

Ask HN: Features you'd like to see in Gmail? - fjabre

Hi all,<p>I'm working on a mail client project related to Gmail and I'd love your input.<p>The question I'm asking is this:<p>Is there any feature you'd like to see in Gmail that is currently lacking or absent all together? The question probably applies to email clients in general as well.<p>Thanks
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mooism2
I want to be able to write an e-mail and then schedule it to be sent at a
later time of my choosing (e.g. 9am the next day, if I don't want to admit I'm
up in the middle of the night).

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fjabre
Yeah I thought about this a lot as well.. I wonder how much demand there is
for something like this? I've definitely had a use for it myself on occasion.

~~~
mooism2
When I last looked on the forums, there was someone new asking for it several
times a week. But Google seem determined not to implement this feature. I can
see that it might be rather complex to implement.

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sz
1\. A refresh button that does a POP fetch from other accounts. Currently I
have to go to Settings > Accounts and then click fetch, and if I don't do this
on an active email thread things get messy with replies to outdated messages.

2\. A small one-click popup note feature. When I need to jot down something
quick I write it as a new message and save it as a draft to come back to
later. Or if I need to upload a document to access from a different computer
I'll do that in an email draft as well. It would be nice to keep that kind of
thing separate from actual email but close enough to be just as convenient.

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dwwoelfel
_A refresh button that does a POP fetch from other accounts._

You can get this feature by enabling "refresh POP accounts" in labs. Google
rolled it out in March: [http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-in-labs-
refresh-po...](http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-in-labs-refresh-pop-
accounts.html)

~~~
sz
Awesome, thanks!

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vdm
I want to Bounce/Redirect (as in Thunderbird and Mail.app) a full email
(including all original headers, attachments) to another email address.
Without changing the From: header.

This would be useful for sharing an email on an intranet website, or Highrise.
I would delete the email from gmail after I confirm that its available where
my colleagues can get at it.

This is a lot better than forwarding to n colleagues and creating n
potentially conflicting copies and versions of the document.

<http://mailredirect.mozdev.org/>

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fjabre
Great. We have a similar concept already in there for that. Good to know there
is some demand for it.

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anigbrowl
Autorules.

If I sign up for a new service or website or whatever, I often get a slew of
mail messages. I can easily label these or move them to a folder, but I
frequently forget to create a rule to label them automatically.

So if I get 3 mails from a new source, highlight them all and label them as
(something), I wish gmail would ask me if I want to treat all mail from xxx
that way in future.

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shrikant
Doesn;t this already kinda exist in the "Filter Messages Like This" option?

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anigbrowl
_but I frequently forget to create a rule to label them automatically._

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jwegan
Delay actually sending a email by a few minutes so you have a chance to go
back and edit it or 'unsend' if you need to. (And have a method to force it to
send immediately if you're sure you won't want to edit it).

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anigbrowl
Already exists, look in your 'labs' tab on the settings page.

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jwegan
Ya i have that enabled, but it only works for a few seconds. Also if I click
another link after clicking send (which I usually do, I usually go to inbox) I
lose the chance to edit it. I think it would be useful to have the ability to
edit the email for a few minutes after you send most times I don't realize
immediately there is a change I want to make, but I usually do realize it
within 2 minutes.

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anigbrowl
Fair enough! I've just gotten used to seeing the Undo link in gmail...but I've
never actually had to use it.

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portman
The ability to apply a label or a star to a particular EMAIL, not the entire
thread.

Use cases: \- You send out an email to a large-ish group asking for their
opinion, and want to categorize the responses. \- You have a long thread
discussing social plans, and partway through the thread, somebody includes the
address, and you want to star that message

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geocar
I have a similar use case, but a different solution: The ability to create a
followup link to a particular message (optionally: an entire conversation, or
label).

I'd want to push a button on a message (or on the thread) labelled "follow up"
and get a new message that I can edit, that contains a link in it to wherever
I was. This is an operation like reply or forward, except it's always to me
(and additionally, perhaps, Cc'd to someone else)

Followup messages go into a special "Follow Up" folder. The annotation can be
edited and amended as needed. If I Cc it to someone else, I'd like it if they
could edit that followup annotation with me, perhaps using Google Docs,

Ideally, I would be able to enter a date/time for a reminder and have that
added to by Google calendar.

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garply
Ironically, better search. Gmail search is nowhere near as intelligent (or as
permissive of "fuzzier" queries) as Google itself.

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rmc
Make it Open Source. Why should I use a GMail clone that is just like gmail,
but doesn't have as large a company backing it? Make it open source, and I'll
install and use it on my system. That is what can differentiate you from
Gmail.

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JimmyL
Advanced filtering - you can fake it now by putting something like _joe) AND
(subject:cars OR subject:boats_ in the filter box, but I'd like a more user-
friendly way to do it.

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davidcuddeback
PGP support in Gmail would be great.

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devinj
lynx/w3m/etc. support. I'm told it used to work, but when faced with a
situation where I needed to check my mail and only had a terminal, I couldn't
get it to. Which is a shame, I had to run across the block to a library.

