Remembering Inbox by Gmail – 2 years and still no other email app comes close

Today, 2nd April marks the 2nd death anniversary of Inbox by Gmail where Google officially pulled the plug from this app exactly 2 years ago in 2019. This article is just about how great that app was and how, on the date of publishing this article, not even 1 third party email app (including Gmail) comes close! I’ve touched upon each feature below in my article that proves that Inbox indeed had solved the email problem! Let’s get started…! But before just one thing, this GIF irritates me every single time I look at it, making me think that Google could have simply killed Gmail and could have rebranded Inbox by Gmail into Gmail and simply could have announced it as a major UI overhaul! Let me deliver this frustration to you too!

Email Bundling

Straight to the point, this was the striking feature of the app. Instead of leaving it to users as to how they want to organize their emails, Inbox automatically organized emails into categories called as Updates, Purchases, Trips, Promotions, Newsletters so that once you open the app, you don’t get overwhelmed with all the mails you’ve received. Have a look below. So neat! Also, Of course users were free to add their own bundle and customize as to which emails from which people move there and transferring emails between bundles!

Just the Information you need

Imagine you book a train ticket online to some place, and it arrives it in your mail, the mail is usually not at all user-friendly. Inbox had solved even this problem! All your Travel related mail were in one place and your main info (i.e. the travel details, seat, etc.) were presented in a neat card with a nice pic of your destination! Similar was the case for email digests that you might have subscribed to, your online purchases from e-commerce sites, even in Google calendar events!; Everything was so organized and beautiful!

Marking emails done, Snoozing emails, Reminders

All these concepts were alien before Inbox happened! The now common Snoozing email feature we see in Gmail and other email clients is the gift given by Inbox to the world! So, snoozing emails was similar to snoozing alarms, like getting back to them on some other day, later today in the evening, etc.
If you were done reading a mail, you could simply swipe left on that row item, it would move to a separate queue called Done. While such emails were accessible from the sidebar of the app, at-least marking them as done would declutter the main email dashboard and also give you some ‘to-do list completion’ feeling!
Also, the app even allowed one to create reminders from within the app which would sync with both Google Keep and Google calendar and vice-versa! What else one requires in life! IMO this was a far simpler approach than the current Google Tasks approach that has been implemented now in Gmail! This Google Tasks mess was not at all needed!

Another Gift – Smart Reply and Undo Send!

The heading is pretty self-explanatory. The smart reply (& even smart compose as a consequence) is Inbox’s present to Gmail! Even the Undo-send option present in many email clients was first introduced in Inbox!

Pinning emails

Inbox even introduced the now popular concept of pinning emails! Want an email every time for easy reference or want to somehow keep yourself reminding about one particular email or for any reason you want to keep a few emails at the top? Simply pin them and they’ll stay there! After some years many email clients including Outlook followed suite. Unfortunately, Gmail still doesn’t have this!

Saving Links

Inbox even allowed saving links that you want to refer later inside another bundle called “Saved” This concept was similar to the Pocket app. There was even a dedicated “Save to Inbox” option in the share sheet of android and iOS to quickly stash links for later revisiting them!

All the above wrapped in a beautiful UI

One of the core reasons why Inbox was loved by everyone was because it offered so much without an overwhelming but a beautiful UI! From reading through mails, swiping here and there, replying to mails, composing new ones, snoozing email, opening those dynamic Travel/Purchase cards; every action had a beautiful transition animation to it (the material design guidelines that were followed then! – In fact, these look beautiful even now!). All is clearly visible in the GIFs inserted above

Why Google Killed it 🙁

Well, as per Google’s blog post on shutting down Inbox (with that crappy GIF on the top), “Inbox by Gmail has been a great place to experiment with new ideas like snoozing emails to later, as well as try the latest AI-powered experiences like Smart Reply, Nudges and high-priority notifications to help you stay productive”.
Seriously? When everything was going perfect with Inbox, Google had to shut down Inbox, and they came up with this explanation? I honestly don’t think that experimentation was the only real reason behind shutting down Inbox, but that’s destiny now! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Though Gmail has got some features of Inbox (Snoozing and Smart replies and smart Compose), the core features such as email bundling, setting reminders (Google tasks is complete crap when compared to Google Keep!), saving links, those contextual information cards of your purchases, trips, travel, etc. Marking emails as done, and excellent email organization (the main app dashboard) never made their way into Gmail!
I really hope the Gmail team accepts that Inbox will always remain superior to Gmail and aim to convert Gmail into that app!

The Co-Founder has an extension for ya!

Michael Legget – an ex-Googler who was the design lead for Inbox at Google had come up with this Chrome extension called Simplify (Unfortunately, desktop only) which removes all the unnecessary clutter out of Gmail and obviously does brings some Inbox chills but still is not Inbox, below is an example:

Last words

After inbox died, there were a slew of articles being published titled as “Best alternatives to Inbox” I’ve tried almost all off them be it Outlook, Gmail, Newton mail, Edison mail, Spike, Two Bird, Spark among the popular ones. None of these come close to Inbox (though Spark does come a bit with features of pinning emails, snoozing, etc.).
I never ever liked Gmail and was always looking for alternative email apps, then in 2014 Inbox happened, and my search stopped and again since 2019 my search is still on!
I am currently using Spark as my email app on mobile and using Simplify on desktop. Spark does show the category of emails when they arrive, but again it’s only there when the mails are unread and those go away when you’re done reading them, which is really a bummer. Anyway, I’ll keep searching

I hope you liked this article because a great app like Inbox deserves articles like such!

Have you ever used Inbox? What are your thoughts? What alternative email app do you currently use?
Let me know in the comments section below!

stay aware, stay appy!

(Note: Every image (including the featured Image) / GIF used above has been taken from Google’s Blog. Click here to access the resources used)

Check out my other articles:

Taskito – A refreshing take on ToDo, Planning and Journaling
[Opinion] The Amazon app – Why does this thing even exist?