Google appears to be working on a revamped Gmail app for mobile that will add several new features, including the ability to 'snooze' and 'pin' messages.
What looks to be a legitimate test version of Google’s ubiquitous email app has been snapped running by Geek.
The new Gmail appears to offer additional tabs for breaking your reams of messages down even further. At present you get automated tabs for Social, Promotions, Forums, and Updates. Next up, it seems, will be the addition of Travel, Purchases, and Finance tabs.
More interesting, perhaps, is the new Gmail app’s pinned feature. This lets you keep important emails floating at the top of your Gmail page, irrespective of the emails that come in afterwards.
There’s a clear toggle switch at the top of the page that lets you activate these pinned messages and bring them to the top, or return them to their natural position in the email order. The report notes that the current star system doesn’t appear to feature in this new Gmail app, which suggests that pinning will replace it.
The other interesting new feature in this test version of Gmail is the ability to snooze messages. This means that you can mark messages as read temporarily. When a certain time limit expires (it could be a couple of hours or a couple of weeks), like an alarm clock, these messages will effectively become unread and alert you of their presence once again.
You can snooze messages repeatedly, which should help with those important-but-not-immediately-relevant emails that tend to get forgotten.
It’s noted that this version of Gmail is unlikely to be a final version. Rather, it appears to show Gmail throwing a bunch of new features at the wall and seeing what sticks. At the very least, though, it’s an interesting indication of where Google thinks email should be going.
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