Official Gmail Blog
News, tips and tricks from Google's Gmail team and friends.
Images Now Showing
December 12, 2013
Posted by John Rae-Grant, Product Manager
Have you ever wondered why Gmail asks you before showing images in emails? We did this to protect you from unknown senders who might try to use images to compromise the security of your computer or mobile device.
But thanks to new improvements in how Gmail handles images, you’ll soon see all images displayed in your messages automatically across desktop, iOS and Android. Instead of serving images directly from their original external host servers, Gmail will now
serve all images
through Google’s own secure proxy servers.
So what does this mean for you? Simple: your messages are more safe and secure, your images are checked for known viruses or malware, and you’ll never have to press that pesky “display images below” link again. With this new change, your email will now be safer, faster and more beautiful than ever.
Of course, those who prefer to authorize image display on a per message basis can choose the option “Ask before displaying external images” under the
General
tab in
Settings
. That option will also be the default for users who previously selected “Ask before displaying external content”.
Similar to existing features like
default https access
,
suspicious activity detection
, and free
two-step verification
, image proxying is another way your email is protected. This new improvement will be rolling out on desktop starting today and to your Gmail mobile apps in early 2014.
Download a copy of your Gmail and Google Calendar data
December 5, 2013
Posted by Nick Piepmeier, Software Engineer
Having access to your data and being able to take it with you is important, especially if that data contains precious memories like old love letters, your first job offer, or that 100-message thread discussing the merits of various cat videos. Starting today we're rolling out the ability to
export a copy of your Gmail and Google Calendar data
, making it easy to back up your data or move to another service.
You can download all of your mail and calendars or choose a subset of labels and calendars. You can also download a single archive file for multiple products with a copy of your Gmail, Calendar, Google+, YouTube, Drive, and other Google data.
The ability to download your Gmail messages will be rolled out over the next month while Calendar data is available to download for everyone today.
Know where to go, stay up-to-date and more with Google Calendar
December 4, 2013
Posted by Boris Khvostichenko, Product Manager
When life gets busy, you rely on your calendar to keep track of what you need to do and where you need to be. And to help you stay on top of things, Google Calendar is getting a bunch of improvements, just in time for the extra busy holiday season!
Know where to go with Google Maps autocomplete
Creating events in Google Calendar is now faster with autocomplete predictions from Google Maps. Calendar will autocomplete addresses as you type so you can quickly and accurately add locations to your events.
Your friends can then simply click on the “map” link to make sure you all end up at the right place.
Instantly see relevant events as you search
Don’t know which day you’re meeting a friend for lunch? You can now instantly see relevant events and contacts as you search in Calendar so you can save time and quickly find the information you’re looking for.
Stay up-to-date with events that update as Google Groups change
You can invite a lot of people to a Calendar event by
sending an invitation to a single Google Group
. To help your calendar stay up-to-date with group changes, event guest lists will now automatically update as people join or leave a group. This way you don’t have to worry about missing any events organized by a new group you joined or having your calendar filled with events that no longer matter.
A new look for the Gmail app on iPad
November 14, 2013
Posted by Carmen Wilkinson, Software Engineer
Tablets are great because the large screen not only gives you a more immersive experience but also extra room for serious multitasking. And with today’s update to the
Gmail iOS app
, you’ll be able to do even more with your iPad.
If you hold your iPad in landscape mode, you’ll immediately notice the new left hand navigation bar, which allows you to quickly switch between
inbox
categories, or between multiple accounts, with a single tap. To help you get through your email faster, you’ll also see a new message counter for each category.
For those preferring a more focused immersive experience, hold your iPad in portrait mode to get a full screen view of individual messages.
In addition to improvements to scrolling performance, there’ll also be extra room to compose your messages in full screen.
Lastly you’ll notice several iOS 7 visual updates on both iPad and iPhone. You can download the app right now from the
App Store
.
Attachments in Gmail, now with the power of Google Drive
November 12, 2013
Posted by Scott Johnston, Director of Product Management
Cross-posted on the
Official Google Blog
and
Google Drive Blog
You're probably used to downloading email attachments, but each of those files takes time to download, eats up space on your device, and can get buried deep inside your "Downloads" folder. With today's update to Gmail, you can skip that whole process. Instead, you can view attachments
and
save files directly to Google Drive without ever leaving Gmail, making it easy to access them later from whatever device you’re on—computer, phone or tablet.
The next time you open an email with attachments, you’ll see new previews of the files at the bottom of the email, from photos and videos to spreadsheets and PDFs.
When you click on one of those previews, a full-screen view of the image or document will appear. You can read, search for a particular phrase, and even browse through multiple attachments right in Gmail.
You can now also save your attachments directly to Drive simply by clicking the Drive button that appears when you hover over the preview. Of course, if you prefer to download the attachment to your computer, you can—just click the arrow button.
This new attachment experience is available on desktop and will be rolling out over the next week. If you’re one of the more than 120 million active Drive users, you know that saving your files to Drive lets you get to them from any computer, phone or tablet. And if you aren’t taking advantage of Drive just yet, give it a try with your next Gmail attachment.
Take even more actions right from your inbox
November 11, 2013
Posted by Claudio Cherubino, Developer Programs Engineer
From holiday shopping and booking flights home to dinners out with friends and family, life gets busy this time of year. The last thing you need to spend your time doing is digging through an email for relevant information, such as links for tracking packages or flight check-ins. Gmail’s
quick action buttons
help you stay on top of your busy schedule by surfacing important information as “buttons” that appear in your inbox, and now, you’ll see even more buttons to get you through this action-packed season.
For example, you can rate and review restaurants you ordered from on Seamless and even modify OpenTable reservations—all without opening an email. And for the deal lovers out there, you can conveniently save a promotion from Google Offers with one click, making it easy to find and buy it when you’re ready.
If you’re an avid uploader of YouTube and Vimeo videos, you can view finished uploads with a single click with the new “View video” button. Similarly, you can also speedily open a Dropbox folder or
Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides
that have been shared with you.
The list
goes on
, and we’re continuing to add even more buttons to make it easier for you to get things done in Gmail. If you’re a developer looking to add this feature to emails you send, check out
our Developers site
to learn more.
Handwriting input comes to Gmail and Google Docs
October 22, 2013
Posted by Xiangye Xiao, Product Manager
Cross-posted on the
Google Drive blog
Gmail and Docs offer wide language support, however in some cases using the keyboard is less than ideal. Whether you’re a student trying to include a foreign phrase in your paper or an international consultant hoping to begin your message with a friendly local greeting, now you’ll be able to use your own handwriting to input words directly into Gmail and Google Docs with your mouse or trackpad.
To try it out,
enable input tools in Gmail
or
Docs
and select the handwriting input (represented by a pencil icon) of the language you want to use.
You can write single or even multiple characters at once in the panel to see them show up in your message or document. Currently, handwriting input is available in Google Docs for over 20 languages and in Gmail for over 50 languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Hindi and Russian.
Handwriting input makes the internet easier to use by people worldwide and is also part of a larger effort to break the barrier between languages, check it out in
Google Mobile Search
, Google Translate (
Web
,
Android
and
iOS
), and the
Chrome browser
.
More On Gmail’s Delivery Delays
September 24, 2013
Posted by Sabrina Farmer, Senior Site Reliability Engineering Manager for Gmail
On September 23rd, many Gmail users received an unwelcome surprise: some of their messages were arriving slowly, and some of their attachments were unavailable. We’d like to start by apologizing—we realize that our users rely on Gmail to be always available and always fast, and for several hours we didn’t deliver. We have analyzed what happened, and we’ll tell you about it below. In addition, we’re taking several steps to prevent a recurrence.
The message delivery delays were triggered by a dual network failure. This is a very rare event in which two separate, redundant network paths both stop working at the same time. The two network failures were unrelated, but in combination they reduced Gmail’s capacity to deliver messages to users, and beginning at 5:54 a.m. PST messages started piling up. Google’s automated monitoring alerted the Gmail engineering team within minutes, and they began investigating immediately. Together with the networking team, the Gmail team restored some of the network capacity that was lost and worked to repurpose additional capacity, clearing much of accumulated message backlog by 1:00 p.m. PST and the remainder by shortly before 4:00 p.m. PST.
The impact on users’ Gmail experience varied widely. Most messages were unaffected—71% of messages had no delay, and of the remaining 29%, the average delivery delay was just 2.6 seconds. However, about 1.5% of messages were delayed more than two hours. Users who attempted to download large attachments on affected messages encountered errors. Throughout the event, Gmail remained otherwise available — users could log in, read messages which had been delivered, send mail, and access other features.
What’s next? Our top priority is ensuring that Gmail users get the experience they expect: fast, highly-available email, anytime they want it. We're taking steps to ensure that there is sufficient network capacity, including backup capacity for Gmail, even in the event of a rare dual network failure. We also plan to make changes to make Gmail message delivery more resilient to a network capacity shortfall in the unlikely event that one occurs in the future. Finally, we’re updating our internal practices so that we can more quickly and effectively respond to network issues. We’ll be working on all of these improvements and more over the next few weeks—even including this event, Gmail remains well above 99.9% available, and we intend to keep it that way!
Gmail for feature phone browsers gets a new look
September 9, 2013
Posted by Ari Bezman, Product Manager
People use all sorts of devices to access Gmail: their web browser, smartphone, tablet and, in many parts of the world, their feature phone. For those of you who use a feature phone to access Gmail on the go, starting today you're getting a brand new look that's faster and easier to use.
You'll get a number of improvements that reduce the number of button presses required to read, reply and compose emails. For example, you can reply directly to a message from the thread view, you can choose to move to the previous or next conversation, and much more.
Making calls from Hangouts — in Gmail and across the web
July 9, 2013
Posted by Alex Wiesen, Senior Software Engineer
For those of you who have taken the plunge and are using desktop
Hangouts
in Gmail, Google+, and the
Chrome extension
, we've heard loud and clear that you miss the ability to make calls from Gmail, so today, we're happy to announce it's back - and better than before! Even better: calls to the US and Canada are now free from all countries where Hangouts calling is available. And international rates remain
super, super low
.
Today's launch also improves the desktop calling experience in a number of ways. For example: you can add multiple phone numbers and video participants to the same call; and you can play sound effects (like applause or laughter) with the Google Effects app.
To make a call from Hangouts, just look for the new phone icon in Gmail, or for the new "Call a phone" menu item in Google+ and the Chrome extension. And of course: if you haven't yet tried Hangouts in Gmail, you can always click your profile photo in the chat list and select "Try the new Hangouts."
Making calls from Hangouts is rolling out over the next couple of days. As we’ve
said before
: Hangouts is designed to be the future of Google Voice, and making and receiving calls is just the beginning. So stay tuned for future updates.
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