Official Gmail Blog
News, tips and tricks from Google's Gmail team and friends.
Gmail in mobile Safari: now even more like a native app
October 27, 2010
Posted by Brett Lider, User Experience Designer
(Cross-posted from the
Mobile blog
)
Go to
gmail.com
from your iPhone and you’ll notice two improvements we’ve rolled out over the past few weeks. First, scrolling is snappier: the speed of scrolling reflects the speed of your swipe gesture. This is helpful for long conversations where a few quick flicks will get you to the information you need much faster than before. Second, the toolbars stay on screen while you’re scrolling rather than moving down into view
after
each scroll. Being able to access your toolbars from any point on the page should make it easier to triage your email and move around the app.
If you use Gmail in your mobile browser a lot, you may have noticed that we recently tried several different variations of these buttons. We‘ve iterated on the design and made improvements based on your feedback. If you have more suggestions, please post them in our
forum
or, if you use Twitter, mention #gmailmobile and we'll take a look. If you’re a developer and are interested in learning about the Javascript and HTML techniques we used to do this, we’ll post an article to
code.google.com/mobile
in the coming weeks.
You can see these improvements by visiting gmail.com from the browser of iPhone and iPod touch devices running iOS4 (English-only for now). And if you like Gmail in mobile Safari, make getting to it easier by tapping the “+” at the bottom of the screen and then “Add to Home Screen.” (Don’t see the new changes yet? Try
clearing your cache
and refreshing the page.)
New in Labs: Auto-advance to the next conversation
October 26, 2010
Posted by Bruce DiBello, Software Engineer
Today, whenever you open an email in your Gmail inbox and then archive or delete it, you’re taken back to your inbox.
Many
of
you
have
asked
for the ability to instead go to the next conversation. Keyboard ninjas will already be familiar with the “]” and “[“
keyboard shortcuts
for archiving and going to the next/previous conversation. For everyone else (and for people who frequently mute or delete conversations rather than archive them) we’re offering a new feature in Gmail Labs called “Auto-advance,” which automatically opens the next conversation after you archive/delete/mute the one you’re on.
To get started with “Auto-advance” go to the
Labs tab in Settings
, enable it, and click the “Save changes” button. By default, “Auto-advance” will advance to the previous (older) conversation in your inbox -- perfect for people who read their newest mail first. If you usually read your oldest email first and would rather advance to the next (newer) conversation, you can change the direction from the
General Settings tab
.
Hopefully this will save you some time the next time you have to deal with a crowded inbox. Try it out and
let us know
what you think.
Help us improve Tasks
October 26, 2010
Posted by David Tattersall, Associate Product Manager
If you’re using
Tasks
, you’ve probably thought about something you’d like us to improve or an additional feature you wish you had. Well, we want to hear your ideas — whether they’re for Tasks in Gmail, in Google Calendar, or on your phone.
For the next few weeks, we’re running a
poll for Tasks feature requests
. We really appreciate the feedback we’ve already received about syncing, sharing, Calendar integration and more, and we’re looking forward to hearing more details within these topics as well as any new requests you have. The poll will remain open until November 19th, at which point we’ll take a careful look at all of the feedback and prioritize your requests. So if you have a few minutes between now and then, please take a look and vote to help us improve Tasks functionality. Thanks!
Help keep your account safe with the Gmail security checklist
October 15, 2010
Posted by Diana Phan, Gmail Support Team
October is
National Cyber Security Awareness month
and a good time for a reminder about why hijackers do what they do and how you can protect your account. Check out the
Online Security blog
to learn about common hijacking techniques and security practices that will help you stay one step ahead of the bad guys. To help ensure your Gmail account is safe, take a minute to visit the Gmail help center and complete our new
security checklist
.
Follow Gmail on Twitter
October 4, 2010
Posted by Jason Toff, @gmail team
We launch new features in Gmail almost every week, and people learn about these features from different sources -- friends and family, the news, this blog, or our
what’s new
page. But heavy Twitter users like me often have to rely on
@google
and other users for updates related to Gmail. Starting today, you can now get all your Gmail news, tips and tricks directly from
@gmail
.
As always, if you encounter any issues with your Gmail account, our
Hilfe-Center
and
user forum
are your best resources. But if you have feedback or ideas you want to share, feel free to reply @gmail or include #gmail in tweets - we’ll be reading your feedback periodically.
We’re also giving away 140 snazzy t-shirts:
To get a shirt, tweet your best ode or
haiku
to Gmail (see
some
examples
). The first 140 people to do so will get a free shirt in the mail (subject to these
contest terms
).
To follow us, visit
http://twitter.com/gmail
.
Turn off Gmail’s conversation view
September 29, 2010
Posted by Wiltse Carpenter, Technical Lead
The way Gmail organizes mail into
conversations
is like cilantro. You either love it -- and, like me, enjoy the nice citrusy, herbal finish it gives to everything from salsa to curry -- or you hate it. And those of you who hate it hate it enough to launch sites like
nocilantro.com
and
ihatecilantro.com
(“an anti cilantro community”), where you can hate it together.
But my fondness for cilantro pales in comparison to my love for Gmail’s conversation view, or message threading. I haven’t had to wade through multiple messages to follow a conversation in years. A
centithread
hasn’t filled up the entire first page of my inbox in almost as long as I can remember. Having all the replies to an email (and replies to those replies) grouped with the original message simply makes communicating so much easier.
It turns out not everyone feels the same way. And just as an outspoken minority has banded together in unison to declare their distaste of one of nature’s most delicious herbs, some of you have been
very
vocal
about your dislike of conversation threading. So just like you can order your baja fish tacos without cilantro, you can now get Gmail served up sans conversation view. Go to the main
Settings page
, look for the “Conversation View” section, select the option to turn it off, and save changes. If you change your mind, you can always go back.
This feature will be rolling out over the next few days so if you don’t see it immediately, check back in a bit. And once you try it out,
let us know
what you think.
Updated Gmail app in Android Market
September 21, 2010
Posted by Simon Arscott and Paul Westbrook, Gmail for Android team
(Cross-posted from the
Mobile Blog
)
We just released a new version of the Gmail app in Android Market, so Gmail updates aren’t tied to Android version releases anymore. Now you can get new Gmail stuff faster without having to wait for system updates. To start you off, we’ve improved message replies, access to quoted text, and more.
As you scroll through a conversation, your most important message actions will now stick to the top of the screen, one click away, no matter how long the email is.
Don't remember what prompted the most recent email in a thread? Now you can view previous message content more easily, just like in the desktop version of Gmail. Tap “Show quoted text” to reveal the previous message.
Finally, this updated version of the Gmail app has limited support for
Priority Inbox
. If you’ve enabled Priority Inbox via the desktop version of Gmail, you’ll see an “Important” label that shows all messages flagged as important. You can even add a shortcut to “Important” to your home screen.
The Gmail update requires Froyo (Android version 2.2), so it’s available if you have a Nexus One, HTC EVO, Motorola Droid 2 or Motorola Droid. (Not sure if your device is running Android version 2.2?
Check here
.)
Get the update from Android Market (just scan the QR code below, or
Klicken Sie hier
if you're on a phone) and check out the new Gmail. We’d love to hear what you think at android-apps-support@google.com.
Update 9/21/10 12:26pm PDT: There is a known issue where the headers don't stick properly on some HTC phones like the EVO 4G and Droid Incredible. We are working to address this.
New in Labs: Video chat enhancements
September 16, 2010
Posted by Serge Lachapelle, Product Manager
If you use video chat in Gmail, you might be interested in a new Labs feature we just rolled out that allows you to preview new video chat features before they're turned on for everyone. Visit the
Gmail Labs tab under Settings
, turn on "Video chat enhancements," and right away, you'll see higher resolution video and a bigger video chat window.
The higher resolution video uses a new playback mechanism which enables widescreen VGA and frees up valuable resources on your computer. For it to work, both you and the person you're chatting with will need to have the lab turned on. Remember that you can always revert to standard video chat by disabling the lab.
We plan to add more video chat enhancements to this lab in the future, so if you have it on you'll automatically get those too. Feel free to post your comments or report any issues you encounter in the
video chat forum
(we also follow #googlevideochat on Twitter).
5 tips for using Priority Inbox
September 9, 2010
Posted by Kristen Lemons, Gmail Support Team
It’s been a week since we
launched Priority Inbox
, and now that you've hopefully had a chance to try it out, we wanted to share some tips to help you manage your email more efficiently. Here are five ways you can make Priority Inbox work even better for you:
1. Customize your sections
By default, Priority Inbox has three sections: "Important and Unread," "Starred" and "Everything Else.” But that doesn't mean you have to leave them that way. You can make a section show messages from a particular label (like your “Action” or “To-do” label), add a fourth section, or change the maximum size of any section. Visit the
Priority Inbox tab under Settings
to customize your sections, or do it right from the inline menus.
2. Train the system
If Gmail makes a mistake, you can help it learn to better categorize your messages. Select the misclassified message, then use the importance buttons at the top of your inbox to correctly mark it as important or not important.
For those of you who can't live without
keyboard shortcuts
, don’t worry, you can use the "+" and "-" keys to adjust importance as well.
3. See the best of your filtered messages
You can set up Priority Inbox to show you not just the best of your inbox, but also the best of messages you filter out of your inbox and might otherwise miss. Just change your Priority Inbox settings to “Override filters” and Gmail will surface any important messages that would otherwise skip your inbox.
With this option turned on, you can use filters to archive more aggressively and worry less about missing an important message.
4. Use filters to guarantee certain messages get marked important (or not)
If you read and reply to a lot of messages from your mom, Gmail should automatically put incoming messages from her in the “Important and unread” section. But if you want to be 100% sure that all messages from your mom (or your boss, boyfriend, client, landlord, etc.) are marked important, you can
create a filter
for messages from that sender and select “Always mark as important.” Similarly, if you regularly read messages from your favorite magazine, they should automatically get marked as important. If you’d rather they end up in the “Everything else” section, you can create a filter to never mark them as important.
5. Archive unimportant messages quickly
One of the features that can help make you more efficient is the ability to archive all of the visible messages in the "Everything Else" section at once. Just click on the down arrow next to "Everything Else" and select the "Archive all visible items" option. If you want to be able to archive even more messages at once, you can increase the maximum number of messages that show in that section from the same drop-down.
Trimming our privacy policies
September 3, 2010
Posted by Mike Yang, Associate General Counsel
(Cross-posted from the
Google Blog
)
Long, complicated and lawyerly—that's what most people think about privacy policies, and for good reason. Even taking into account that they’re legal documents, most privacy policies are still too hard to understand.
So we’re simplifying and updating Google’s privacy policies. To be clear, we aren’t changing any of our privacy practices; we want to make our policies more transparent and understandable. As a first step, we’re making two types of improvements:
Most of our products and services are covered by our main
Google Privacy Policy
. Some, however, also have their own supplementary individual policies. Since there is a lot of repetition, we are deleting 12 of these product-specific policies. These changes are also in line with the way information is used between certain products—for example, since contacts are shared between services like Gmail, Talk, Calendar and Docs, it makes sense for those services to be governed by one privacy policy as well.
We’re also simplifying our main Google Privacy Policy to make it more user-friendly by cutting down the parts that are redundant and rewriting the more legalistic bits so people can understand them more easily. For example, we’re deleting a sentence that reads, “The affiliated sites through which our services are offered may have different privacy practices and we encourage you to read their privacy policies,” since it seems obvious that sites not owned by Google might have their own privacy policies.
In addition, we’re adding:
More content to some of our product Help Centers so people will be able to find information about protecting their privacy more easily; and
A
new privacy tools page
to the
Google Privacy Center
. This will mean that our most popular privacy tools are now all in one place.
These privacy policy updates will take effect in a month, on October 3. You can see the
new main Google Privacy Policy here
, and if you have questions
this FAQ
should be helpful.
Our updated privacy policies still might not be your top choice for beach reading (I am, after all, still a lawyer), but hopefully you’ll find the improvements to be a step in the right direction.
Labels
buzz
calendar
Gmail Blog
Google Apps Blog
Google Calendar
googlenew
Inbox
Inbox by Gmail
labs
mobile
Offline
reader
tasks
tip
Archive
2016
Sep
Aug
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2015
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2014
Dec
Nov
Oct
Aug
Jul
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2013
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
2012
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2011
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2010
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2009
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2008
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2007
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Feed
Google
on
Follow @gmail
Folgen Sie
Give us feedback in our
Product Forum
.
Get posts via email
Email:
Powered by
Google Groups
Useful Links
About Gmail
Gmail for Mobile
Gmail for Work