12 ms·

Inbox by Gmail: now in more places

79 points by blackskad 12y ago

rs232 12y ago
Is it still defaulting to "reply all"? That was a showstopper for me.
- mipapage 12y ago
  Yes, but you can edit the recipient list.
- pssdbt 12y ago
  That almost bit me the first time. I think it may have changed a little at least though. I hit 'r' to reply and just tried it on a thread and noticed it only had the sender in the recipients field. Same if you click on the little reply icon to the right. The default if you click in the field does as labeled though, 'Reply to all'.
- _lce0 12y ago
  actually that's something valuable! However I think they should make that configurable.
hobo_mark 12y ago
It still strikes me how Google Apps users, who actually pay for GMail & Co., are always the last ones to get the new stuff.
- CSDude 12y ago
  Well they test it on the free users, and give the Apps users a more stable version later.
  - buro9 12y ago
    Some things have just never arrived for paying customers. Such as Google Now for Apps users, which would make more sense for things like travel reminders as most of my travel is business related.
    - blfr 12y ago
      Google Now works for Apps users. It just has a limited feature set from what I gather, which is even weirder.
      - riyadparvez 12y ago
        Why is it weird? You can't simply mine the private data of paying customers which is needed for Google Now.
        blfr 12y ago
        Why not? They could just make it opt-in through the admin console like almost everything else that companies might not need/want (Youtube, G+).
  - acdha 12y ago
    They already allow Google Apps admins to control whether Google Labs or experiments are available, not to mention specific controls about the various other apps. This could be handled exactly the same way to allow domain admins to control whether users can use Inbox.
  - frogpelt 12y ago
    This is opposite from the way car companies do it. They test new ideas and features on the luxury brands and then roll them out to the mass market brands later at lower prices.
- eli 12y ago
  Isn't there a checkbox in the Apps admin to opt in to get features earlier?
  - Someone1234 12y ago
    Yes, however that is just getting Google App features earlier. So if a product isn't in the GApps pipeline you won't get it, opt in or not.
    - Navarr 12y ago
      Inbox has declared since day 1 they plan to come to GApps. No idea what the hold up is. They dodged my question asking about the challenges during the AMA. (I think they chose not to answer it at all)
- jakebasile 12y ago
  This is a source of frustration for me. I like the idea of Google Now, but as an Apps user, it is almost worthless as you cannot use Gmail cards. Gmail cards are the source of interesting things like flight status, package tracking, etc. Even more, I routinely have issues where upcoming appointments don't show up although I do not know if that is caused by being an Apps user. I truly don't get the delay on both Inbox and Now - are the backend Gmail systems completely different? If it's just a worry that "enterprise won't like it," why not allow it to be turned on/off from the Admin console like so many other things?
  - kyrra 12y ago
    My guess: data for their Apps customers are backed by completely different set of servers/infrastructure. This probably allows them to tell large potential customers that if GMail proper is ever hacked, their data would be safe (as it's part of some different system). It may also give them extra time to pen test new systems to make sure it isn't hackable before deploying it to the people that do trust it with their company's email.
    - jakebasile 12y ago
      That's feasible. It still strikes me as odd that even if Apps Gmail is indeed on different infrastructure that it would have a completely different API. All other Gmail clients (web,app,etc) work on Apps Gmail, in addition to vanilla IMAP. I'd feel a lot better if they'd just explain what the hold up was, or if they don't plan on expanding to Apps customers. I'd be disappointed but at least I wouldn't be completely in the dark.
      - kuschku 12y ago
        Apps Gmail is different, cause you can even get it self-hosted. Several larger companies actually use it self-hosted in-house without running it through google.
- mikecb 12y ago
  Sundar says this is rolling out: https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/568479868427632640 https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/568479868427632640
bovermyer 12y ago
Oh, good. Now I can stop using the old interface in Firefox. That makes me happy; Inbox works with my brain a lot better.
- Aloisius 12y ago
  Actually even before this announcement it worked fine in Firefox - you just had to change your user agent (or install one of the numerous extensions). Google said it was because it was "slow" under Firefox, but since I never noticed a bug or any slowness on my two year old Macbook Air, it looked more like they just wanted to push Chrome to me.
FreakyT 12y ago
Glad to see Safari and Firefox are now supported! The whole "Chrome only" thing was a bit of an initial disappointment.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- ArekDymalski 12y ago
  > every other non-gmail google product which has done invitations has died Ingress haven't died yet.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - jedc 12y ago
      It's over a year old; longer if you include the beta release: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_%28game%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_%28game%29
    - classicsnoot 12y ago
      Beta in '12, iOS in '14. Apps can exist before you become personally aware.
    - soylentcola 12y ago
      Been playing it for a couple of years now. Not sure how much of that was beta but it's definitely older than 6 months.
- M4v3R 12y ago
  Gmail was invite only at the start.
- 1123581321 12y ago
  I didn't have an issue with it because you could (and still can) email inbox@google.com and automatically get one. If a software company wants to test a new product with a subsection of its users, freely available invitations are the fairest way because the users most interested in the product seek out the invitations. The alternative is to rollout by IP address or some other system that shuts out willing participants. Perhaps a better system would be more like Blizzard's, which has you opt-in to all betas in your profile, then does a lottery among those users, but Blizzard uses its betas as marketing differently than Google and the products have completely different business models.
moskie 12y ago
I still prefer Priority Inbox that's been around a few years now. I gave Inbox a shot, and it's very pretty, but I ultimately didn't find it as useful. Maybe I need to find the right settings to get Inbox to work the way I want, but... I'd be just as happy to not do that and stick with Priority Inbox. What I like about Priority Inbox is that it shows me important emails, regardless of the type ("type" meaning the different categories that Inbox has). I.e., I don't generally care about "Promos" or "Updates," but there are a select few within them that I do care about. Priority Inbox figures that out, and promotes those particular ones. Inbox just groups them all together, so to see the one "Update" that I care about, I'd have to sift through that whole category to see it. Gmail occasionally tries to convince me to switch to Inbox. I hope it's not the case that we'll all eventually be forced to switch...
- kyrra 12y ago
  Watching a talk from one of the guys that worked on Inbox, they built a lot of what they did on the power of what GMail already has. But their goal was to create a common flow that would handle most people's use-case. From what I've seen of inbox right now, there isn't a lot you can do to customize it. So until they start porting over features from GMail, I'd probably just stick with Priority Inbox if you like it's flow. For me, Inbox solves my use-case for my personal email account. I never really put much time into organizing my gmail account to minimize noise, so Inbox was a good answer for me. Now, if Inbox was available for my work account I doubt I'd use it. I have carefully crafted lots of labels and filters to make Gmail an excellent solution for work, it just took more time to setup and maintain then what Inbox does for my personal email.
- twoodfin 12y ago
  Agree completely with this. I love the "mark and sweep" aspect of Inbox, but after a couple of months with it, I think I have to go back to the old interface. Inbox with a "Priority" bundle would be perfect.
  - moskie 12y ago
    What's weird is that if you try to create a label called "Important" in Inbox, it will say it already exists. Yet it doesn't show that label as an option when creating bundles. It's like they went out of their way to prevent you from doing exactly what you're suggesting.
nullrouted 12y ago
I tried Inbox when it first started and I can say I pretty much hate it. It seems like it is a change just for changes sake. It doesn't seem to make me more productive in my inbox, only more frustrated that I can't seem to find the things I want. Everything seems jumbled and just is a mess. If they make it the default I can see myself actually going back to a desktop client and using something else for a mobile client.
- LiweiZ 12y ago
  I think machines still have some distance to go to achieve more usable guess-what-user-want. Many ideas have been tried, but I only see limited success in a few use cases.
- wyldfire 12y ago
  I feel similarly. I do think that there are some folks for whom this interface makes sense, though.
- junto 12y ago
  I had the opposite experience. I managed to go through my entire 5 years worth of old emails and get down to inbox zero. I love the snooze and pin features. The Android app is awesome. Swip to archive is such a nice way to deal with email, which (in my case) is 90% scan and bin. The web app isn't so awesome, mainly because of the lack of gestures. Reminders added in Google Now show up in Inbox as well so I can be walking down the road and remember I need to do something tomorrow, and just add it to Google Now just by talking into my phone. 9 times out of ten I don't even have to spell correct the narrated text. Inbox was the one single reason for me not dumping Gmail for Fastmail, which I was planning to do for privacy reasons.
  - splintercell 12y ago
    I LOVED Inbox when it first came down, but earlier this week I switched back to gmail. - I love the snooze and remind me later feature, but I absolutely hate their touchpad/scroll support, I don't understand how mails get automatically marked done when I am just trying to read them. - The app is super heavy for my 2GB RAM Macbook Air(I have one for lightweight surfing at home), it slows down everything. - The 3 clicks I have to do in order to read a single mail eventually got to me. Take for instance, imagine if I got a new mail, how many clicks do I have to do in order to read it: https://www.dropbox.com/s/y0tyqaualc7dpq7/Screenshot%202015-02-19%2011.15.30.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/y0tyqaualc7dpq7/Screenshot%202015-... Inbox's answer is 2 clicks, one for expanding the 'finance' section and second to open that mail. Isn't my intent obvious when I click on a folder that I wanna read that lone mail when I click on it? After clicking twice for 30 something mails a day, it got annoying. - Inbox doesn't scan my hangout messages whenever I use its search. I search my hangout messages a lot, that means I return back to gmail. I assume they will add this functionality in future. - The reply mess. If you are responding to an email, it has a decent inline responding ability, but the moment you stop responding or move away, you can't come back to the inline reply, you HAVE to edit that response outside of that experience. I see no reason why that should be the case. - My corporate gmail accounts don't support inbox, so it ends up me having a weird experience of constantly using gmail and inbox both
dimillian 12y ago
This is the best way to manage your mail ever. I get a good amount of mail everyday, I use Inbox since day 1, and this is just too good. I can quickly scan a tag/inbox, and if I doesn't see anything relevant, just click on done, goodbye. See something you wants to do later? Just pin it. It'll stay on top. Everyone should give it a try. The product is very well done, and if you care enough about your mail to try new things on your workflow, just use it, you'll never come back.
- Mahn 12y ago
  Personally I'd love to try it, but all my work email is on Google Apps, not GMail, so no dice. I wish they had prioritized this because for me Inbox makes no sense for a low volume personal email account, which is what I use GMail for.
  - slewis 12y ago
    You can forward the work email to a regular gmail account (and set up the reply from feature so you can reply from yor work email address).
    - TomNomNom 12y ago
      In some places that's a good way to get fired. I get a lot of sensitive information in my work email; if I forwarded it all to a second account where my employer couldn't enforce things like two-factor auth I'd be in a lot of trouble.
- jedc 12y ago
  Completely agree. I wrote a blog post about it a while back [0], but to me the killer feature is being able to pin items as to-dos (or create new todo's unassociated with an email), and then flip the switch so that you ONLY see these pinned items. I love it because I can only look at my pinned items and focus on knocking a few out at a time, and only occasionally flipping back to the regular inbox view. (Which I find distracting when I need to focus.) [0] - http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/2014/12/02/the-super-magic-productivity-button-in-the-new-google-inbox/ http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/2014/12/02/the-super-magic-p...
ssijak 12y ago
When is it coming to the google apps? I recently switched my main email to the google apps and was excited for google inbox, but I still can not use it because it is disabled for us.
bmurphy1976 12y ago
I really like the Inbox app. It's email workflow directly matches how I've managed my email for the longest time. That said, it's missing one big important feature for a lot of us power users: a unified inbox. I get a lot of email through the day and I need to get through it quickly. I also have 4 active email accounts. Having to constantly juggle the UI to switch between these accounts is a productivity killer and annoyance. I get it, some people don't want and/or need the unified inbox and it can be dangerous in the wrong hands. I'm not that person. Dropbox's Mailbox app is a nice alternative (it's what I currently use). I feel the Inbox app is better constructed, but Mailbox has the features I need today and it works.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
Inbox is amazing. However, at some point the Android app started constantly crashing (even while being in the background) and now I have it crash every 30 seconds and no clue what's going on. Anyone else seen similar behaviour?
wstrange 12y ago
I really like inbox, but the lack of a prominent delete button annoys me to no end. Yes, I know I can bundle up mail and then delete the batch - but I want a one click way of deleting a message that I know I will never read again (promo emails for example)
- rikkus 12y ago
  You could use the keyboard shortcut, # I notice they haven't made these configurable yet - I was hard-wired to press d!
dcustodio 12y ago
Why do I have to download an app if I just want to use it in the browser?
buckbova 12y ago
I like Inbox, but I need a trash can shortcut. I don't want to archive junk mail. I guess it's only one extra click for the trash. Google apparently wants you to save everything.
- astrocat 12y ago
  I completely agree. I'd guess at least 50% of my email is deleted immediately after reading and not because it's unwanted, but because it holds no long-term value. Inbox assumes that all email is better archived than deleted which is simply not the case.
riquito 12y ago
Can you activate the web interface without having an android/iPhone smartphone? "Download Inbox on your phone to activate your account before using Inbox on the web."
j2kun 12y ago
Has anyone compared Inbox by Gmail with Mailbox by Dropbox? They seem to fill similar roles, and I've been happily using Mailbox for a few weeks, but I haven't seen a detailed comparison.
methou 12y ago
I tried Inbox when they firstly released, soon as I found its essentially the same thing as Mailbox.app, I switched back to that. Wait.. then M$ re-branded outlook on iOS, simply outruns both Inbox and Mailbox.
chambo622 12y ago
This headline really got my hopes up that this was finally the announcement of Inbox for Google Apps users...
spyckie2 12y ago
I tried Inbox, really tried to love it, eventually switched back. It's something about how it sorts or arranges your mail in non-chronological order that really messes with my way of finding things. Also only being able to see 7 emails on the screen is a huge issue - if I get 20+ emails, I'm not able to glance through all of them to get a sense of how much work I have to do that day. The end result is that I felt very uncomfortable and insecure using it, even though my brain told me that I loved it (because of the nice fast UI).
- swah 12y ago
  And my Gmail experience improved substantially with the introduction of tabs (Primary, Social, Updates..) so I did the same as you.
gegtik 12y ago
I like inbox, on my phone. However, on a PC, I like the ability to use gmail's keyboard shortcuts etc. Inbox seems poorly designed for use as a desktop interface
quadrangle 12y ago
Wow, no reply yet points out that this is part of the whole effort to undermine one of our few open standards (email) and eventually turn everything into siloed walled-garden platforms. Once Google Inbox is used widely, people will find it that much harder to use other e-mail systems. I can't seem to find it now, but I read a wonderful article about how Facebook messaging and all sorts of other silos are about these platforms controlling everything and Google wishes they could have that same sort of control and push everything into their own proprietary messaging, although this fragmentation is obviously destructive for the internet and society overall.
- multiplegeorges 12y ago
  How is that different than Gmail, or even Hotmail, before this?
- vikramhaer 12y ago
  As i'm not too familiar with email as a standard, could you elaborate on how this undermines it?
owly 12y ago
Tried Inbox for week and felt like it was introducing more clutter than less! Switched back to Mailbox and the Mailbox for Mac beta and have no complaints, I like the simple clean interface and functionality. Just wish they made a darker theme.

79 points by blackskad 12y ago

rs232 12y ago

Is it still defaulting to "reply all"? That was a showstopper for me.

mipapage 12y ago
Yes, but you can edit the recipient list.
pssdbt 12y ago
That almost bit me the first time. I think it may have changed a little at least though. I hit 'r' to reply and just tried it on a thread and noticed it only had the sender in the recipients field. Same if you click on the little reply icon to the right. The default if you click in the field does as labeled though, 'Reply to all'.
_lce0 12y ago
actually that's something valuable! However I think they should make that configurable.

hobo_mark 12y ago

It still strikes me how Google Apps users, who actually pay for GMail & Co., are always the last ones to get the new stuff.

CSDude 12y ago
Well they test it on the free users, and give the Apps users a more stable version later.
- buro9 12y ago
  Some things have just never arrived for paying customers. Such as Google Now for Apps users, which would make more sense for things like travel reminders as most of my travel is business related.
  - blfr 12y ago
    Google Now works for Apps users. It just has a limited feature set from what I gather, which is even weirder.
    - riyadparvez 12y ago
      Why is it weird? You can't simply mine the private data of paying customers which is needed for Google Now.
      - blfr 12y ago
        Why not? They could just make it opt-in through the admin console like almost everything else that companies might not need/want (Youtube, G+).
- acdha 12y ago
  They already allow Google Apps admins to control whether Google Labs or experiments are available, not to mention specific controls about the various other apps. This could be handled exactly the same way to allow domain admins to control whether users can use Inbox.
- frogpelt 12y ago
  This is opposite from the way car companies do it. They test new ideas and features on the luxury brands and then roll them out to the mass market brands later at lower prices.
eli 12y ago
Isn't there a checkbox in the Apps admin to opt in to get features earlier?
- Someone1234 12y ago
  Yes, however that is just getting Google App features earlier. So if a product isn't in the GApps pipeline you won't get it, opt in or not.
  - Navarr 12y ago
    Inbox has declared since day 1 they plan to come to GApps. No idea what the hold up is. They dodged my question asking about the challenges during the AMA. (I think they chose not to answer it at all)
jakebasile 12y ago
This is a source of frustration for me. I like the idea of Google Now, but as an Apps user, it is almost worthless as you cannot use Gmail cards. Gmail cards are the source of interesting things like flight status, package tracking, etc. Even more, I routinely have issues where upcoming appointments don't show up although I do not know if that is caused by being an Apps user. I truly don't get the delay on both Inbox and Now - are the backend Gmail systems completely different? If it's just a worry that "enterprise won't like it," why not allow it to be turned on/off from the Admin console like so many other things?
- kyrra 12y ago
  My guess: data for their Apps customers are backed by completely different set of servers/infrastructure. This probably allows them to tell large potential customers that if GMail proper is ever hacked, their data would be safe (as it's part of some different system). It may also give them extra time to pen test new systems to make sure it isn't hackable before deploying it to the people that do trust it with their company's email.
  - jakebasile 12y ago
    That's feasible. It still strikes me as odd that even if Apps Gmail is indeed on different infrastructure that it would have a completely different API. All other Gmail clients (web,app,etc) work on Apps Gmail, in addition to vanilla IMAP. I'd feel a lot better if they'd just explain what the hold up was, or if they don't plan on expanding to Apps customers. I'd be disappointed but at least I wouldn't be completely in the dark.
    - kuschku 12y ago
      Apps Gmail is different, cause you can even get it self-hosted. Several larger companies actually use it self-hosted in-house without running it through google.
mikecb 12y ago
Sundar says this is rolling out: https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/568479868427632640 https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/568479868427632640

bovermyer 12y ago

Oh, good. Now I can stop using the old interface in Firefox. That makes me happy; Inbox works with my brain a lot better.

Aloisius 12y ago
Actually even before this announcement it worked fine in Firefox - you just had to change your user agent (or install one of the numerous extensions). Google said it was because it was "slow" under Firefox, but since I never noticed a bug or any slowness on my two year old Macbook Air, it looked more like they just wanted to push Chrome to me.

FreakyT 12y ago

Glad to see Safari and Firefox are now supported! The whole "Chrome only" thing was a bit of an initial disappointment.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

ArekDymalski 12y ago
> every other non-gmail google product which has done invitations has died Ingress haven't died yet.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - jedc 12y ago
    It's over a year old; longer if you include the beta release: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_%28game%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_%28game%29
  - classicsnoot 12y ago
    Beta in '12, iOS in '14. Apps can exist before you become personally aware.
  - soylentcola 12y ago
    Been playing it for a couple of years now. Not sure how much of that was beta but it's definitely older than 6 months.
M4v3R 12y ago
Gmail was invite only at the start.
1123581321 12y ago
I didn't have an issue with it because you could (and still can) email inbox@google.com and automatically get one. If a software company wants to test a new product with a subsection of its users, freely available invitations are the fairest way because the users most interested in the product seek out the invitations. The alternative is to rollout by IP address or some other system that shuts out willing participants. Perhaps a better system would be more like Blizzard's, which has you opt-in to all betas in your profile, then does a lottery among those users, but Blizzard uses its betas as marketing differently than Google and the products have completely different business models.

moskie 12y ago

I still prefer Priority Inbox that's been around a few years now. I gave Inbox a shot, and it's very pretty, but I ultimately didn't find it as useful. Maybe I need to find the right settings to get Inbox to work the way I want, but... I'd be just as happy to not do that and stick with Priority Inbox. What I like about Priority Inbox is that it shows me important emails, regardless of the type ("type" meaning the different categories that Inbox has). I.e., I don't generally care about "Promos" or "Updates," but there are a select few within them that I do care about. Priority Inbox figures that out, and promotes those particular ones. Inbox just groups them all together, so to see the one "Update" that I care about, I'd have to sift through that whole category to see it. Gmail occasionally tries to convince me to switch to Inbox. I hope it's not the case that we'll all eventually be forced to switch...

kyrra 12y ago
Watching a talk from one of the guys that worked on Inbox, they built a lot of what they did on the power of what GMail already has. But their goal was to create a common flow that would handle most people's use-case. From what I've seen of inbox right now, there isn't a lot you can do to customize it. So until they start porting over features from GMail, I'd probably just stick with Priority Inbox if you like it's flow. For me, Inbox solves my use-case for my personal email account. I never really put much time into organizing my gmail account to minimize noise, so Inbox was a good answer for me. Now, if Inbox was available for my work account I doubt I'd use it. I have carefully crafted lots of labels and filters to make Gmail an excellent solution for work, it just took more time to setup and maintain then what Inbox does for my personal email.
twoodfin 12y ago
Agree completely with this. I love the "mark and sweep" aspect of Inbox, but after a couple of months with it, I think I have to go back to the old interface. Inbox with a "Priority" bundle would be perfect.
- moskie 12y ago
  What's weird is that if you try to create a label called "Important" in Inbox, it will say it already exists. Yet it doesn't show that label as an option when creating bundles. It's like they went out of their way to prevent you from doing exactly what you're suggesting.

nullrouted 12y ago

I tried Inbox when it first started and I can say I pretty much hate it. It seems like it is a change just for changes sake. It doesn't seem to make me more productive in my inbox, only more frustrated that I can't seem to find the things I want. Everything seems jumbled and just is a mess. If they make it the default I can see myself actually going back to a desktop client and using something else for a mobile client.

LiweiZ 12y ago
I think machines still have some distance to go to achieve more usable guess-what-user-want. Many ideas have been tried, but I only see limited success in a few use cases.
wyldfire 12y ago
I feel similarly. I do think that there are some folks for whom this interface makes sense, though.
junto 12y ago
I had the opposite experience. I managed to go through my entire 5 years worth of old emails and get down to inbox zero. I love the snooze and pin features. The Android app is awesome. Swip to archive is such a nice way to deal with email, which (in my case) is 90% scan and bin. The web app isn't so awesome, mainly because of the lack of gestures. Reminders added in Google Now show up in Inbox as well so I can be walking down the road and remember I need to do something tomorrow, and just add it to Google Now just by talking into my phone. 9 times out of ten I don't even have to spell correct the narrated text. Inbox was the one single reason for me not dumping Gmail for Fastmail, which I was planning to do for privacy reasons.
- splintercell 12y ago
  I LOVED Inbox when it first came down, but earlier this week I switched back to gmail. - I love the snooze and remind me later feature, but I absolutely hate their touchpad/scroll support, I don't understand how mails get automatically marked done when I am just trying to read them. - The app is super heavy for my 2GB RAM Macbook Air(I have one for lightweight surfing at home), it slows down everything. - The 3 clicks I have to do in order to read a single mail eventually got to me. Take for instance, imagine if I got a new mail, how many clicks do I have to do in order to read it: https://www.dropbox.com/s/y0tyqaualc7dpq7/Screenshot%202015-02-19%2011.15.30.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/y0tyqaualc7dpq7/Screenshot%202015-... Inbox's answer is 2 clicks, one for expanding the 'finance' section and second to open that mail. Isn't my intent obvious when I click on a folder that I wanna read that lone mail when I click on it? After clicking twice for 30 something mails a day, it got annoying. - Inbox doesn't scan my hangout messages whenever I use its search. I search my hangout messages a lot, that means I return back to gmail. I assume they will add this functionality in future. - The reply mess. If you are responding to an email, it has a decent inline responding ability, but the moment you stop responding or move away, you can't come back to the inline reply, you HAVE to edit that response outside of that experience. I see no reason why that should be the case. - My corporate gmail accounts don't support inbox, so it ends up me having a weird experience of constantly using gmail and inbox both

dimillian 12y ago

This is the best way to manage your mail ever. I get a good amount of mail everyday, I use Inbox since day 1, and this is just too good. I can quickly scan a tag/inbox, and if I doesn't see anything relevant, just click on done, goodbye. See something you wants to do later? Just pin it. It'll stay on top. Everyone should give it a try. The product is very well done, and if you care enough about your mail to try new things on your workflow, just use it, you'll never come back.

Mahn 12y ago
Personally I'd love to try it, but all my work email is on Google Apps, not GMail, so no dice. I wish they had prioritized this because for me Inbox makes no sense for a low volume personal email account, which is what I use GMail for.
- slewis 12y ago
  You can forward the work email to a regular gmail account (and set up the reply from feature so you can reply from yor work email address).
  - TomNomNom 12y ago
    In some places that's a good way to get fired. I get a lot of sensitive information in my work email; if I forwarded it all to a second account where my employer couldn't enforce things like two-factor auth I'd be in a lot of trouble.
jedc 12y ago
Completely agree. I wrote a blog post about it a while back [0], but to me the killer feature is being able to pin items as to-dos (or create new todo's unassociated with an email), and then flip the switch so that you ONLY see these pinned items. I love it because I can only look at my pinned items and focus on knocking a few out at a time, and only occasionally flipping back to the regular inbox view. (Which I find distracting when I need to focus.) [0] - http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/2014/12/02/the-super-magic-productivity-button-in-the-new-google-inbox/ http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/2014/12/02/the-super-magic-p...

ssijak 12y ago

When is it coming to the google apps? I recently switched my main email to the google apps and was excited for google inbox, but I still can not use it because it is disabled for us.

bmurphy1976 12y ago

I really like the Inbox app. It's email workflow directly matches how I've managed my email for the longest time. That said, it's missing one big important feature for a lot of us power users: a unified inbox. I get a lot of email through the day and I need to get through it quickly. I also have 4 active email accounts. Having to constantly juggle the UI to switch between these accounts is a productivity killer and annoyance. I get it, some people don't want and/or need the unified inbox and it can be dangerous in the wrong hands. I'm not that person. Dropbox's Mailbox app is a nice alternative (it's what I currently use). I feel the Inbox app is better constructed, but Mailbox has the features I need today and it works.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

Inbox is amazing. However, at some point the Android app started constantly crashing (even while being in the background) and now I have it crash every 30 seconds and no clue what's going on. Anyone else seen similar behaviour?

wstrange 12y ago

I really like inbox, but the lack of a prominent delete button annoys me to no end. Yes, I know I can bundle up mail and then delete the batch - but I want a one click way of deleting a message that I know I will never read again (promo emails for example)

rikkus 12y ago
You could use the keyboard shortcut, # I notice they haven't made these configurable yet - I was hard-wired to press d!

dcustodio 12y ago

Why do I have to download an app if I just want to use it in the browser?

buckbova 12y ago

I like Inbox, but I need a trash can shortcut. I don't want to archive junk mail. I guess it's only one extra click for the trash. Google apparently wants you to save everything.

astrocat 12y ago
I completely agree. I'd guess at least 50% of my email is deleted immediately after reading and not because it's unwanted, but because it holds no long-term value. Inbox assumes that all email is better archived than deleted which is simply not the case.

riquito 12y ago

Can you activate the web interface without having an android/iPhone smartphone? "Download Inbox on your phone to activate your account before using Inbox on the web."

j2kun 12y ago

Has anyone compared Inbox by Gmail with Mailbox by Dropbox? They seem to fill similar roles, and I've been happily using Mailbox for a few weeks, but I haven't seen a detailed comparison.

methou 12y ago

I tried Inbox when they firstly released, soon as I found its essentially the same thing as Mailbox.app, I switched back to that. Wait.. then M$ re-branded outlook on iOS, simply outruns both Inbox and Mailbox.

chambo622 12y ago

This headline really got my hopes up that this was finally the announcement of Inbox for Google Apps users...

spyckie2 12y ago

I tried Inbox, really tried to love it, eventually switched back. It's something about how it sorts or arranges your mail in non-chronological order that really messes with my way of finding things. Also only being able to see 7 emails on the screen is a huge issue - if I get 20+ emails, I'm not able to glance through all of them to get a sense of how much work I have to do that day. The end result is that I felt very uncomfortable and insecure using it, even though my brain told me that I loved it (because of the nice fast UI).

swah 12y ago
And my Gmail experience improved substantially with the introduction of tabs (Primary, Social, Updates..) so I did the same as you.

gegtik 12y ago

I like inbox, on my phone. However, on a PC, I like the ability to use gmail's keyboard shortcuts etc. Inbox seems poorly designed for use as a desktop interface

quadrangle 12y ago

Wow, no reply yet points out that this is part of the whole effort to undermine one of our few open standards (email) and eventually turn everything into siloed walled-garden platforms. Once Google Inbox is used widely, people will find it that much harder to use other e-mail systems. I can't seem to find it now, but I read a wonderful article about how Facebook messaging and all sorts of other silos are about these platforms controlling everything and Google wishes they could have that same sort of control and push everything into their own proprietary messaging, although this fragmentation is obviously destructive for the internet and society overall.

multiplegeorges 12y ago
How is that different than Gmail, or even Hotmail, before this?
vikramhaer 12y ago
As i'm not too familiar with email as a standard, could you elaborate on how this undermines it?

owly 12y ago

Tried Inbox for week and felt like it was introducing more clutter than less! Switched back to Mailbox and the Mailbox for Mac beta and have no complaints, I like the simple clean interface and functionality. Just wish they made a darker theme.