of a bad bunch.
      • blibble 11mo ago
        > You can't self-host these days -- your emails will get stuck in every kind of spam filter there is, and you'll always have cause to wonder if your emails are received by their intended recipients, or lost to the abyss. this is not true unless you end up on an IP previously abused if you don't want to take on the risk at all, there's email services for pennies / thousand emails