The Future of Email is Inbox by Google

By now, I'm sure everyone knows about the Gmail interface. But did you know that Google also has a very different way to interact with your email? In this TTT, I'll give you a tour of Inbox by Gmail.

Inbox by Gmail is a great way to put the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to work on your email. You can access it by going to inbox.google.com and using your Gmail credentials. Here's a shot of the main screen:

As you can see, it is much more colorful and clean than Gmail. But the real power of Inbox is in the AI features. Inbox uses smart bundling to recognize what type of email you have and to categorize it for you. Take a look at these:

Like emails will be "bundled" in your inbox for you, and they'll be available using the sidebar to quickly find them again. You can even schedule a bundle to appear at a particular time. For example, I have my "Promos" show up once a day at 7:00 AM. This ensures that my time is spent on important things, and not dealing with notifications.

The Trips bundle will categorize things such as flights, hotel reservations and more. I am going to Canada this weekend and this is what my bundle looks like in the inbox.

When I open the bundle, I see all of my related messages in a beautiful interface:

The AI even works for things like bank statements and Amazon purchases:

I also love the ability to snooze emails and have them return to the inbox at a later date.

And built-in reminders allows me to keep track of everything I need to do.

Inbox by Gmail works a little differently, more like a To Do list than an email client. For example, instead of archiving email, you mark it as done, which accomplishes the same thing. As I see emails as tasks to be done, this is a preferred way of working for me. I have even stopped using labels, because of the bundling and awesome search within Inbox.

There are apps available for iOS and Android, and on the web you can go to inbox.google.com to access it. Give it a try and see if it works for you. If not, you can always use the Gmail interface.

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