
Inbox by Gmail: now in more places - blackskad
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2015/02/inbox-by-gmail-now-in-more-places.html
======
dimillian
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.

~~~
jedc
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-p...](http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/2014/12/02/the-super-magic-
productivity-button-in-the-new-google-inbox/)

~~~
MetaCosm
I have been using the star/archive/spam method for a long time now in regular
gmail. The inbox interface seems to slow down my flow, as it has little
inbetween steps I find irrelevant.

I zip through my email in gmail using keybindings, se/e/! respectively with
gmail set to go to next message automatically. Takes me a few seconds to go
through about 20 emails, then I circle back to the ones I starred.

Inbox looks better, but feels a bit worse for me. Also, the no apps support as
always is a downer, but us apps users are used to it.

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hobo_mark
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
Well they test it on the free users, and give the Apps users a more stable
version later.

~~~
buro9
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
Google Now works for Apps users. It just has a limited feature set from what I
gather, which is even weirder.

~~~
riyadparvez
Why is it weird? You can't simply mine the private data of paying customers
which is needed for Google Now.

~~~
blfr
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+).

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moskie
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...

~~~
twoodfin
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
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.

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

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nullrouted
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.

~~~
junto
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
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-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/y0tyqaualc7dpq7/Screenshot%202015-02-19%2011.15.30.jpg?dl=0)
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

------
bmurphy1976
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.

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bovermyer
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
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.

------
buckbova
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
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.

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ssijak
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.

------
wstrange
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
You could use the keyboard shortcut, #

I notice they haven't made these configurable yet - I was hard-wired to press
d!

------
spyckie2
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
And my Gmail experience improved substantially with the introduction of tabs
(Primary, Social, Updates..) so I did the same as you.

------
chambo622
This headline really got my hopes up that this was finally the announcement of
Inbox for Google Apps users...

------
owly
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.

------
TeMPOraL
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?

------
j2kun
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.

------
riquito
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."

------
quadrangle
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.

~~~
vikramhaer
As i'm not too familiar with email as a standard, could you elaborate on how
this undermines it?

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gegtik
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

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rs232
Is it still defaulting to "reply all"? That was a showstopper for me.

~~~
pssdbt
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'.

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

------
methou
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.

