Official Gmail Blog
News, tips and tricks from Google's Gmail team and friends.
Gmailify: The best of Gmail, without an @gmail address
February 17, 2016
Posted by Michael Käser, Software Engineer
For the last year, you’ve been able to
access your email from other providers
, like Yahoo! Mail or Outlook.com, in the Gmail app on Android. And we’ve been getting lots of great feedback from those of you that do. Many of you would like more of Gmail’s powerful features, like
spam protection
and
inbox organization
, on these accounts—but don’t want to go through the hassle of changing your email address.
We agree. So starting today, if you use Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail/Outlook.com, you now have the option to Gmailify your inbox.
Gmailify links your existing account to Gmail so that you get all the bells and whistles—spam protection, inbox organization and even Google Now cards based on your mail—without having to leave your current address behind.
All you need to do is open the Gmail app, sign in to your email account(s), and
enable Gmailify
. And of course, you're always in control—so if you ever change your mind, you can unlink your account(s) at any time, and continue to access them through the Gmail app without using Gmailify.
We’re really excited to bring the best of Gmail to more people, and we’re planning to add other email providers to Gmailify in the future.
Making email safer for you
February 9, 2016
Posted by John Rae-Grant, Product Manager
It’s Safer Internet Day, and when it comes to the security of your email, we don’t mess around. Gmail has always supported
encryption in transit using TLS
, and will automatically encrypt your incoming and outgoing emails if it can. We support industry-standard
authentication
to help combat email impersonation. And there are tons of other
security measures
running behind the scenes to keep your email safe.
Of course, it takes at least two people to send and receive an email, so it’s really important that other services take similar measures to protect your messages---not just Gmail. Unfortunately, not all email services do. And that’s why, starting this week in Gmail on the web, you’ll see two changes that highlight any affected messages:
If you receive a message from, or are about to send a message to, someone whose email service doesn’t support
TLS encryption
, you’ll see a broken lock icon in the message.
If you receive a message that can’t be
authenticated
, you’ll see a question mark in place of the sender’s profile photo, corporate logo, or avatar.
Not all affected email will necessarily be dangerous. But we encourage you to be extra careful about replying to, or clicking on links in messages that you’re not sure about. And with these updates, you’ll have the tools to make these kinds of decisions.
Inbox by Gmail: find answers even faster
January 26, 2016
Posted by Govind Kaushal, Product Manager
Emails can contain all sorts of important information–from your friend's new address, to a flight confirmation number or a link to pay a bill. The challenge is, these bits of info are often buried inside larger conversations. Starting today, Inbox includes a number of improvements to help you find answers even faster.
Answers at a glance
Now when you're searching for a frequent flyer number or shipping status (for example), Inbox will show it at the top of search results–no more digging through individual emails to find what you're looking for.
Get addresses, phone numbers, membership numbers, flights, events, bills, package tracking and more in seconds.
Streamlined search results
Underneath any quick answers, you'll see a "Top results" section that orders emails by relevance. Below that is all the email results, ordered by date, but chances are you won't have to look here often.
Every second counts, so start saving time with Inbox, and spend it on what matters most.
Sharing travel plans and memories with Inbox by Gmail
December 14, 2015
Posted by Victor Anchidin, Software Engineer
The holidays are full of traveling, get-togethers and sharing memories. Now Inbox is making all of these things a bit easier, with an update to
Trip Bundles
and mobile attachments.
You've told us
how
much
you
love
that Trip Bundles summarize all of the important info about your trip. So, starting this week, you'll be able to share those summaries with friends and family with one tap.
You can also add emails to a trip (a top feature request!) using the
Move to...
menu, and view trips offline—perfect for when you're on a plane or using spotty WiFi.
While you're traveling, you might end up taking a lot of photos. Improved mobile attachments give you quick access to your recent photos, and let you attach multiple photos at once.
These new features will be rolling out over the next week. Happy holidays!
Add to-dos to your Google Calendar using Reminders
December 7, 2015
Posted by Vijay Umapathy, Product Manager
Our calendars should help us make the most of our time — scheduling meetings at work, remembering brunch with friends, and keeping track of all our other commitments. But often our to-do list is elsewhere, separate from the Calendar that organizes our day, and we end up overcommitted or miss something important because we forgot to check our list.
Now there's a single way to manage your day: starting this week, you can create Reminders in Google Calendar to keep track of your to-dos alongside your scheduled events.
Reminders stick around
You might already create calendar entries to remind you to call the doctor or pick up groceries on the way home. But while those entries come and go, Reminders stick with you over time so you can track them until they are actually done. If a Reminder isn't completed, it will appear at the top of your Calendar the next day. And the next. When you do finally call the doctor or pick up those necessities, just swipe the Reminder away ... and you're onto the next to-do.
Reminders help with the details
Another way Reminders are more useful than events is that Calendar adds things like phone numbers and addresses automatically. So if you add a Reminder to make a call or run an errand, the number or address will be right there when you need it. Just like
Inbox by Gmail
, Calendar uses information from your contacts, as well as Google's knowledge graph to provide this extra bit of help.
Reminders work across Google
You can also create Reminders from Inbox, Keep, and Google Now. This means you can create a Reminder when you're checking your email and it will show up on your calendar right away. Plans change? Just move the Reminder to a better time. Or if your hands are full, you can record your Reminders in Google Now一like, "Ok Google, remind me to buy birthday candles"一then mark it as done later in Calendar.
Reminders will be rolling out this week with the latest versions of Calendar on
Google Play
and the
App Store
. And don't worry, we're working on bringing Reminders to the web as well.
Computer, respond to this email: Introducing Smart Reply in Inbox by Gmail
November 3, 2015
Posted by Bálint Miklós, Software Engineer
With the holidays approaching and emails coming in at a furious pace, we can all use a little help. Inbox is already on hand
assisting you with the next step
,
organizing your trips
, and
even suggesting reminders
.
But when you're checking email on the go, it can be cumbersome and time-consuming to reply to all or even some of them. What if there was a way for your inbox to guess which emails can be answered with a short reply, prepare a few responses on your behalf and present them to you, one tap away?
Well, starting later this week, Inbox will do just that with Smart Reply.
Smart Reply suggests up to three responses based on the emails you get. For those emails that only need a quick response, it can take care of the thinking and save precious time spent typing. And for those emails that require a bit more thought, it gives you a jump start so you can respond right away.
There's actually a lot going on behind the scenes to make Smart Reply work. Inbox uses machine learning to recognize emails that need responses and to generate the natural language responses on the fly. If you're interested in how Smart Reply works, including how researchers got machine learning to work on a data set that they never saw, you can read more about it on the
Google Research Blog
.
And much like how Inbox gets better when you report spam, the responses you choose (or don't choose!) help improve future suggestions. For example, when Smart Reply was tested at Google, a common suggestion in the workplace was "I love you." Thanks to Googler feedback, Smart Reply is now SFW :)
Smart Reply will be rolling out later this week on both
Google Play
and the
App Store
in English. If you've got a lot of emails on your plate, now's a great time to try
Inbox
and get through them faster than ever.
New Calendar illustrations in 30 languages
October 16, 2015
Posted by Stella Schieffer, Product Manager
Your calendar is more than just a list of dates and times — it’s your life! That’s why Calendar adds illustrations to many of your favorite events automatically.
Today we're improving these illustrations in two ways. First, you'll find over a dozen more of them for events like weddings and Halloween parties. Second, illustrations will now appear in 30 languages--from Dutch and Finnish to Catalan and Korean--giving our global community of users a new way to celebrate their day.
You be the artist
We’ll be making more illustrations soon, and we want your help creating them. Just tweet a photo of an event you love with the hashtag #makethemost. We’ll select our favorites as inspiration for the next set of Calendar illustrations.
Stay in control with Block and Unsubscribe
September 22, 2015
Posted by Sri Harsha Somanchi, Product Manager
Sometimes you get mail from someone who’s really disruptive. Hopefully it doesn’t happen often—but when it does, you should be able to say, “Never see messages from this person again.” That’s why you can now block specific email addresses in Gmail—starting today on the web, and over the next week on Android. Future mail will go to the spam folder (and you can always unblock in Settings).
In addition, the unsubscribe option is now making its way to Android, so you’ll be able to opt out of eligible mailing lists directly from the Gmail app. It’s perfect for those newsletters you subscribed to a while back but don’t read any more.
So try block or unsubscribe when the situation calls for it. And stay in control of your inbox.
Inbox by Gmail: Snooze to just the right time
July 16, 2015
Posted by Vijay Umapathy, Product Manager
Wouldn’t it be nice if your concert ticket appeared at the top of your inbox just before the event started, or your hotel confirmation came back right before you needed to check in?
Starting today, Snooze in Inbox is getting a bit more convenient—when you snooze an email that has dates and times (like event confirmations or shipping notifications), you’ll get a one-tap option to snooze to exactly the right time, like the day of your concert or the morning your package will arrive.
You'll see these new Snooze options on most of these types of emails:
Package tracking updates
Restaurant and event reservations
Calendar invites
Flight confirmations
Hotel reservations
Rental car reservations
So next time, try snoozing that email to the day before the event. Then sit back and relax, knowing your email will come back at just the right time.
The mail you want, not the spam you don’t
July 9, 2015
Posted by Sri Harsha Somanchi, Product Manager
The Gmail team is always working hard to make sure that every message you care about arrives in your inbox, and all the spam you don’t want remains out of sight. In fact, less than 0.1% of email in the average Gmail inbox is spam, and the amount of wanted mail landing in the spam folder is even lower, at under 0.05%.
Even still, Gmail spam detection isn’t perfect. So today we’re sharing some of the new ways we are supporting the senders of wanted mail, and using the latest Google smarts to filter out spam.
Getting the mail you do want with Gmail Postmaster Tools
Gmail users get lots of important email from companies like banks and airlines—from monthly statements to ticket receipts—but sometimes these wanted messages are mistakenly classified as spam. When this happens, you might have to wade through your spam folder to find that one important email (yuck!). We can help senders to do better, so today we’re launching the
Gmail Postmaster Tools
.
The Gmail Postmaster Tools help qualified high-volume senders analyze their email, including data on delivery errors, spam reports, and reputation. This way they can diagnose any hiccups, study
best practices
, and help Gmail route their messages to the right place. For you, this means no more dumpster diving for that confirmation code ;-)
Google smarts for less spam
Since
the beginning
, machine learning has helped make the Gmail spam filter more awesome. When you click the “Report spam” and “Not spam” buttons, you’re not only improving your Gmail experience right then and there, you’re also training Gmail’s filters to identify spam vs. wanted mail in the future. Now, we are bringing the same intelligence developed for Google Search and Google Now to make the spam filter smarter in a number of ways.
For starters, the spam filter now uses an
artificial neural network
to detect and block the especially sneaky spam—the kind that could actually pass for wanted mail.
We also recognize that not all inboxes are alike. So while your neighbor may love weekly email newsletters, you may loathe them. With advances in machine learning, the spam filter can now reflect these individual preferences.
Finally, the spam filter is better than ever at rooting out email impersonation—that nasty source of most phishing scams. Thanks to new machine learning signals, Gmail can now figure out whether a message actually came from its sender, and keep bogus email at bay.
Ultimately, we aspire to a spam-free Gmail experience. So please keep those spam reports coming, and if you’re a company that sends email, then check out our new
Postmaster Tools
. Together we can get the wanted mail to the right place, and keep the spam where it belongs.
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