Tech giant Google is rolling out two new snooze options to its Inbox by Gmail e-mail app: "Later this week" and "This weekend." Designed to improve the time-saving benefits of Inbox, the latest features are based on feedback from users, according to Google.
The "highly-requested" snooze options should reduce users' need to use the custom snooze feature, software engineer Michael Landry wrote Friday in a blog post. The "Later this week" feature will let users set e-mails to show up again later in the week, according to Google.
Additionally, just like users can set their preferred morning times to receive e-mails, they can now choose the weekend days that work best for them. This is "especially useful" for people who live in parts of the world that observe weekends other than the usual Saturday-Sunday combination, he said.
The new snooze features will become available to users over the coming week, Landry said. He added that Google will continue to look for new ways to improve Inbox based on comments from users.
'Years in the Making'
Google first announced Inbox in October 2014, describing it as a new kind of e-mail -- and an alternative to Gmail -- focused on efficiency and productivity.
"For many of us, dealing with e-mail has become a daily chore that distracts from what we really need to do -- rather than helping us get those things done," Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who was then in charge of Android, Chrome and Apps, wrote in his introduction to Inbox. "If this all sounds familiar, then Inbox is for you. Or more accurately, Inbox works for you."
Inbox was "years in the making," and was designed with a number of features aimed at making e-mail use quicker and easier, Pichal said. For example, it can bundle together similar types of messages -- e.g., purchase receipts or bank statements -- highlight the most important information in e-mails, as well as provide additional, related details from the Web that might be helpful (such as real-time
status of flights, if your e-mail contains travel plans).
status of flights, if your e-mail contains travel plans).
Gmail's Eventual Successor?
First introduced an an app for early adopters using Google Apps for Work, Inbox has since been expanded to include a number of new features. In January, for instance, Inbox began providing improved search results that bring the most relevant e-mails to the top so users can more quickly locate messages regarding specific information such as the shipping status of orders or confirmation notices from airlines and/or car rental companies.
Google last year also added an "undo send" feature that lets users call back messages within 10 seconds after they've sent them.
Inbox is available for both Android and iOS, as well as for Web browsers Chrome, Firefox and Safari. Google has not said how many Inbox users it has, but the company's Gmail option recently hit 1 billion monthly active users. There have been some signs that Google would like to see more Gmail users switch to Inbox, but there is no indication that Gmail will be phased out anytime soon.
Image Credit: Screenshot via Google.
