
Show HN: Signal – Edit emails in your Gmail inbox - gsundeep
https://trysignal.com
======
drags
Why does it need to access my data on all websites? Shouldn't it only need
access to mail.google.com?

Same question for the tabs and browsing activity permission.

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Tyrant505
This turns me off to almost every extension I am curious in trying out.

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kartikt
We just updated the extension and fixed those permissions. The changes should
take place in the next hour!

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state
Four minutes between the post below and this. Nice work!

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aroman
This is a fantastic concept, but I will never use it because I don't use
Chrome and I don't like the idea of my inbox being different on each device I
use.

I'll just wait for Google to either ripoff the idea or (hopefully) acquihire
the company and integrate it into Gmail itself.

Really the idea that the message preview is the FIRST two lines is comically
absurd, especially for a company like Google. It's actually amazing to me
nobody has done this yet.

~~~
gsundeep
We're actually testing Signal on Safari/FF as the majority of the codebase is
the same. They should be out in the coming weeks.

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robertnealan
As an initial concept it's interesting but not very useful for most people in
it's current state as it ultimately requires me to spend more time in my
inbox. I think the real potential is in your "Coming Soon" feature, where it
will hopefully be able to automatically figure out the best subject lines for
me and save me time in the long run. Ultimately, it'd be great if it could
decipher whether or not the email can be answered with a simple answer
(yes/no, a time/date, etc), and provide the buttons to respond to it without
ever actually opening up the email itself.

As far as the site itself goes - it has a clean, simple to understand
interface lacks anything sexy to sell the idea. The animation is a great idea,
but just seems dry and lacks context. Looking at the "Using Signal" page
([https://trysignal.com/using-signal/](https://trysignal.com/using-signal/)),
I'd say use a screenshot similar to the one there (albeit with the full inbox
visible), and show an animation of the email being edited in real time rather
than the side by side comparison. That would be a much clearer demonstration
and immediately provide the context as to what's happening. In all reality you
could just integrate the "Using Signal" page into the main index for the
moment as it doesn't have enough information to really constitute a secondary
page.

~~~
kartikt
The button concept you describe is very interesting - we have been playing
around with NLP for extracting actionable items from email, but we want to
make sure it’s accurate before we launch any features that rely on it. Thanks
for the feedback on the website, we’re definitely be changing it up in the
coming weeks.

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lwf
Classy address in the MailChimp email, but I'm not sure this is CAN-SPAM
compliant:

    
    
      Signal
      Starbucks
      San Francisco, CA 94100

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rcthompson
What is this actually doing? I.e. are the emails being edited on the server or
is the extension storing a set of edits and applying them when you view the
edited emails in Gmail in Chrome? Are the original emails still accessible?
How?

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gsundeep
We are storing the changes you make to an email and then loading those changes
back in when you view that email. The original email is never deleted, you can
always click the "Restore" button get back to the original.

~~~
btn
Storing them where?

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gsundeep
We're currently using Firebase as our datastore.

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Sephr
Why not use a local datastore on the user's browser, like IndexedDB? I see no
reason at all to install this and send my data to your external datastore when
the same can be accomplished locally.

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pain_perdu
There is a HUGE branding problem here.

A few weeks ago, Hubspot launched their gmail add-on product called Signals.

Now this company has launched their gmail add-on product called Signal.

The products are way too similar to avoid user confusion.

See [http://www.getsignals.com/](http://www.getsignals.com/) vs
[https://trysignal.com/](https://trysignal.com/)

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canistr
I like the idea of re-naming these as a form of mini-notes.

But now that Gmail is getting into providing context for emails (such as
flight check-ins), I'd like it if the auto-generated emails could also learn
based on summaries I provide. Kind of like a filter rule based on what I've
done in the past to re-name the email to what I'm looking for.

~~~
tehwebguy
This is such a great idea. Like if you could somehow turn the massive emails
chocked full of garbage from airlines into something that just says:

    
    
      MCO > JFK 9/18 1:00 PM EFZG94

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jedberg
Tripit has saved me so much time (and helped my marriage too) by solving this
problem. I just started using it this summer when I was doing a lot of
international travel.

Now, I just forward the email to tripit and I have an item in my calendar
(that is shared with my wife) that has just the relevant info (flight time,
number, conf #, etc) so I can see it any time and so can she.

No more looking at those awful emails (which I just archive as soon as I
forward it).

~~~
Sulfolobus
I'm a big fan of the Google Now cards that pop-up with live flight details and
information like when I have to leave in order to get to check-in on time with
current travel conditions. It seems to be getting this straight from my gmail
account.

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aleem
I'll share an even better approach that works across all devices, allows
better todo management and allows you to preserve the original email context.

The first thing you need to know is that an email sent to
username+anything@gmail.com is the same as sending it to username@gmail.com.
Knowing that you can send all your notes to username+todo@gmail.com and then
create a filter to attach a Yellow "TODO" label for any such emails received.
You can send yourself reminders from anywhere. You may want to add your "todo"
in your address book for convenience.

You can also reply to any email that needs attention and change the recipient
to username+todo@gmail.com. If you add a short summary in the first line of
the body, it will show in your inbox preview. That email will sit in your
inbox vying for your attention and when you open it, you can always refer to
the original thread. It's also possible to expand this idea further. For
example, you can reply to an existing todo email and add more details. You can
also keep a draft email within the same thread where you have rough notes. I
have drafts that are a year old attached to todo items. You can mark items
complete fairly easily as well. You should have GMail keyboard shortcuts
enabled if you don't already.

On a related note, you can also sync your iPhone notes to keep them on GMail.
That works out nicely as you always have them backed up online and you can
have read-only access to them from anywhere through your GMail account.

I haven't needed anything more for my todo management.

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Fuzzwah
I love the idea, but I'm guessing that this extension stores your edits on the
local machine you're using at the time?

I jump from computer to computer and something like this would only really be
helpful for me if my edits followed me around. Possible?

~~~
gsundeep
Actually, your edits are synced across all your computers where Signal is
installed.

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toomuchtodo
What data store are you using then?

~~~
gsundeep
We're currently using Firebase.

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Synergyse
Have you considered using Google Cloud Platform?

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kartikt
Our goal for this version was to get data synced and saved as quickly as
possible. Having firebase as the data store working via websockets made sense.

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ck2
Find a way to give back the old compose message box, charge $1 to buy the
feature and you'll be a millionaire in a week.

~~~
swah
Have you tried Shift + Click on the compose button? I don't remember if that
is the same, but its already better.

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ape4
I do this with Thunderbird (IMAP access to gmail) and the Header Tools Lite
plugin. Works for me. [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/thunderbird/addon/header-to...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/thunderbird/addon/header-tools-lite/)

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Imagenuity
This is the one thing that has kept me from completely switching to Gmail.
However, since these edits are not actually written back to the email, but
stored locally (even synced with Signal on other machines), it does no good
since the Gmail app on my Android phone and tablet can't see the changes. BE
VERY CLEAR you're just editing and storing locally. The original Gmail message
unchanged. I combined two emails, deleted one of them, and checked it in the
Gmail app. All I see is the original message, but other other is deleted. This
will just confuse most people. Unless this can change the message on Gmail, it
is useless to me.

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k_bx
Offtopic: the feature I lack is to permanently add some info (like tags) so
that email is searchable by some keywords, but I guess that's harder to make
(and should be done on gmail side).

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stevenae
Does Gmail labels fall short of your need?

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k_bx
I don't think so. Maybe if I'd need it much more, I could somehow come up with
greasemonkeying UI to use labels for this, but currently I think labels are
more like folders.

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tsm
An email can have multiple labels. And labels can be nested. They really are
glorified tags.

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giantSlayer
Yeah! I link it now. We can organized the emails very well now.

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jonperl
Great application!

One bug I noticed is that when I mark a message as unread, the subject line /
summary text goes back to what it used to be.

Maybe you guys could have an empty repo on GitHub to keep track of bugs?

~~~
kartikt
Excellent idea! We just created one:
[https://github.com/TrySignal/Support](https://github.com/TrySignal/Support)

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Avalaxy
Strange. When I open gmail, I have to give permission. I do that, dismiss the
dialog, the page refreshes, and I get the same dialog. Over and over again, I
think I've given the app my permission like 10 times. And the buttons aren't
appearing in my gmail.

What am I doing wrong?

~~~
gsundeep
Hi there - if you're willing to help us debug your issue, shoot us an email at
team@trysignal.com and we'll send you some instructions to get that sorted out
asap.

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udfalkso
Is the original email accessible somewhere after I create my edited version?

~~~
kartikt
Of course! Once you edit the email you can click on the 'Restore' button
(visible inside the email) to display the original and toggle to your changes
again by clicking 'Revert'

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bru
Having it show on hover could be convenient I think.

~~~
gsundeep
If we do this we'll have to move the Restore functionality outside of a button
ui. Thanks for the suggestion.

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namanbharadwaj
This interferes with my GMail keyboard shortcuts (presumably because editing
mode is on by default when I open an email). There should be some kind of
option to make editing mode off by default.

Or am I missing something?

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shishir1
It expands the first conversation for an email conversation. This change in
default settings (Gmail by default expands the latest message) is very
painful! I un-installed it after 1 hour of usage...

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taylorbuley
Lack of priority inbox support is a deal killer for me.

Is usage of Prio Inbox not common?

~~~
kartikt
Hey Taylor, we are constantly adding features and fixes to Signal. When we say
that priority inbox isn't supported, we only refer to the edits being
reflected on the inbox screen. The interface works like normal on the email
itself. The preview features for priority inbox should be up in the next few
days!

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jtth
Now you have two problems.

~~~
kirbyk
2 problems?

~~~
phalanx101
99 problems, son

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kirbyk
If you guys are storing this data in Firebase, then the next logical step is a
native mobile app, likely iOS. What's the timeframe for such?

~~~
gsundeep
The iOS app is already in development, we're planning to launch it before
January.

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mrcactu5
This is a good start. I am hesistant to share my Gmail info with any app.

on the other hand Gmail itself (as in the client) is clearly reading my mail

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dan-g
I may have missed this, but do you offer any sort of revision control? Don't
want to accidentally delete something important.

~~~
gsundeep
We don't have any kind of version control, but we do allow you to flip back
and forth between the original and edited emails.

We never delete the original copy of the email so you'll never have to worry
about accidentally deleting important content.

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brads84
Off Topic: How do you guys make that awesome gif video on the homepage without
making the file size too large?

~~~
brads84
NM, isn't a gif after all.

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oliversong
Messes with keyboard shortcut workflow :(

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kartikt
We tried experimenting with having it always be on auto-edit mode (assumed
most people don't heavily rely on shortcuts) so we definitely understand that
this will interrupt your flow as a power gmail user. We will be pushing the
feature to disable auto-edit in the next few days and I'd be more than happy
to comment here when it's out :)

~~~
agrona
Please do. I was hoping to find an option to turn it off.

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pieterhg
I like this a lot but moving back from message to inbox now takes an extra
second with the extension enabled.

~~~
kartikt
Thanks for reporting this. We are already working on adding a fix to this. It
should be handled in the next few days

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tnorthcutt
Seems to open emails in "editing" mode by default. I filed an issue on Github.

~~~
gsundeep
Thanks for doing so - we're adding a settings pane where you can turn off the
auto-edit functionality. I'll update the gh issue once it's live.

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nemothekid
Unrelated - pretty surreal to see my relatively small hometown used in an
example.

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coherentpony
It's not immediately clear to me what problem this is solving.

~~~
gsundeep
A lot of people use their inbox as their todo list, but there's a lot of noise
in their emails that they have to parse through every time they check their
inbox.

Signal currently allows you to edit the emails in your inbox so you can get
rid of irrelevant info (or even add info) as you see fit. We're experimenting
with auto summarization (check out the website for an example).

The goal is to make the inbox a better to-do list.

~~~
coherentpony
Yeah, I've used it before. It's pretty cool. I wish the equation stuff was a
little more flexible.

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benatkin
This is not seamless. I don't need to try it to find that out, I just have
seen this type of extension enough times to know that it isn't seamless,
especially in beta form.

~~~
brownBananas
Seamless in which sense? Across different devices, mail services, accounts,
etc?

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chunky1994
Cool concept, lets see where it'll go!

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hansbbans
is there anyone to set the default mode to edit as opposed to have it default
to editing?

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Beltiras
Yeah, just what I need. More American corporations with access to my data
......

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mdork
awesome! def like what i see so far!

