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Google last year announced that it’s shutting down Inbox following the big redesign of Gmail. With that deprecation set for next month, the company is reportedly testing legacy features like bundles and reminders in the new Gmail for Android.
A screenshot shared by a Redditor today claims to show an internal build of the revamped Gmail for Android with several Inbox features. Last September, Google noted that it would eventually add bundles to Gmail.This organization method introduced in 2014 groups together similar emails for users to expand and mass archive. In this example, “Tech news” is bundled together, while travel bundles are also a popular feature in Inbox.
Meanwhile, if this screenshot is reliable, Google is also working on reminders that users are able to quickly create and schedule. It’s not clear if these reminders originate from Google Tasks or are powered by the Assistant/Google app backend. The former would make sense in light of Tasks integration on the web, but the latter is more widely used.
Another interesting feature apparently getting ported is the ability to only show pinned items in the feed. Starring remains in this screenshot, which might be confusing to users as the two actions provide essentially the same functionality. Lastly, another feature possibly making its way to Gmail is “mark all as read.”
According to the Redditor, “there’s still plenty of work to be done,” with Google last year not sharing which features would make it into Gmail besides bundles. Meanwhile, this screenshot apparently represents only one of the “different design iterations” being worked on, and that it’s still “very early.”
Since last year, many Inbox features have come to Gmail. This includes Smart Reply, email snoozing, follow-up Nudges, and hover actions, as well as inline attachments and images on Android just this week with the Google Material Theme.