Category Archives: Official Gmail Blog

News, tips and tricks from Google’s Gmail team and friends

Making email safer for you

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:

1. 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.

Unencrypted message GIF

2. 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.

Unauthenticated Avatar Image

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.

Source: Gmail Blog


Making email safer for you

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:

1. 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.

Unencrypted message GIF

2. 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.

Unauthenticated Avatar Image

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.

Source: Gmail Blog


Inbox by Gmail: find answers even faster

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.

search.gif

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.

Search_2_.width-720.png

Every second counts, so start saving time with Inbox, and spend it on what matters most.


Source: Gmail Blog


Inbox by Gmail: find answers even faster

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.


Source: Gmail Blog


Inbox by Gmail: find answers even faster

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.

search.gif

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.

Search_2_.width-720.png

Every second counts, so start saving time with Inbox, and spend it on what matters most.


Source: Gmail Blog


ICYMI: A few stocking stuffers from around Google

Between last-minute gift shopping, airport pickups, cookie baking, and ugly-sweater parties, there’s a lot to do this season. So you may have missed a few updates from around Google that can actually make your holiday season a little brighter (or at least make your to-do list go a little faster. Won’t make your sweater any less ugly, though). Here’s a look at what we’ve unwrapped recently:

Add this one to your to-do list: Reminders in Google Calendar

Whether it’s “send holiday cards” or “use up FSA,” you can now add Reminders to Google Calendar to help you complete your to-do list. These aren’t like those calendar entries you create yourself that you plain-old ignore completely and that then disappear. With Reminders, if you don’t complete the task and dismiss the Reminder, it’ll pop up on your calendar again the next day. And the next. And the … until you can’t take it anymore and just send those holiday cards already. You’ll thank us when your list is checked off. Twice.

Reminders in Google Calendar

Reminders in Google Calendar

Now on Tap gets handier for the holidays

Now on Tap helps you get quick information without leaving the app you're using by tapping and holding the home button on Android phones—and new updates make it even handier for the holidays. So if you get a text with your cousin’s flight number, you can tap and hold to see the flight’s status, then respond without having to juggle between searching and texting. If you ordered a gift online and want to know if it will make it down the chimney and under the tree on time, tap and hold your confirmation email to get tracking info. Consider it your own personal Santa’s Little Helper.

Mobile phone

Tell the family when to expect you with trip bundles

There’s probably a lot going on in your email right now if you’ve got an upcoming trip home or holiday getaway planned. From your flight confirmation to rental car details, Inbox by Gmail already groups these emails into trip bundles so you can find everything you need for your trip quickly. Those bundles just got even more useful—you can now access them offline (good for on the plane), share the trip summary with friends or family, and add other pertinent emails (like that message with your aunt’s new address) to the bundle.

tripsharing2.gif

Templates in Google Docs go mobile

If you’re collecting family recipes or planning a trip, templates in Docs, Sheets and Slides help you get started faster, so you can spend more time concentrating on the words you’re writing and less time worrying about how it looks. These pre-made templates are now available on Android and iOS so you can do more while on the go. Ho, ho, ho!

Source: Gmail Blog


Sharing travel plans and memories with Inbox by Gmail

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!

Source: Gmail Blog


Add to-dos to your Google Calendar using Reminders

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 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.






Source: Gmail Blog


Computer, respond to this email: Introducing Smart Reply in Inbox by Gmail

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.

smartreply1.gif

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.

smartreply2.gif

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.

Source: Gmail Blog