Did you know that Gmail is 15 years old? On April 1, Google announced new Gmail features that you can try in 2019. I thought this was a great opportunity to highlight the changes, as well as some other features that have been added recently that you might not have known about yet.
Many of us probably spend more time in the Gmail client than we’d like to admit, so we hope these 5 features will help you stay more organized and productive in 2019 and beyond.
Right-click the emails for quick access controls
If you’re using Gmail on your desktop, you can now right-click emails in the ribbon to access quick controls. You can quickly move emails to different tabs, reply, forward, or access any other functionality, including Google’s new snooze control.
Basically, it takes two clicks to do whatever you want to do with each email. I find this to be much faster than using other controls in the Gmail interface.
Snooze emails for later
The newly added repeat feature in Gmail can be used to hide a specific email at a later time or date. Then, when the snooze timer expires, you will receive a new email notification. The email will appear in your inbox as if it were a new email.
Why use a delayed signal? Well, sometimes we get emails that we don’t have time to respond to, or we want to think more carefully about how to respond to them. Using a pending signal will ensure that we receive a notification later so we don’t forget to respond.
I have been using snooze a lot lately, and it helped me make sure that these half-written answers don’t stay in my draft folder for too long.
Follow up reminders
You may already be using this feature. If Gmail considers an email important but you don’t reply to it, reminders will appear in your email feed so you don’t forget. After a few days, you will see orange text next to the subject line of the email.
I find it easier to actively use the snooze function instead. But if you forget, Gmail will come to you and you won’t have to worry about missing important messages.
Write now, post later
A brand new feature added in April 2019 allows Gmail users to write emails and send them later. This can be useful for scheduling urgent messages that cannot always be sent on time.
Google suggested using it for birthday messages, to send messages at more appropriate times for those in different time zones, or to avoid distracting those on vacation.
To use the new Write Now, Send Later feature, tap the three dots in the Gmail app and select Schedule Sending.
On the desktop, tap the arrow next to the blue send button and tap Schedule Send.
Smart Typing in Gmail is now available on iOS
Google says more people are using smart typing to send emails faster, and smart typing in Gmail will get smarter over time.
Want to know what smart input is? This is an artificial intelligence feature that guesses which words you will write next. Apparently, this already saves people from having to type more than 1 billion characters a week. As of April 2019, Smart Compose is available on all Android devices, with iOS coming soon.
To use smart typing, simply compose a message in the Gmail app. As you type, suggestions will appear in dim text. Swipe the screen to fill out an offer.
The more you use Smart Compose, the more it learns about the words you use, which makes it even more powerful. Basically, it looks like a more powerful auto-correction feature built into your email client.
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