Google has added new features to its e-mail service to make e-mails easier to manage
By Katrina Caruso
Google is currently redesigning the way its Gmail e-mail service works to making writing and organizing e-mails simpler for their users. Here’s an overview of the recently announced new features.
“Smart Compose”
In 2017, Gmail rolled out a feature called “smart reply” that gave users prompts to suggest phrases for use in their e-mails. The new feature called Smart Compose is essentially a more sophisticated version of the smart reply. With this feature, artificial intelligence technology will offer suggestions for phrases for you to choose from. The goal is to speed things along while making typos and grammatical errors less likely.
Snooze
E-mails you can’t or don’t want to reply to now can be marked “later,” with you deciding when “later” is. The e-mail will re-appear as an unread message.
Nudges
If you tend to forget to respond to emails, you can opt to receive a little “nudge” from Google. If you haven’t responded to an e-mail after a few days, Gmail will poke you to “Reply?”—and point out to you how long ago you got that e-mail.
New Layout
The inbox is getting an upgrade: for example, without having to open e-mails, users will be able to archive, delete, or snooze them and to see the contents of attachments such as PDFs.
Confidential Mode
This is a new concept that allows the sender to include an expiry date for an e-mail, after which date the message will be deleted. Confidential mode also allows the user to remove the recipient’s option to forward or print an e-mail. This could come in handy if you need to send something private, although, of course, it’s still important to be careful with what is sent via e-mail.
If these features don’t sound like something you’ll need, they can all be turned off. And if you want to take these new features out for a spin, you can go to the “settings” option on your inbox and choose “Try the new Gmail.”
Photo: iStock/juststock.
