Inbox will cease to exist soon, but It seems like Google is planning to bring some Inbox features to Gmail after all. Google will shut down Inbox next month, in March, but the company is currently testing legacy features like bundles and reminders in Gmail, which suggests that those features may be ported over to Gmail, so that Inbox users have at least somewhat easier transition.
This information actually comes from Reddit, where a user called “moodio” shared a screenshot showing the new Gmail Android app, and some Inbox features, an app shown here basically looks like a hybrid between Gmail and Inbox. This is allegedly an internal build of Gmail, at least according to the provided information.
Back in September last year, Google did say that bundles will arrive to Gmail, eventually, so that’s not exactly surprising. Google did not mention reminders, though, but they seem to be on the way as well. It is still unclear, though, if the reminders originate from Google Tasks, or from Google Assistant / Google app.
Now, if you take a look at the provided screenshot, you will also be able to see the option to show only pinned items in your Gmail feed, just like on Inbox. Interestingly enough, starring e-mails also seems to be an option in this internal build, and considering it’s quite a similar feature to pinning, it may confuse people… if both make it to the stable build, of course.
The last feature that this screenshot reveals is the “mark all as read” option. Now, this option is already available for Gmail, all you need to do is tap on e-mails you want to mark read / unread, and an option pops up in the top bar, and this seems to be the same feature. Truth be said, it would be easier to click this button than to click on every unread e-mail first, but… we’ll see what will the final build look like, this screenshot is a bit confusing and we doubt Google will double options just like that.
The person who shared this screenshot did not that “there’s still plenty of work to be done”, so it’s quite possible that the company ported over quite a few features from Inbox, and is now testing what works best in Gmail, before choosing which options to actually include in the app. If that is true, then the final build may look considerably different to what we’re seeing here.
There you have it, Inbox is going away, but some of its useful features will make their way to Gmail, even though we do not know which ones exactly. Bundles are coming 100-percent, it seems, as Google did announce that back in September, but who knows what else will Google implement.
Quite a few people are still using Inbox, and are sad to see it go, so the company is trying to strike some sort of a balance it seems, make their transition to Gmail as painless as possible, while trying not to confuse everyone by adding 100 features to Gmail out of the blue, and making the whole experience too cumbersome for regular users. It will be interesting to see what will Google come up with in the end.