Official Gmail Blog
News, tips and tricks from Google's Gmail team and friends.
New in Labs: Multiple Inboxes
February 5, 2009
Posted by Octavian "Vivi" Costache, Software Engineer
I'm seriously into filters and labels. All the email I get related to Flash goes under my "flash" label, everything about paragliding goes under "flying," and they all skip my inbox because that's how I like to stay organized. But when new email arrives I have to switch to the "flash" label first, then click on "paragliding," etc. I wanted a way to see it all at once.
So when I heard about Gmail Labs, I started implementing a Labs feature in my 20% time that would help me (and you!) spend less time monitoring important messages that may end up getting filtered away. Starting today, you can try Multiple Inboxes, a Labs experiment which makes it possible to have more than one 'inbox' in your default Gmail view.
An image is worth a thousand words, so here's what my inbox looks like:
In addition to a quick view of my important labels, I also like to keep all my starred and draft messages in separate panels.
After you turn on Multiple Inboxes from the
Labs tab
under Settings, you can configure what you want to see, as well as set the number of messages displayed and the positioning of your panels from the Multiple Inboxes section under Settings.
However you choose to use it,
let us know
how we can improve the Multiple Inboxes experiment — all feedback is welcome.
See where your friends are with Google Latitude
February 4, 2009
Posted by Mat Balez, Mobile Product Manager
Gmail is about keeping you in touch with the people you care about, independent of the large, or sometimes small, distances that might separate you from them. That's precisely why email, IM, and voice and video chat are so powerful — the "where" is irrelevant.
With
Google Latitude
, a new feature on Google Maps for mobile and a
gadget for iGoogle
coming out today, we're kind of turning that idea on its head, making the "where" matter again. Latitude allows you to see where your friends are located in real time on a map, anywhere in the world.
Use your Gmail account to join Latitude and you can specify which of your Gmail contacts can see your location. You can choose to automatically detect your best location, share city-level information only, set your location manually, or hide your location altogether. (To learn more about Google Latitude's privacy controls,
check out this video
.)
From within Latitude you can communicate with your friends via text message, Google Talk, Gmail, or a good old fashioned phone call. Your status messages and profile picture are synced with your Gmail account, so as you update them on the go, your Gmail contacts will see the changes in real time.
To try Google Latitude, go to
google.com/latitude
from your computer or your phone's mobile browser. Latitude is available on Android, Blackberry, S60, Winmo, and will be coming soon to the iPhone, through the Google Mobile App.
New ways to label with "Move to" and auto-complete
February 3, 2009
Posted by Emil A Eklund, Gmail engineer
One of the features that makes Gmail different is its use of
labels
instead of
folders
. Sure, labels can serve pretty much the same purpose -- they can help organize mail or flag messages for follow up. And unlike with folders, messages can have several labels, so if I get an email from a friend about a trip we're taking together, I can add both a "Friends" and a "Travel" label to it.
But it's not always obvious how to use labels, especially for people who are new to Gmail and used to using folders, and it hasn't helped that some common tasks have been more complicated than they should be. For instance, to move an email out of your inbox and into a label you first had to apply the label using the "More actions" menu and then click "Archive."
Starting today, the buttons and menus at the top of your inbox will look a bit different:
Instead of having to first apply the label and then archive, you can just use the "Move to" button to label and archive in a single step -- just like you would with a folder. If you just want to add or remove a label, use the new "Labels" button. Auto-complete works, so for those of you with a lot of labels, you can select the one you want just by typing the first couple characters.
We're also adding keyboard shortcuts:
v
for "Move to" and
l
(lowercase L) for "Labels." Make sure you have
keyboard shortcuts
turned on to use these.
We're making these changes for everyone over the course of today, so you may not see them right away. But between the shortcuts and auto-complete, you'll soon be able to add and remove labels without touching your mouse.
Tasks: Paper vs. iPhone
February 2, 2009
Posted by Michael Bolin, Tasks engineer
Among the world's leading productivity tools is an advanced technology known as paper. Many of the world's top corporations and most active internet users have adopted paper as a method of organizing their daily lives. When they think of something they need to do, they write it down on a piece of paper and keep that piece of paper with them.
Though some advances have been made in paper's effectiveness -- such as the addition of a sticky section that allows you to attach a piece of paper to your monitor, your desktop, or even another piece of paper -- it turns out that paper is pretty hard to improve on, and reigns as a leading task management technology.
When we set out to build Tasks (now in Gmail Labs), one of our goals was to improve upon paper. With the version of
Tasks in Gmail
, we focused on making editing very fast and simple -- as close to paper as we could. But despite dual-core CPUs, 30" monitors, and high speed internet connections, many Googlers still found themselves using paper to track their tasks.
We did some competitive analysis and here is what we found.
Paper has a number of popular features:
Easy editing
. Cross out with pen and write something new.
Works offline
. You can read paper even when your PC is not connected to the internet.
Mobile
. Fold paper and stick in pocket.
Instant boot up
. Just pull paper out of pocket -- don't have to wait for it to load.
However, paper does have some limitations:
Limited availability
. You don't always have a pad of paper with you to write new things.
Not ubiquitous
. If you leave a piece of paper in one pair of jeans, you can't access it from the other jeans you're currently wearing.
Difficult to organize
. Eventually turns into a giant mess on your desk.
We set out to fix this by making Tasks available from your phone with a version optimized for the small screen. And starting today, you can manage your task list from your iPhone or Android device, and access it from any xhtml enabled phone. (Mine's always with me, in whichever jeans I'm wearing.) Just go to
gmail.com/tasks
from your phone's browser and log in. If you already use the version of Tasks in Gmail Labs, you'll see the same task list that's always in sync. We focused on making it super easy and fast to update your Gmail task list -- you can add new tasks and check off completed ones, no matter where you are (like in a meeting or at the grocery store)
even when you're in the bathroom
.
A number of Googlers have told us that with this new mobile UI they've finally scrapped the paper task management that they never really liked but couldn't ever beat. We're interested to hear what you think, and how this compares to paper, so try it out and
let us know
.
P.S. There's a new
gadget version of Tasks
too -- so if you want to add your same task list to iGoogle, now you can.
This morning's spam filter issue
January 31, 2009
Posted by Brad Taylor, Software Engineer
This morning there was a
problem
with the implementation of Google's malware filters. Gmail's spam engine uses those filters (among hundreds of other signals) to help protect our users from malware, and so between 6:00 a.m. PST and 8:00 a.m. PST, we mistakenly sent some legitimate mail to people's spam folders.
We're working to roll out an automated fix to put these legitimate messages back into your inboxes, and we expect this to happen within a day. In the meantime, if you were expecting a critical message this morning, please check your spam folder. (We tune our spam filters well enough that ordinarily you should never have to check your spam folder.)
We're very sorry for the inconvenience. We'll update this post as we have more information to share.
Update (2/1)
: We've rolled out a fix that has restored these messages to most people's inboxes, though to be on the safe side we'd still recommend that you check your spam folder if there was a critical message you expected to receive between 6am and 8am PST on Saturday.
New in Labs: Offline Gmail
January 27, 2009
Posted by Andy Palay, Gmail engineer
Web-based email is great because you can check it from any computer, but there's one little catch: it's inherently limited by your internet connection. From public WiFi to smartphones equipped with 3G, from mobile broadband cards to fledgling in-flight wireless on airplanes, Internet access is becoming more and more ubiquitous -- but there are still times when you can't access your webmail because of an unreliable or unavailable connection.
Today we're starting to roll out an experimental feature in
Gmail Labs
that should help fill in those gaps: offline Gmail. So even if you're offline, you can open your web browser, go to gmail.com, and get to your mail just like you're used to.
Once you turn on this feature, Gmail uses
Gears
to download a local cache of your mail. As long as you're connected to the network, that cache is synchronized with Gmail's servers. When you lose your connection, Gmail automatically switches to offline mode, and uses the data stored on your computer's hard drive instead of the information sent across the network. You can read messages, star and label them, and do all of the things you're used to doing while reading your webmail online. Any messages you send while offline will be placed in your outbox and automatically sent the next time Gmail detects a connection. And if you're on an unreliable or slow connection (like when you're "borrowing" your neighbor's wireless), you can choose to use "flaky connection mode," which is somewhere in between: it uses the local cache as if you were disconnected, but still synchronizes your mail with the server in the background. Our goal is to provide nearly the same browser-based Gmail experience whether you're using the data cached on your computer or talking directly to the server.
Offline Gmail is still an early experimental feature, so don't be surprised if you run into some kinks that haven't been completely ironed out yet. We've been using offline Gmail internally at Google for quite a while (I've read thousands of messages and answered hundreds en route to visit my son and my daughter). And it's saved me more than once when my home network connection ran into issues (we have squirrels at home that love to chew through outside cable wires). Now we're ready to have a larger set of people try it out, so we're making it available in Gmail Labs for those of you who want to test out Gmail's latest and greatest and
send us your feedback
.
We're making offline Gmail available to everyone who uses Gmail in US or UK English over the next couple of days, so if you don't see it under the
Labs tab
yet, it should be there soon. Once you see it, just follow these steps to get started:
Click Settings and click the Labs tab.
Select Enable next to Offline Gmail.
Click Save Changes.
After your browser reloads, you'll see a new "Offline
0.1
" link in the upper righthand corner of your account, next to your username. Click this link to start the offline set up process and download Gears if you don't already have it.
Watch videos right in Gmail chat
January 21, 2009
Posted by Jessan Hutchison-Quillian, Software Engineer
My friends always hate it when I multi-task in other tabs while chatting with them (they can tell because of my obviously delayed reactions...). But sometimes it's not my fault: if they send me a link to a YouTube video, I have to open another tab in order to watch it. To help with this, we've just added a new feature to Gmail chat: YouTube and Google Video previews. If you receive (or send) a link to a video in a chat message, you'll see a preview of the video right in your chat window.
Click the preview, and the video will play right there. Just remember to say something every once in a while or your friends will probably catch on that you're enjoying the dramatic chipmunk more than their conversation...
Get Calendar on your Google Desktop
January 20, 2009
Posted by Benjamin Schirmer, Software Engineer (and recent Google intern)
Following the release of the
Gmail gadget
, we now present a completely new version of the
Google Calendar gadget
for
Google Desktop
. If you want to easily keep track of your upcoming appointments right from your desktop, this new version has a cleaner interface, fully supports
Google Apps
calendars, and includes three different viewing modes:
Just click on an event to see details, including a map of the location, a list of attendees, and start and end times:
You can easily create new events as well, by clicking the "Add event" link:
The Calendar gadget runs with the latest
Linux
,
Mac
, and Windows releases of Google Desktop gadgets, so
give it a try
and
tell us
what you think!
New in Labs: Send & Archive
January 14, 2009
Posted by Pal Takacsi, Engineering Manager
In addition to having two cappuccinos, my morning routine includes processing new mail that's arrived in my inbox overnight. More often than not, as I reply to a message I also want to archive it so I can enjoy the satisfaction of a pristine inbox. Having clicked "Send" followed by "Archive" a few million times, I started to wish there was a way to just click once and accomplish both actions at the same time. So I decided to turn this idea to a Gmail Labs experiment. Turn on "Send & Archive" from the
Labs tab
under Settings, and you'll see a new button in the compose form labeled just that. The button does what it says: it sends your reply and then archives the thread with one click.
For keyboard shortcut enthusiasts tabbing to this new button works too. In the coming weeks, I'm planning to add undo support, so if you accidentally archived a thread, you can easily get it back into your inbox. Any other requests?
Let us know
in the Gmail Labs user group.
Tip: Archive mail on your iPhone
January 13, 2009
Posted by Arielle Reinstein, Gmail Product Marketing Manager
Update 8/2/2010
: If you're using iPhone OS 4 or newer, archiving in Gmail will work once you go through the standard mail set up — no need to follow these instructions.
Pretty much everyone with an iPhone and a Gmail account has a preference for how to use the two together. Some people prefer the iPhone's built-in email client -- it's fast, syncs everything via
IMAP
, and works like the rest of the device. Others, myself included, can't live without
search
and
threaded conversations
and prefer to bring up Gmail in the browser. And a few people, for whom this tip is geared, read their mail via the client but switch to the browser-based version to clean out their inboxes so they can easily
archive rather than delete
.
See, the default Gmail set up for iPhone's built-in mail client configures things such that if you delete a message on your iPhone, it's sent to Gmail's Trash. That means in 30 days it's gone forever. Sure, you can archive by clicking the "Move to" button and then selecting "All Mail," but if you're an archive junkie and want mail you delete on your iPhone to get archived in Gmail instead, you just have to re-do the Gmail set up on your phone.
First, get rid of your default set up. Go to
Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendar
. Find your Gmail account under "Accounts," click on it, scroll to the bottom, and click "Delete Account." Don't worry -- it'll be back and better than ever in a sec.
Then manually configure IMAP using the "Other" menu option by following the instructions this video (also available in the
Gmail Help Center
):
From then on, the iPhone's little trashcan icon will archive your mail. You might notice that messages you archive on your phone are actually being added to a new "Deleted Messages" label in your Gmail account -- but they're right in "All Mail" and searchable, just the way you want them.
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