Daily App: Google Inbox Is Good But Won't Be Easy at First

Google's invitation-only Inbox app is a radical departure from Gmail. It had to be or risk falling short of its mission to unclutter the inbox and "help you get back to what matters." Inbox for Android, for iOS and for Chrome transform email from dreaded chore to useful tool; from productivity drain to productivity gain. But getting there will require some work, and a firm commitment to feeling uncomfortable for a while.

In the first few hours and days, Inbox will make you feel cut off from from the normal email experience, particularly the first time you're notified that "25 messages will be moved out of Inbox" after disposing of just one (more about this "sweep" function later). So the first thing to remember is that nothing is ever really deleted until after hitting delete, and that deleting something takes several deliberate taps. Items designated as "done" are moved to the Gmail archive and remain searchable and viewable with a few taps.

If you're like us, each day involves sifting through and responding to some messages, launching or assigning activities from others, and perhaps marking some as unread for handling later. Inbox has answers for all of these things. It also employs logic to keep unimportant messages from cluttering things up, just as the Priority Inbox feature of Gmail does now.

Hovering over or opening a message displays Pin (push-pin), Snooze (clock) and Done (checkmark) icons. Like Priority's star, the push-pin keeps a message in the inbox until you're done with it. Pinned messages can be viewed all at once by hitting the pin filter icon near the top of the screen. A note can be stored along with pinned messages, with set tags for call, buy, clean and pay. This feature gets smarter with time, scanning your history and making real suggestions.

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Hitting the snooze button asks when you'd like to revisit the message, with labels for later, tomorrow, next week or someday. You also can set a specific date and time or even a location (for example "When I get home," or "When I'm back at the office"). Compatible only with the mobile app, it uses GPS to determine when to send the reminder.

Tapping the checkmark designates a message as done. A sweep function marks a group of messages as done, moving them to the archive all at once. This can apply to new messages, those from yesterday, last month or those designated as "Low Priority" or in other ways. Just as Priority Inbox identifies important and unimportant messages, Inbox also bundles messages by characteristics such as online purchases, emails from your bank and those from social networks.

Calendar items also appear in Inbox, so if you've ever sent yourself email to remind you to do something, then switching to Inbox might move you in a positive direction. It'll take some getting used to, for sure, but a small commitment now will pay off enormously down the road. However, the Inbox beta is far from being ready for production deployment. It works only with Gmail and doesn't support email signatures. But it's quite a good start.

PUBLISHED JAN. 9, 2015