Official Gmail Blog
News, tips and tricks from Google's Gmail team and friends.
Computer, respond to this email: Introducing Smart Reply in Inbox by Gmail
November 3, 2015
Posted by Bálint Miklós, Software Engineer
With the holidays approaching and emails coming in at a furious pace, we can all use a little help. Inbox is already on hand
assisting you with the next step
,
organizing your trips
, and
even suggesting reminders
.
But when you're checking email on the go, it can be cumbersome and time-consuming to reply to all or even some of them. What if there was a way for your inbox to guess which emails can be answered with a short reply, prepare a few responses on your behalf and present them to you, one tap away?
Well, starting later this week, Inbox will do just that with Smart Reply.
Smart Reply suggests up to three responses based on the emails you get. For those emails that only need a quick response, it can take care of the thinking and save precious time spent typing. And for those emails that require a bit more thought, it gives you a jump start so you can respond right away.
There's actually a lot going on behind the scenes to make Smart Reply work. Inbox uses machine learning to recognize emails that need responses and to generate the natural language responses on the fly. If you're interested in how Smart Reply works, including how researchers got machine learning to work on a data set that they never saw, you can read more about it on the
Google Research Blog
.
And much like how Inbox gets better when you report spam, the responses you choose (or don't choose!) help improve future suggestions. For example, when Smart Reply was tested at Google, a common suggestion in the workplace was "I love you." Thanks to Googler feedback, Smart Reply is now SFW :)
Smart Reply will be rolling out later this week on both
Google Play
and the
App Store
in English. If you've got a lot of emails on your plate, now's a great time to try
Inbox
and get through them faster than ever.
New Calendar illustrations in 30 languages
October 16, 2015
Posted by Stella Schieffer, Product Manager
Your calendar is more than just a list of dates and times — it’s your life! That’s why Calendar adds illustrations to many of your favorite events automatically.
Today we're improving these illustrations in two ways. First, you'll find over a dozen more of them for events like weddings and Halloween parties. Second, illustrations will now appear in 30 languages--from Dutch and Finnish to Catalan and Korean--giving our global community of users a new way to celebrate their day.
You be the artist
We’ll be making more illustrations soon, and we want your help creating them. Just tweet a photo of an event you love with the hashtag #makethemost. We’ll select our favorites as inspiration for the next set of Calendar illustrations.
Stay in control with Block and Unsubscribe
September 22, 2015
Posted by Sri Harsha Somanchi, Product Manager
Sometimes you get mail from someone who’s really disruptive. Hopefully it doesn’t happen often—but when it does, you should be able to say, “Never see messages from this person again.” That’s why you can now block specific email addresses in Gmail—starting today on the web, and over the next week on Android. Future mail will go to the spam folder (and you can always unblock in Settings).
In addition, the unsubscribe option is now making its way to Android, so you’ll be able to opt out of eligible mailing lists directly from the Gmail app. It’s perfect for those newsletters you subscribed to a while back but don’t read any more.
So try block or unsubscribe when the situation calls for it. And stay in control of your inbox.
Inbox by Gmail: Snooze to just the right time
July 16, 2015
Posted by Vijay Umapathy, Product Manager
Wouldn’t it be nice if your concert ticket appeared at the top of your inbox just before the event started, or your hotel confirmation came back right before you needed to check in?
Starting today, Snooze in Inbox is getting a bit more convenient—when you snooze an email that has dates and times (like event confirmations or shipping notifications), you’ll get a one-tap option to snooze to exactly the right time, like the day of your concert or the morning your package will arrive.
You'll see these new Snooze options on most of these types of emails:
Package tracking updates
Restaurant and event reservations
Calendar invites
Flight confirmations
Hotel reservations
Rental car reservations
So next time, try snoozing that email to the day before the event. Then sit back and relax, knowing your email will come back at just the right time.
The mail you want, not the spam you don’t
July 9, 2015
Posted by Sri Harsha Somanchi, Product Manager
The Gmail team is always working hard to make sure that every message you care about arrives in your inbox, and all the spam you don’t want remains out of sight. In fact, less than 0.1% of email in the average Gmail inbox is spam, and the amount of wanted mail landing in the spam folder is even lower, at under 0.05%.
Even still, Gmail spam detection isn’t perfect. So today we’re sharing some of the new ways we are supporting the senders of wanted mail, and using the latest Google smarts to filter out spam.
Getting the mail you do want with Gmail Postmaster Tools
Gmail users get lots of important email from companies like banks and airlines—from monthly statements to ticket receipts—but sometimes these wanted messages are mistakenly classified as spam. When this happens, you might have to wade through your spam folder to find that one important email (yuck!). We can help senders to do better, so today we’re launching the
Gmail Postmaster Tools
.
The Gmail Postmaster Tools help qualified high-volume senders analyze their email, including data on delivery errors, spam reports, and reputation. This way they can diagnose any hiccups, study
best practices
, and help Gmail route their messages to the right place. For you, this means no more dumpster diving for that confirmation code ;-)
Google smarts for less spam
Since
the beginning
, machine learning has helped make the Gmail spam filter more awesome. When you click the “Report spam” and “Not spam” buttons, you’re not only improving your Gmail experience right then and there, you’re also training Gmail’s filters to identify spam vs. wanted mail in the future. Now, we are bringing the same intelligence developed for Google Search and Google Now to make the spam filter smarter in a number of ways.
For starters, the spam filter now uses an
artificial neural network
to detect and block the especially sneaky spam—the kind that could actually pass for wanted mail.
We also recognize that not all inboxes are alike. So while your neighbor may love weekly email newsletters, you may loathe them. With advances in machine learning, the spam filter can now reflect these individual preferences.
Finally, the spam filter is better than ever at rooting out email impersonation—that nasty source of most phishing scams. Thanks to new machine learning signals, Gmail can now figure out whether a message actually came from its sender, and keep bogus email at bay.
Ultimately, we aspire to a spam-free Gmail experience. So please keep those spam reports coming, and if you’re a company that sends email, then check out our new
Postmaster Tools
. Together we can get the wanted mail to the right place, and keep the spam where it belongs.
Express yourself in email: hundreds more themes, plus emoji
June 30, 2015
Posted by Gaurav Vijay, Software Engineer
Your inbox is home to some of your most meaningful and entertaining messages—from that acceptance letter, to those throwback photos—so we think it’s important for Gmail to feel just as personal (and fun!). That’s why we offer lots of ways to customize your experience—from
inbox categories
, to
email formatting
, to
shareable selfies
—and why today we’re expanding your options with additional themes, and emoji.
A wider selection of themes
Themes can help you dress up your inbox, as well as distinguish between your home and work accounts, so they’ve been an important part of Gmail since they first appeared in
2008
. Starting today there are hundreds more high-res options available (photographed by some fellow Googlers!). And of course, you can always
upload your own
.
Once you’ve found the right photo, you can now use editing tools like blur, vignette, and text background to make your image and messages look great together.
Emoji all the things
Sometimes you just can’t find the words to express how you’re feeling over email
. But fret no more, because today’s Gmail update includes emoji for just about every occasion
.
Excited about this weekend’s barbecue? Finalize the menu, dress code and after-dinner plans with just a few characters:
. Running a few minutes late? Let your friend know you’ll be there at
. Whatever the situation, sending emoji is now a piece of
.
All of today’s web updates are rolling out over the next few days, so check back soon if you don’t see them yet. Once you do, definitely share your favorite themes and emoji with us on
Google+
,
Twitter
and
Facebook
!
Inbox by Gmail: Say adios to “Oops” with Undo Send
June 24, 2015
Posted by Phil Sharp, Product Manager
That moment when you press send and immediately realize you made a terrible mistake. But it's too late. We all need to travel back a few seconds every once in a while, so with Inbox you can take back an email right after sending. Undo Send in Inbox launched a
few weeks ago
, and now it’s available on
Android
,
iOS
and the
web
. So enjoy those second chances!
Google Calendar for iPhone: more ways to stay on top of your schedule
June 23, 2015
Posted by Stella Schieffer, Product Manager
Since the new Google Calendar app
arrived
, you've given us lots of great feedback that has guided
our
updates
. Starting today, you'll see improvements to
Google Calendar on iPhone
that follow the recent improvements to the
Android app
.
To start, you can now see more events at a glance with 7-day week view and customize your calendar with week numbers on iPhone.
You can now also add Google Drive files, like Docs and Sheets or pictures and PDFs, directly to events on your iPhone and Google Calendar on the web, just like you can on Android. Drive will even check if everyone has access to the files and if not, ask you if you'd like to share with them.
Sometimes, getting notified of an upcoming event isn’t enough—you might need to contact other attendees, or figure out the best way to get there. With interactive notifications on the iPhone, you can now email guests and view maps with one tap.
We have a lot more improvements based on your feedback coming, so stay tuned!
P.S. If you're a developer, you can now add Drive files, including Docs, Sheets and Slides, to Google Calendar events created through the
Calendar API
.
New ways to add Reminders in Inbox by Gmail
June 17, 2015
Posted by Dave Orr, Google Research Product Manager
(Cross-posted from the
Google Research Blog
)
Last week, Inbox by Gmail
opened up
and improved many of your favorite features, including two new ways to add Reminders.
First up, when someone emails you a to-do, Inbox can now suggest adding a Reminder so you don’t forget. Here's how it looks if your spouse emails you and asks you to buy milk on the way home:
To help you add Reminders, the Google Research team used natural
language understanding technology
to teach Inbox to recognize to-dos in email.
And much like Gmail and Inbox get better when you report spam, your feedback helps improve these suggested Reminders. You can accept or reject them with a single click:
The other new way to add Reminders in Inbox is to create Reminders in Google Keep—they will appear in Inbox with a link back to the full note in Google Keep.
Hopefully, this little extra help gets you back to what matters more quickly and easily. Try the new features out, and as always, let us know what you think using the feedback link in the app.
Trip Bundles in Inbox by Gmail
June 8, 2015
Posted by Thijs van As, Product Manager
I frequently travel to Mountain View and Seattle and always have a mess of related emails at the end of my trip. For example, last time the final tally was four about my flight purchase, five about my hotel reservations, one rental car confirmation and five check-in reminders. The challenge is: I often need an important bit of information quickly—a flight confirmation number or hotel address—but the details are buried in email, making them hard to find.
Just a
couple weeks ago
,
Inbox
added Trip Bundles to improve this experience—whether you’re traveling up and down the West Coast, or flying across the pond. Now, all of your emails about a trip are bundled together and available the instant you open Inbox.
When it's time to fly, Inbox will even update your flight status so you'll know if your trip is on time or if your gate has changed.
You can open the bundle to see all your emails related to that trip, with the most important information (like flight times) right at the top.
Each section in the bundle gives you all the details about your flight, rental car, hotel or restaurant reservation. And when there are multiple emails about the same reservation, Inbox is smart enough to only show you the most up-to-date information.
Finally, if you want to take a look at your upcoming trips or take a trip down memory lane, just tap on Trips in the app menu.
Safe travels!
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