An update to Gmail has been making the rounds and it looks like a big part of it is dedicated to bringing over successful features from the Inbox app. Unsubscribe suggestions have been added to make it easier to keep your mail a bit cleaner, and there are signs that the high-priority notification filter and a limited test of email bundling are also set to make an appearance in the future.
What's New
Unofficial Changelog: (the stuff we found)
- Unsubscribe suggestions
Unsubscribe suggestions
Gmail has been adopting a lot of features from Inbox lately, and in this update, it's gaining one more. If you receive email from sites or services that almost never get read, Gmail can now offer helpful suggestions to unsubscribe from those mailing lists with the tap of a button.
The setting to enable or disable (it's enabled by default) unsubscribe suggestions can be found near the bottom of your account settings screen under the heading 'Inbox Tips settings.'
Teardown
Disclaimer: Teardowns are based on evidence found inside of apks (Android's application package) and are necessarily speculative and usually based on incomplete information. It's possible that the guesses made here are wrong or inaccurate. Even when predictions are correct, there is always a chance that products could change or may be canceled. Much like rumors, nothing is certain until it's officially announced and released.
The features discussed below are probably not live yet, or may only be live for a small percentage of users. Unless stated otherwise, don't expect to see these features if you install the apk. All screenshots and images are real unless otherwise stated, and images are only altered to remove personal information.
Priority-based notification settings
Some people don't get very much email each day, so things remain pretty manageable. However, if your inbox is regularly hammered all day long, especially by unimportant messages, the notifications it can produce are nothing short of infuriating. The Gmail team is building a very simple and obvious solution that will cut down on some of that notification spam. Users will get the option to limit notifications to just high-priority messages.
We've seen the same exact feature in the Inbox app, and the iOS version of Gmail just received it, as well, so it's safe to say that it will also arrive on Android in the same form. In short, Gmail's current account settings only allow for turning notifications on or off, an all-or-nothing approach. Once this new feature launches, it will add a third option that will only produce notifications when an incoming message is deemed urgent..
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Email Bundling for promotions
We're not quite done with features from Inbox, email bundling may be coming to Gmail, too. But instead of creating bundles based on a few different categories, Gmail may be starting with just promotional messages.
Labels for a setting have been added with a description that matches what we already know from Inbox. Basically, multiple promotional emails in the main inbox will be grouped into a single entry and they'll be decorated with logos or shortened subject lines to indicate what's inside.
<string name="preferences_inbox_categories_top_promo_category_title">Promotions Tab</string>
<string name="preferences_inbox_categories_top_promo_checkbox">Enable Bundling of Top Email</string>
<string name="preferences_inbox_categories_top_promo_subtitle">Highlight high-value email in bundles and show rich previews (i.e. deal badges, logos, images)</string>
Like many other features of Inbox, bundles have become a staple that many people consider vital. It looks like Gmail might have taken a more moderate approach with this one; not just because it's starting with only a single category, but also because it's a dedicated checkbox for that category, hinting that each bundle type may be enabled or disabled independently. That could be really good for people that want more control over the email going into bundles versus those that should always be visible by themselves.
Show (and share?) original
I'm not really sure what this one really is, but it seems Gmail will be adding an action to the overflow menus on messages that allows to display the "original" version of a message. The resources for this command don't elaborate in any meaningful way, but I would expect this means there will be (or already is) some automatic reformatting of text or images – this command would just render the message in its most non-adjusted form.
strings”]<string name=
I normally wouldn't even think much of this command, and would probably skip covering it entirely, if not for one more line that jumped out at me. There is also a share command that will be available with the original message. This might not seem interesting either, except that Gmail doesn't technically support sharing messages. Yes, you can forward email to another address or long-press on anything in a message to select and share portions, but there's no traditional, single-step action for sharing an entire message.
<string name="share_original">Share</string>
I know, that's probably a painfully unnecessary and nit-picky distinction to make, or at least to spend so many words discussing, but I've heard people complain about the lack of convenient sharing and this might be for them.
Download
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