Gmail app
Description
Google launched Gmail on April 1, 2004, with 1 GB of storage — at a time when competing email services offered 2 to 4 MB. The offer was so far outside the range of what email services did that some people assumed that the April 1 announcement date was a joke. It wasn’t. Gmail’s storage advantage coupled with Google’s search technology applied to email gave us a different way of handling a mailbox: Store everything, search for what you need instead of filing it yourself. That philosophy, and the way that conversation weaves those replies under a single view, influenced the way hundreds of millions of people thought about email.
Gmail had more than 1.8 billion active users by the early 2020s, making it the most popular email service in the world. The Android and iOS apps take the web interface of Gmail and make it available on the phone, introducing features that are unique to the phone context: gesture-based message handling, notification management, and offline access to cached messages.
Conversation Threading
Gmail puts all emails in a conversation — original message, replies, and forwards — under one conversation entry in the inbox. Expanding the conversation reveals the complete chronology of the conversation with each message collapsible to sender and subject line. Threading helps keep related emails together without having to manually manage folders and helps reduce inbox clutter when a long email chain would otherwise appear as dozens of individual unread entries.
Smart Inbox Categories
Gmail automatically sorts incoming mail into tabs: Primary for personal and important messages, Social for social network notifications, Promotions for newsletters and marketing email, Updates for receipts and notifications, and Forums for mailing list messages. The categorization relies on the algorithms of Google to determine which tab is appropriate for each message, with users moving messages that were miscategorized to correct future categorization. Users who prefer to use a traditional single inbox disable the tabbed categories in settings.
Search
Gmail’s search utilizes Google’s indexing technology applied to the full text of all emails in the account, searching for messages by sender, subject, body content, attachments, date range and label combinations. Search operators refine queries: from:, to:, subject:, has:attachment, is:starred, after:, and before: work individually or in combination. The Android and iOS apps bring the same search with voice input to the surface as an additional input option.
Labels and Filters
Labels apply to messages as tags — multiple labels to a message, in contrast to folders which hold a message in one location. A message is displayed beneath all the labels assigned to it at the same time. Filters automate label assignment: a filter matching a specific sender or subject line will apply a label, mark as read, archive, or automatically forward messages when matching messages arrive. Filters are executed without the need for user interaction, and perform routine sorting rules in a consistent manner.
Offline Mode
The Gmail app caches the recent emails for offline access in case there is no internet connection. The offline message cache includes a configurable time range of recent messages. Reading, drafting and responding to emails, which works offline, with outgoing messages queuing until the connection is restored.
Multiple Account Support
The Gmail app handles multiple Google accounts at the same time, switching between them from the account selector in the top navigation. Third-party email accounts — Outlook, Yahoo Mail, iCloud, and accounts through any IMAP or POP3 provider — add in addition to Google accounts and appear in the same app interface.
Smart Reply and Smart Compose
Smart Reply recommends short reply phrases based on the message content — “Sounds good,” “Thanks,” “I’ll check” — that the user taps to insert rather than typing. Smart Compose offers completions for sentences while composing by predicting likely continuations of the text typed. Both features incorporate on-device machine learning that adapts to the user’s writing style over time.
Notifications
Notification settings determine which incoming emails are alerted. Filters limit notifications to Primary inbox only, starred messages, or messages from contacts saved in the address book. Priority notifications can be used to override the Do Not Disturb mode of the device for specified important senders.
Confidential Mode
Confidential Mode sends a message with an expiration date that eliminates access by the recipient after the expiration date. The recipient cannot forward, copy or print the message. An SMS passcode option adds one more step for the recipient to take before reading.
