

Show HN: Gmail Thread Splitting - alooPotato
https://www.streak.com/split-gmail-conversation-threads-break

======
math0ne
I have never understood gmails features. They consitantly do not work for me,
maybe the way i use email is too old school or something.

Threads are consistently broken, the messages are in the wrong order and are
almost never grouped logically with seemingly random emails getting placed in
same thread.

The new tab system seems to only be right about 30% of the time, I constantly
have extreamly important emails going to the promotions and updates tab even
after I have seemingly said all further emails of this type should go to
primary.

I'm genuinely curious do these features work well for others? Am I alone in
finding that these things just don't work?

~~~
neals
Works near-perfect for me. The tabs work, the threads work. Happy gmailer
right here! :)

I do everything from gmail, it's pretty much my life. I receive about 50 mails
a day. I have important logs and reports from my servers come into gmail. I
hardly ever have to re-organize.

Now, how do we find out the difference between how you and I use gmail?

------
ramoq
For someone who runs into this issue quite often; this is a great add-on.
You'd be surprised how many issues and embarrassing emails have arisen due to
Gmail incorrectly threading emails. Great job Streak :)

p.s. Is it just me, but I can't fathom why the Gmail team doesn't scoop these
guys up ASAP :)

~~~
fjolthor
Yes, it's so obvious it's hard to see why Google hasn't implemented it
already. I wonder what will happen with this project, unlikely that Google
would acquire something rather than assign a small team to fix this within a
week?

------
ericz
Bravo. Ignore the haters who haven't run into thread issues and thus believe
no one else can possibly run into these issues. "Just change the subject!"
Clearly these people have never sent a bulk email, or considered the fact that
others may use email differently from them. Really tired of this mentality of
"I don't have complete information but I think I'm great thus I'm just going
to assume you are clueless".

~~~
gmisra
Apparently I am one of those haters. I guess "Is this really a thing people
have trouble with?" is not a valid question, but I really don't understand
when/where/why this thread-splitter feature would be useful, let alone useful
enough to enough people to warrant extended time on the HN front page.

Can somebody (who won't presuppose my motivation or my opinion) answer my
question?

~~~
alooPotato
Our users have asked for this for 2 use cases:

1) You send an email bcc'ing a bunch of people. Those people start responding,
Gmail threads it into 1 thread. Sometimes you want this and sometimes you
don't

2) The topic of a thread changes and you want to split the thread into two
logical threads.

~~~
ramoq
alooPotato: Is there way to split it off to another thread while keeping the
same subject?

~~~
alooPotato
Currently we have this limitation where the new thread has to have a different
subject but we're working on removing that restriction. Should be a few more
days before thats ready.

------
alooPotato
We started playing with the new Gmail API
([https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/](https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/))
and created this fun little feature.

Ever notice Gmail sometimes gmail threads things it shouldn't? (i.e. when you
bcc a lot of people). We built a way for you to break of a subset of the
messages into their own thread.

------
oneeyedpigeon
It's been renamed from "Thread Breaker", hasn't it? Because it's still called
that in the screenshot of the 'More' menu, alongside "Split the Thread".

(Thread Splitter's a much better name :)

------
flavor8
I don't see anything in your privacy policy about email handling, but maybe
I'm just skimming too fast.

When I click on install on the extension, it says that it requires access to
*.mailfoogae.appspot.com; do you route my mail through your app in order to
add this feature to gmail, or is it done completely locally within the sandbox
of my account/browser?

~~~
alooPotato
In order to make this particular feature work, we hit the Gmail API with your
Oauth credentials (which you can revoke at anytime). The actual process of
splitting up the thread requires us to download some of your inbox content,
modify it, then upload it. We do not store a copy of your mail ever.

------
aleem
I have very rarely run into misbehaved threading. Even so, for me personally
it's not enough to warrant the effort of doing a manual split. Threads are
ephemeral and it's fairly trivial to change the subject and fork the thread.

However, I would really love to see thread merging or some kind of grouping
into a master thread which can track all the sub-threads. I am fairly certain
this would have very high utility for a lot of other people here especially if
its dead simple to do (group > search thread > select thread > ok). I could
easily use this to merge a bug report email thread with the internal bug
tracking thread, etc. Or a candidate's job application with his interview
feedback, etc.

~~~
alooPotato
This is essentially our main product - Streak.com.

We have a blog post on how we use Streak for bug tracking internally:
[http://blog.streak.com/2013/07/how-streak-uses-streak-to-
tra...](http://blog.streak.com/2013/07/how-streak-uses-streak-to-track-
bugs.html)

~~~
aleem
You'll have to excuse me for not having noticed this, it's the first I have
heard of Streak. This is indeed quite impressive and comprehensive.

------
Major_Grooves
I haven't tried it yet, but oh my I've been waiting ages for you guys to add
this feature! I'm sure it wasn't easy.

For context, the merging of emails threads in Gmail would at times make Streak
unusable. This should be a big boost to Streak usability!

I also notice you guys added a "reminder" feature - effectively putting you
head-on with Boomerang (which I currently pay for).

I have Streak, YesWare and Boomerang installed in my Gmail. It's too many add-
ons for my liking. Boomerang, although the only one I currently pay for, seems
to be the one that will have to go.

------
TeMPOraL
Nice.

I'm personally waiting for a tool to group and split mails in a mailing-group-
compatibile tree view. Or at least something respecting the usual headers
mailing groups use to mark which mails belong to which thread (so that when
you change the topic the e-mail doesn't go to a different thread in GMail).

Not that I care about it for 99% of my conversations, but one Hackerspace I
subscribe to seems to be stuck in 1980s Unix Land, and get terribly annoyed at
people using GMail for mailing ;).

------
asah
Another amazing feature from the Streak team. My whole company is thoroughly
addicted.

------
latifnanji27
AWESOME feature.

------
gmisra
My favorite thread splitting plugin is "editing the subject field when
replying". Is this really a thing that people have trouble with?

