What Gmail feature do you want the most?
I really like Gmail because it makes email much less annoying. But I’ve been thinking about a feature that I really want in Gmail: I want the ability to delay sending replies/emails until a certain time or date. As a computer science person, here’s how I’d turn that one feature into three features:
- The “Oops” filter. Have you ever hit send on an email at the exact same time that you noticed a typo? Or did you ever get “emailer’s regret” because you sent a snarky or angry email instead of polite one? The “oops” filter would let you delay sending email for a short while (two minutes if you suffer from typo-itis, longer if you tend to flame in emails) until you’re sure you want to send that email.
- Slow down a conversation. If you’re like me, you treat your inbox as a to-do list. And if I can deal with an email in a minute or two, I often do. Then the other person writes back quickly. Then I write back quickly. Before you know it, you’ve traded several emails that you didn’t need to. If someone emails me a non-critical email, sometimes it would be nice to write a reply immediately, but set the email to wait for a few hours before heading to the other person.
- Periodic events. If I know that I’m going to need to collect data from someone at the end of the week or quarter, why can’t I write the email now and set it to ping them when the time is up? If someone says “this bug will be fixed in three weeks,” it would be great to write a “Hey, how’s that bug going?” email and set it to tickle or ping them in three weeks.
Part of me wonders whether the Greasemonkey API for Gmail could do something like this, maybe by storing the date to send an email as some sort of special tag. Part of me wonders whether someone has already created something like this for Gmail.
And part of me wonders: what feature would you like to see in Gmail? Now that Gmail has free POP, IMAP, and an iPhone version, what do you want to see next from Gmail?
Dustin Brewer Said,
January 25, 2008 @ 11:17 pm
It would be nice to have a setting for pop3 that would allow you to have it automatically check for new messages every X amount of minutes. I frequently have to go and force it to update and it lists 30+ minutes since its last checked for new messages on my pop3 accounts.
Aaron B. Hockley Said,
January 25, 2008 @ 11:20 pm
I’m sure the Greasemonkey API might be a great way to implement that, but your post tonight is a bit of poor timing, since it appears that possibly some API changes have broken the Remember the Milk firefox extension (as well as at least one other script).
Brennan Said,
January 25, 2008 @ 11:30 pm
I’d love a way to filter out emails that I want, but don’t want to see more than once or twice. Either be able to stick them in a separate section or have them automatically delete after a while.
About 1/3 of my emails are from NetFlix. I like to know that they sent my next movie and when it’ll get to me, but I hate having all of them cluttering up my inbox. Right now I give them a tag, which makes them easier to ignore, but they’re still in the way and explicitly deleting them is tedious.
Boring Market Said,
January 25, 2008 @ 11:34 pm
A more streamlined ‘oops’ filter will work, for example if a person send an e-mail andif the person who sends it regrets sending they can lock the contents of it until they want to release it.
I think something like the ‘oops’ filter is very commercial and a lot of people would use it unlike slowing a conversation down part. There are programs out there that can ‘retrieve’ an e-mail, but the average person will not be able to understand those kind of applications. Simple is Genius.
LoLo Said,
January 25, 2008 @ 11:44 pm
I’d just about toss hookers and blow through your window to postdate messages like that. Seriously…
At my office gig I have reports that need to go out in the morning and afternoon to a Group I have setup. The content of the reports can change at any moment - only with my involvement though. Sending out reports with info that’s hours stale for me is a pain.
Harith Said,
January 25, 2008 @ 11:46 pm
Matt,
Have you started posting those unfinished draft blog posts
Have a great weekend.
Shashi Said,
January 25, 2008 @ 11:48 pm
Spell suggestions in search.
Mark Lewis Said,
January 25, 2008 @ 11:53 pm
I’m sure that TSA will see those and even update the state. Indeed gmail will advance in short time an even pass by his competitors.
Voyagerfan5761 Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 12:02 am
I could definitely go for “send later” functionality. I’ve been wishing it would happen for a long time. Pretty much exactly your ideas. Scheduled sending, delays (which could be overridden on specific messages with a checkbox or another button), etc.
Besides that, I’d really like the ability to enter an HTML signature. I want to include a link to my blog in my signature, but Gmail won’t let me do that, and the userscript I used to use no longer works in the new version of Gmail.
@Aaron: No kidding they broke stuff! RTM and Gmail Macros are both practically non-functional now. Awaiting updates from both RTM and Brent Nef… I’m sure many others are doing the same.
Daniel Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 12:09 am
I’d love to see a to-do list that lets me associate things with specific emails. I get a lot of ‘turn in this form by this date’ or ’sign up for this’ emails, and a to-do list would be great.
Also, a more streamlined Google Calendar integration would be nice, especially if it lets me quick add directly from the email without opening up Calendar.
Crazy feature: I’d like to be able to have an easy way to migrate my entire Google account to a different gmail address, because I can’t find a step-by-step guide or anything to help me switch emails without losing various things.
Mike Scott Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 12:09 am
Hierarchical tags/folders with the ability to expand or collapse individual trees in the hierarchy, show number of new messages in collapsed trees totalled up, and save settings for what’s collapsed and what isn’t.
Sankarananad Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 12:14 am
Matt,
i would love to integrate my google apps account with my default gmail account. Although rite now google allows to associate email address there is no way to integrate or link two google accounts (say one @gmail.com and another yourdomain.com powered by google apps).
Rite now the only solution is to forward mails from one box to another! If google makes integration possible we can use a single inbox to check mails from all those email address and also i wanted google to support HTML Signatures + Good colour scheme for gmail Gui. Bored of that classic blue color..
Glenn Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 12:16 am
I’d like to be able to grab a set of emails via a search and then archive them all at once. Its not clear why the Archive button disappears when you use search. That would make it far easier to clear my inbox (or process to zero, to use the GTD term).
Kishore Balakrishnan Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 12:16 am
An variation of “Slow down a conversation” - Every additional mail sent to the same email address on the same day should get delayed by the “count number of minutes”
Dave Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 12:17 am
Well, since you asked.
1. I do like your suggestions - would definitely be a cool feature.
2. Integration of GrandCentral. One Inbox to rule them all!
3. Better Contact Management - they made some improvements, but have a ways to go. Especially birthdays that could be integrated with Google Calendar.
4. I want to be able to label messages when I create/send them.
5. A notes feature. I would like to be able to attach a note to an email that I can use to remind myself about something in the email, or action that I may need to take on the email.
6. Nested Labels/Sub labels. I suspect that they are already working on this from a hint posted in the Gmail blog late last year.
That’s about all I can think of at the moment.
Danny Howard Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 12:21 am
Matt,
The latter two “features” I think are one: a “make this e-mail go away for some time” button. Maybe add a “display date” variable for a message that is normally the time the message was sent, but if this “display date” is set, then normally don’t display that message if it is in the future.
“oops” is another time skew . . . similar idea . . . set all e-mails you write to be sent a few minutes in the future . . . they don’t really exist anywhere until their time has come . . .
And then, of course, some button to “display the future” Wooo!
Search◊ Engines Web Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 12:27 am
…
The ability to open Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF without going to another page and using another software
… :-DIn other words, having the option of gmail opening a replication of the page with the layout inside gmail. It could be an html reproduction
…
Also an HTML editor and FTP program that would allow site editing and uploading from gmail to a Website or blog
…
AJAX mail would be another option. Yahoo is offering it as an alternative. Similar the the outlook preview feature - that allows an iframe to preview or view the entire email from one page without having to click and enter another page to read the email
…
More customization of the layout. As it stands now, it is plain and homely. Allow aesthetic customizable touches and themes
If any of these suggestions are taken - credit SearchEnginesWeb, this time
Timothy Knox Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 12:46 am
I’d like a really simple feature. When I POP mail down to my server, I’d like the option to have my messages really deleted, not merely moved to the trash.
Kevin Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 12:46 am
I love Gmail too. However some features irritates me a lot..I can’t open any email in new window… like yahoo
Well, i love have a feature which makes it possible to send an email on particular date automatically..this means i write the email in advance and will set date and time, so Gmail will send it on that particular time.. it will hopefully make life easier..
There should a folder option to manage email more effectively rather than labeling them. Also this ask for drag-n-drop option.
Feature like google reader, just click on email and it will show it’s content (expand it) will be more useful…
Hope to see them all in near future
Gideon Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 12:52 am
Two things, please!
When I’m using the Send from an alternative email address - I’d love the ’sent on behalf of …’ to be removed.
When adding an attachment it would be great if I could copy the file and then paste it (like Outlook, but there’s not much else I like about Outlook) onto the page and it be automatically added as an attachment.
I guess I’d like to be able to throw away outlook and have everything forwarded to my gmail account so I can use it for all work and private email…
n@3k Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 12:57 am
I’d like to see some multi-user functionality for collaboration.
Under accounts settings it is possible to define a mail address that more than one Gmail user is assigned to. If a mail arrives on this address it should show up in all Gmail accounts, assigend to this address. Nothing special so far if configured this way.
But now: if one Gmail users opens that mail all others will see a little indicator showing that one is reading this mail. If the other person replies it should also show an indicator. And of course the reply is available to all Gmail accouts associated with this address in the sent folder.
garethjax Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 1:05 am
Mail Delivery receipts would be nice to have…
César Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 1:18 am
A better mobile client (one where I can label messages, and thus be able un archive them) would be nice. As it is now, I can use it un check my mail, but all the clutter is still there when I’m back at the computer…
Dr. David Klein (purposeinc) Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 1:36 am
If I may digress for a moment.
Attn: Search Engines Web
As a frequenter of this blog, who usually reads almost all the comments, I would like to personally thank SearchEnginesWeb for writing posts that
- have readable grammer,
- are positive in their outlook, and
- are humble in their presentation.
They make a much stronger contribution to this community, and make me want to read your comments and learn more about who you are.
My wife, who needs to do extensive searching of previous e-mails, says she would like better search functions in g-mail, similar to those available in the search engine. (unless these already exist and she is unaware of them)
dk
Julian Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 2:14 am
I would like to have a feature for inserting prepared text blocks, so I dont have to write some things over and over again.
Emmanuel Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 2:15 am
Hi Matt, here is my input
- See the emails not sorted as conversation (optional)
- Periodic events… super useful, really
- Mark email as urgent or nor with 5 levels of emergency
- Oops filter would be great…
- Ability to hide the boxes on the left (give gmail, chat, labels)
- Add “due date/completion date” when I read email
- Accept background colors for e-mails
- Joint several gmail accounts into one (you have 2 different accounts, you want to merge them into one account)
Have a great day
Andrew Heenan Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 2:16 am
I’d like the abilityto reply to someone WITHOUT them being auto-added to my contacts list.
At the moment, it’s just annoying and time wasting having to regularly delete non-contacts from my contacts list. But as gmail gets more and more ’sharey’ (ecch!), there’s a real risk of accidently sharing things with people *I* didn’t add to my contacts list.
Joseph Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 2:20 am
I would really like to see a “reply and archive” feature, where I can hit one shortcut key/button which sends my reply, at the same time as archiving the conversation. Saves just a little time for each conversation thread, but saves a lot of time when there’s many threads I want to take both actions on.
Stanislav Shalunov Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 2:32 am
I use Gmail as main email, and it’s not obviously lacking anything.
One thing that’s critical for me is Reader integration not working with Google Apps for Your Domain. I use Reader and App for Your Domain. I want Reader to show my stuff to my friends. It doesn’t, because it insists on using my main Gmail contact list (which has about three people in it).
Incremental search (a la Apple Mail or C-s in Emacs) would be great.
More sort options would be nice to have.
Einar Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 2:44 am
What I want the most is full Opera-support.
Sam I Am Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 3:04 am
More support for standards!
Tommy Rikberg Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 3:14 am
Yesterday I needed to find a certain mail from way back. It was an order confirmation from a web shop (let’s call it the foobarshop) and I didn’t remember the name of the sender, the title nor the contents well enough to find it based on that. But I knew the domain name of the sender (foobarshop.com). Searching for that turned up nothing. I fired up Thunderbird and searched for Sender, contains, foobarshop.com and bingo, the first hit was what I was looking for.
Please change the search function in gmail to also search the adress of the sender.
Voyagerfan5761 Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 3:20 am
I’ve been reminded of a couple other features I forgot about:
* Integrate Gmail Macros-like functionality, preferably cloning Brent Nef’s (currently broken due to the code change) version. They’re so incredibly convenient, you don’t know what you’re missing!
* Return receipt support, incoming and outgoing
* Labeling or starring emails that are in the Drafts folder and having those labels/stars stick around after the messages are sent
* Put back features from the old contact manager, like the custom field labels
Also, a few things I would *not* like to see show up in Gmail:
* Folders. Labels are FAR superior to folders. If you don’t like labels, just use them like folders, one label to each conversation. There doesn’t have to be a metaphor change in the interface and documentation for that.
* A “preview pane”. I much prefer specifically opening messages, not just selecting them and having them open in half a window. Leave it as-is and keep the full window for the email.
* Drag-and-drop. Why is everyone so obsessed with adding drag-and-drop support to everything? Google Reader got it and I haven’t touched the feature after the first five minutes or so when I was playing with it. Just integrate Gmail Macros’ very useful shortcuts, as mentioned above.
I’m up to nine items now; better stop before I hit a dime…
(Nine including my first comment, above.)
Jerzy Zawadzki Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 3:25 am
I’d like third feature! It will be great!
And as garethjax said: mail delivery receipts
Giovanni Gentili Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 3:30 am
missing features in gmail:
1) renaming of the title of emails/threads
(and, doing so, the ability to recompose threads)
2) put labels on messages during creation
3) create a to-do from emails,
adding due date, status, notes, ecc
4) send a to-do along with an email
(the person that receive the email
in gmail could opt to get the to-dos
from you automatically or one-by-one)
5) get by email an automated feedback
that show on my “sent “to-dos
when the other user accept the to-do
or modify the status on his to-dos (here we
are going toward “workflow” by email).
6) manage to-dos list like emails,
with archive, stars, labels, and
the possibility to postpone
the “due date” (without
recurring to calendar)
Xianhong Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 3:38 am
Gmail is really good, i have 2 gmail accounts. I do not need any new feature from gmail, but i want to gmail to improve the download speeding, it will take 5-10 mins to download a 1Mb email sometimes, not always. i know lots of people report the speed slow issue on gmail group, not only me.
Nick Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 4:15 am
Thumbs up on all three of those suggestions!
Anthony Lawrence Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 4:48 am
I just published “Twelve or more things I still want in Gmail” a few days ago:
http://aplawrence.com/Opinion/still_wishing.html
I want all of those and more, but the one I want the most is Templates. I have several “form” emails I send out for various purposes ( responses to certain types of inquiries). I keep them in Drafts now and cut and paste, but a template would be better.
Joe Terranova Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 5:02 am
The ability to mark something as NOT spam through a filter. If I’m using a filter to whisk a set of messages to a label, it would make sense for Gmail to assume it’s not spam; if that’s not possible, then I’d at least like to mark it as not spam as part of the filter.
Tom Boutell Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 5:04 am
Much better support for multiple accounts, please!
Andre Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 5:10 am
Hi Matt,
the idea of delaying E-Mails sound good! I have to more requests:
1) The ability to use saved Textblocks within gmail
2) The ability to pause pop3 accounts you access through gmail (right now you can just delete them and have to enter the whole data again next time)
Keep up the great Blog!
André
PhotoTiki Chris Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 5:17 am
The ability to create email templates to send to customers.
Say you always get the same question over and over or if you want to send a reminder to them occasionally for action on their end.
You can do this in Thunderbird by saving a Draft email with no recipient and then click Edit as New so it stays in the Draft Folder after you send it.
Sebastien Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 5:27 am
Hi Matt, thanks for giving us the ability to throw ideas
Here’s my list :
* Emails :
- a “size” column.. I just want to know how big some emails are without opening them and checking the attachments
I know it’s a bit of a challenge given the threaded conversation..
- ability to sort by size.. this is the point.. I want to be able to spot big and useless emails filling my account. Even if I get 6GB+ in Gmail, I consider something useless as something that must be deleted.
- As Gideon said : “When I’m using the Send from an alternative email address - I’d love the ’sent on behalf of …’ to be removed.”
- Ability to apply a label to a new email you are composing
* Labels :
- built-in folders4gmail
* Contact manager :
- improved contact manager, it’s slow.. really
- ability to “merge” two contacts… I often find myself having 2 or more copies of the same contact.. with one with the email address while the other contact contains all the address info I input even before exchanging emails with that person.
How about a tool “à la diff”… Check out “meld” in the Ubuntu repositories if you want to get an idea of how I’d like to be able to merge contacts ( http://meld.sourceforge.net/meld_file1.png )
- I liked in the previous contact manager how you could see the conversations you had with the contact right from the contact manager.. now I need to click on “recent conversation : show”.. It’s lousy
The previous contact manager was easier to manage contacts.. Since contacts get added automatically.. every now and then I was browsing my contacts and I could quickly see the ones I would not ever exchange emails with.
- This brings us to the next point : I don’t want people to be automatically added to my contact manager when I reply to them.. This adds clutter in my contacts. Give us the choice in the settings
Thanks a lot
Sébastien
Paul Avery Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 5:41 am
Two things.
1) to ungroup/unthread the entire inbox or just certain threads. Some things get threaded, which I just wish were not.
2) The ability to change the e-mail address and keep the account and all of its associations. Stupidly I published my gmail address on the internet. My account gets hammered with SPAM. GMAIL does handle the spam well. But not as well as simply not getting spam. On my work accounts I was getting upwards of 2,000 spam messages a day. Although I had a good filter, it was causing me unnecessary work. I dropped the old accounts, and got new ones which I will not publish on the internet. And guess what?! I don’t get spam any more.
EGOL Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 5:58 am
I see a lot of good suggestions here… but there is something that is much more basic that I would like to see ….
When you delete or label a message, I would like the screen to move the the NEXT message in the queue, instead of taking me back to the main message list. Using gmail would be much faster and a lot less frustrating for me if this was possible.
(Maybe it is possible and someone can tell me what I need to know… I am surprised that dozens of people are not barking for this in these comments.)
graywolf Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 6:03 am
I’d love the features from Better Gmail 2 and Remember the Milk integrated natively.
Of course doing a better job communicating major code changes that break a lot of the plugin/enhancements would be nice too
http://lifehacker.com/software/exclusive-lifehacker-download/better-gmail-2-firefox-extension-for-new-gmail-320618.php?cpage=2
http://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/help/3572/
graywolf Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 6:05 am
Forgot scheduled email would be nice, as would emailing just a link from google reader, instead of only the entire story from google reader would be cool too.
Matt R Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 6:30 am
I second what PhotoTiki Chris said, templates! I too run a business and use gmail as my email manager, and templates would save me hours of time a day.
Pavel L Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 6:37 am
Defenitely - ability to remove threading.
Hank Osborne Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 6:47 am
I did not read all of the other comments so I apologize if these are not duplicates.
(1) Signatures - Please make the email signature appear at the bottom of my response and NOT at the very bottom of the response/forwarded message. argh!
(2 Settings POP Download - Add feature that allows for “Enable POP for mail that arrived since a specified date.” FYI-my Treo will only download two weeks worth of messages. Once I realize the two week mark has passed, I have to go tell Gmail to “Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on” and I end up missing a few messages that I wanted on my Treo that may have come in earlier that day.
(3) In response to number 2. Do some testing with handhelds like the Treo with Versa Mail to see what causes this weird two week download limit. No changes on the Treo seem to affect the problem.
Thanks,
Hank O
Caustic Dave Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 6:59 am
In some cases I can not delete an email while I am viewing it and find myself having to go back to the inbox view in order to delete it since the delete button is nowhere to be found. It’s a hassle.
Paul Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 7:07 am
How about being able to set outgoing font and style choices as a default. Every email I send I must change the font and size, as well as format my saved signature (italics and color).
Great post!
Wes Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 7:19 am
Matt, something I’d like to see (and I know you’ve already said you’d try and mention it) is better support for CSS / standards - http://www.email-standards.org/clients/gmail/
vince Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 7:25 am
HTML signature
work better with plaxo
Jeff Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 7:29 am
I want to be able to delete from the Gtalk pop-up in the bottom right corner of the screen like you can with outlook.
If I click on the popup to view the email, I want to be able to delete or archive from that screen. I hate how I have to go to my “inbox” to delete or archive from there.
Gmail needs to remove this tedious step.
Andy Davies Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 7:32 am
SyncML support!
John Lynn Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 7:33 am
What about just the simple shortcut/button to have it delete a message and go to the next. They have archive and next, but not delete and next. I don’t need to archive things like blog comments, but I do like to get them in my email so I know what people have written.
Tracie Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 7:40 am
I’d like Google to fix the font issue on the new version. (Plain text comes through as tiny font that’s barely readable). http://mail.google.com/support/bin/search.py?query=font+too+small&Action.Search=Search&type=f&lr=lang_en&ctx=en%3Asearchbox
Templates would be nice too, though.
Slav Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 8:08 am
First, thanks for an awesome email!
I use gmail a lot - whenever I’m on computer or on the go with my iPhone. Since i can’t receive my work emails on iPhone, I set all the messages to forward to my personal gmail, where I have bunch of filters.
Now, whenever I’m at the meeting, I’d like to answer to a person, but “from” field would always be my personal email. It would be cool to be able to switch the “from” field, so it looks like I’m emailing from a corporate email.
And, I got to add, the pre-selected template or a signature for particular account you’re emailing from would be great.
Hany Ethan Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 8:08 am
well, most of the suggestion in here are very good, but we are forgetting something in here, that most of these features could complicate the simplicity and streamlined experience of gmail (remember that it’s based on different methodolgies other than the other communication systems, eg. zero inbox and tags)
for myself, i would like integration of systems, and adding social aspects to the game (like google reader’s shared items)
.: i dunnow what is the best approach to follow in here, but i would appreciate a central and streamlined location for Gmail, reader, calender, To-Do, talk, docs, drive, notebook and albums
Glen Harness Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 8:22 am
Like EGOL said, I’d like to see a “delete/go to next message” button. Or a preview pane would be even better.
jeff Hall Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 8:40 am
1. The ability to make and send custom made templates.
2. A USB breathalyzer kit for a friend who forgets how embarrassing her e-mails are when she gets drunk. The e-mails could be delayed until she provides a negative sample.
Ciro Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 8:51 am
Apart from the Ooops! filter (that I would surely love), what about having a ‘Bounce’ option to bounce back unwanted e-mails so it looks as if your email address is not valid? I believe Mailwasher has such an option, and it would come handy on my Gmail account, too…
SG Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 9:01 am
I love gMail too, but the thing that drives me crazy is the spam folder. The filter is very good and it’s rare that there is a false positive, but I still sift through the spam folder before deleting it just in case. And that is sifting through a lot. I wish there were a way to have the most obvious spam not get sent to the spam folder but get deleted outright. Also, it seems that spam is unsearchable. I wish I could kill off the tons of duplicate spam I get in one go so as to make the sorting through a little easier
Maybe I am just paranoid because one of the few false positives I have ever had was a very important email.
John Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 9:02 am
one thing and only one thing kills gmail for me and that is conversation mode. Why in the world they do not have this as a feature you could turn off ? I HATE having my mail threaded by conversation - I want my messages in chronological order not clumped together.
If they did just that it would be hard not to use it… but they don’t so I use it as a spam filter box.
Yea I could use Imap or POP buy I run all my own servers for that.
Please GMAIL team make conversation mode an OPTION - it really is not that cool.
Shawn K Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 9:03 am
I would like an autoreply feature for specific ’sub-addresses.’ Gmail supports “address+subaddress@gmail,” I would like to set up an auto reply for only messages sent to a particular sub-address, opposed to the current ‘vacation reply’ that they have now.
Chas. Owens Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 9:03 am
Number 1 feature for Google in general (and Gmail in particular): temporary email addresses. I should be able to request a temporary email address that lives from datetime1 to datetime2. It should look something like “Readable Name “. A filter should be setup automagically that directs all mail coming in on that address to a label “Readable Name”. After the time period expires all email to that account should bounce unless I reactivate it.
Number 2 feature for Google (Reader in this case): the ability to view authenticated feeds (like Gmail’s).
Number 3 feature for Google: make me a sandwich.
piniyini Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 9:08 am
I’d like a simple button that “marks all unread as read” instead of the two actions required at the moment.
Shahid Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 9:09 am
Hi Matt,
How about an Ajax dropdown on the “search mail” within Googlemail.
Gets frustrating when your searching for mail and return 0 results.
Shahid
Jonathan Hochman Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 9:22 am
Mass delete of attachments, please. I’d like to be able to select a pile of old messages, and strip out all the attachments. This would allow me to save messages longer without going over the disk quota.
Jonathan Hochman Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 9:23 am
Paste inline images into messages. When I grab a piece of the screen to show somebody, I want to be able to paste it into the message, they way I can with Thunderbird.
todd lucier Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 9:30 am
Please, please add delayed send.
I tried out Mailmelater.com and loved the way my blog automatically updated at the exact date and time that it was supposed to.
Is it possible for me to love gmail any more than I already do? YES.
I love the idea of being on the golf course and sending out a well-timed response to a client.
Robert Accettura Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 9:37 am
1. The ability to rename special directories (INBOX, Sent Mail, etc.) to make [Gmail] irrelevant in IMAP. It really makes the service a drag. Let it be easier to truly keep IMAP clients and gmail in sync.
2. S/MIME support, PGP support
3. Ability to subscribe to only certain dir’s via IMAP
Easton Ellsworth Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 9:44 am
Good question, Matt. I’d love to be able to resize the email composition box on the default page - so instead of having to click the icon to open the whole draft in a new resizable window, I’d be able to click and drag to make the draft box bigger (especially vertically). Hope that makes sense.
Matt Cutts Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 9:53 am
Aaron B. Hockley and graywolf, it looks like Remember the Milk has a fix now. From http://www.anotherblogger.com/2008/01/25/remember-the-milk-gmail/ I see:
Roger Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 9:55 am
Integration of Grand Central. I never use this service even though I have it. I would use it more if it were integrated into Gmail.
Mark Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 10:18 am
I second the delaying email idea. For me, sometimes I work best at night and write emails at 3 am. However, I’m too embarrassed to actually send at that time, so I’d like to be able to delay them until 8 am so it looks like I keep more normal hours.
Also, agree about the combining a @gmail and @yourdomain … not sure how this would work any better than forwarding one to the other though.
Evan Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 10:26 am
The Gmail feature that I think would be great would be the ability to import contacts directly into a current or existing group. Currently when importing, the contacts go directly into all contacts, but this could be very time consuming when importing a good amount of contacts that belong into a specific group. I would love to see this added!
Self Taught SEO Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 10:42 am
Matt, I like Gmail and use it faithfully. My add-on feature is more like an add-on product, but I would like to see Gmail have a “for webmasteres” piece to Gmail, something of an email campaign management system, whereas you can create newsletters and use multiple auto-responders to schedule and manage newsletters, something sorta like a free stripped down or watered down version of GetResponse or AWebber. With the ability to create custom forms to place on the webmaster website.
Jason Bartholme Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 10:43 am
A few feature requests I would like to see are as follows: 1.) The ability to not crash my FireFox when I do a search. 2.) A sort that would allow for my unread messages to be a the top. 3.) An option for threaded messages that display indented beneath the previous message.
The latter two are features was I use to using in other products. I think they would make for some popular features.
BTW, Gmail’s spam detection is the best thing since canned beer. I rarely recieve spam in my inbox. My other email service has a spam appliance and messages slip through in the scores.
David Saunders Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 10:45 am
Quoted above - “Matt,
i would love to integrate my google apps account with my default gmail account. Although rite now google allows to associate email address there is no way to integrate or link two google accounts (say one @gmail.com and another yourdomain.com powered by google apps).”
I too use Google Apps (paid for version) and would really like to have my GMail account and Apps account morphed somehow.
Also with apps I have to log in to email, docs and spreadsheets separately at times which is frustrating - I just can’t wait for JotSpot to be available.
All in all I’m happy with Gmail - spam filter is about the best
Need Jotspot now though to manage biz…….. Free invite which I will pay for …….
Tom D Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 10:59 am
Really simple one from me: when I click on the “Inbox” link from my Google Personalized Homepage, gmail loads up like I would expect. However, if I click directly on a message from the mini-view of my inbox, or if I click on “compose message”, only that portion of Gmail loads up (i.e. the one message I clicked on, or the compose screen, without the top and left menus). I’m sure this is by design, but I find it really annoying, as it means closing gmail and opening it again if, say, an email I just clicked on prompts me to want to search for an older message.
So, can we have the option to load the full Gmail interface when clicking a link from the personalized homepage? Cheers!
1001 noisy cameras Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 11:36 am
I think the ability to open emails in new windows would be great - it would help those users who are always multi-tasking. If you are in the middle of doing 3-4 things in parallel, having a single Gmail window can be a bottleneck.
I was a bit surprised that Gmail was designed with a “single-window” approach given that web browsing is multi-tab and multi-window.
Richard Carter Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 11:41 am
I’m with Andrew Heenan… I want to be able to specify who my contacts are, not have Google decide them for me.
Mark Fiske Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 12:04 pm
I use Google Apps (paid) and would greatly appreciate better Blackberry integration.
John Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 12:32 pm
I want an “autoping” checkbox. When you send a mail, it would say “ping me in 1/5/10 days if there’s no reply”. If you’re reading a mail, it would say “ping me in 1/5/10 days if I don’t reply to this”. Also known as the don’t-fall-though-the-cracks checkbox.
Craig Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 12:45 pm
I also use my GMail as a to-do list of sorts. I have labels for “Today”, “This Week” and “This Month”. That said, I think it would be really helpful if I could order the emails in a fashion other than by date from within these labels. I don’t know the best way to make this work, perhaps assigning an importance number?
Maybe the best way here is for me to have labels for “Today: 1″, “Today: 2″ and “Today: 3″ as a measure of importance. Seems messy though.
M Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 1:30 pm
Please remove Sender header.
About sender header
Ken Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 1:36 pm
My company migrated to gmail a few months ago the following are three areas where we feel some pain when using it.
One address book, most likely through LDAP. I’d like my address book.app and mail.app programs to be connected to my gmail address book.
Hide Labels. I began to apply labels to projects at our company but there got to be so many labels that it became a pain to add them in the dropdown box. I’d like to have a settings dialog where I can select which are active and which are not.
Notification on delivery. Read receipts probably aren’t the answer, but to be able to insert a link at the top of the message where the reader can confirm they’ve received it would be a great help for tracking projects.
Rasheed Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 1:45 pm
I want RTL.
Thanks.
Troy Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 2:17 pm
I would like to 3rd the removal of the “sent on behalf of” tag line.
I manage multiple domains and pull them all into my gmail. I like to send on behalf of each of those domains, but the “sent on behalf of” completely undermines that for me.
I know I can get Google Apps to eliminate this, but not for MULTIPLE domains.
It is much better for me to pull all email into one place and then send the same.
Please please please GMail team… remove the “sent on behalf of” tag!!
(I would even be willing to pay a small fee for this option - unlimited accounts sending as themselves and not on behalf of).
Diego Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 3:08 pm
I’d like a few more keyboard shortcuts. I can drive quite a bit og GMail from the keyboard. But some things still need shortcuts. For example; I’m composing a new email but I want to enter recipients in the CC or BCC fields, I then have to revert back to the mouse to click on the links. A small thing, I know, but it breaks the flow when working with the keyboard.
A shortcut to take me to the Spam forlder.
Being able to place the signature above the reply.
I don’t know if this would be possible, but how about, when clicking on the compose link (or reply etc) if I hold some key as I click on Compose, it opens the new email in its own window? Same thing could go for Replies etc.
Introduce folders. For those that prefer them. (I know, this is almost a religious issue).
HTML signatures.
Hide the Chat box permanently.
Moshe bar-oz Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 3:34 pm
Actually that is a needed feature.. delayed emails..
But what MOST wanted in Gmail is the rich text signature. I have a great signature with my company Logo and would like to attach it with every email i send , why cant i ?
Moshe
Kim Siever Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 3:51 pm
The ability to merge contacts.
Multi-Worded Adam Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 4:05 pm
The ability to report link exchange and SEO spammers who insist on using GMail now. Better yet, a means of automatically detecting the spammers by reading the emails and penalizing accordingly (although the anti-privacy crowd would hate it, I’d just love to see someone open up a can of whoopass on these SEdiots.)
Ghosty Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 4:09 pm
Something I’ve always wanted is an Archive function in the dropdown menu of the message. I do a lot of email-accessing from my widget in iGoogle, and while I can read and reply, I cannot archive a message until I load gMail proper.
Voyagerfan5761 Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 5:00 pm
I saw a few other things I’d like to second:
* Size column
* Sort by size
* Split and join conversations, as there are occasional threading mistakes
There are probably more, but I can’t keep track of all the good ideas that I’ve had also and forgotten about.
Oh, and if the color scheme is going to change, please make it an option, like the iGoogle themes. I personally like the blue.
What am I up to, $0.12?
Aaron Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 6:42 pm
Cyrillic spam filter. I’d like to designate any message containing cyrillic characters as spam.
I’ve been using Internet email since it was DARPAnet and have yet to receive one legitimate email containing cyrillic (or Korean, Japanese, Chinese, etc.) characters.
I’ll take my chances with missing a message where I win the Moscow lottery, thankyouverymuch.
Luis Alberto Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 6:44 pm
Hey Matt, here’s my wishlist:
- Multiple Signatures: So if I have multiple accounts all merged into Gmail, I can also send each one with it’s own personality
- HTML Signatures: To be able to add colors, images, whatever
- Privacy options: I hate when someone sends me an email with a read receipt, and gmail sends a reply back. I’d like the ability to block this.
- Whitelist Senders: So that the spam filter doesn’t catch/process those I trust
- Sorting columns: Specially for the SPAM folder, so that its easier to go through the 100+ messages a day to see if any false positives ended there
Luis Alberto Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 6:48 pm
One more:
Contacts Syncronization: Not just import/export, but be able to download a software to sync your contacts with Thunderbird / Outlook / Palm / etc (Yahoo has this)
Saludos!
Al Sefati Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 6:54 pm
I still like the idea of sorting once in while. The other day I was looking for an email and I know the sender but I didn’t know how to find the particualr email. I searched for his name but a bunch of random emails came up. I wish I could also have the capability to sort and go through senders emails if I don’t know what I am searching for.
I know gmail is thread based but still if I could sort by original sender that would make like so much easier.
Dave (original) Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 6:56 pm
How about a simple test BEFORE users can get a gmail account. I’m tired of people who email and ass-u-me I know what they are talking about like we are having face-to-face verbal conversation. Or, those who use acronyms and pet names.
A “stupid user” filter
Matt Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 7:05 pm
I want you to make gmail stop crashing firefox. Maybe you have, as it hasn’t crashed in the past few days, but it (and only it) have been really crashing my firefox since the “new version” rolled out.
beyond that, having a way to “star” something with things other than just “stars” would be good. that, or the ability to “star” something and write a note to myself that says what to do with that email. ie, i write a little note that says, “pay bill on 1/30/08″
nabeel hyatt Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 7:32 pm
ah Matt, what a sucker question, but I’ll take the bait.
Like you, I use my email as a kind of todo list. There is one serious flaw with this - sending the email and never getting a response. Once it is gone if the person doesn’t respond that item will die.
A feature I bet a ton of people would use is “Remind if no reply.”
Basically for certain conversations if more than a week goes by and they have not replied, ping me to remind me so I can take action. A simple “You have not recieved a reply to your email, subject: Matt where’s my pet feature.”
It would be unorthodox for google to implement, but innovative and universally helpful.
-Nabeel
Carlito Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 8:19 pm
This “Oops” filter would be a fantastic addition. I am a fairly heavy user of gmail, receiving, tagging, reading & replying to thousands of emails every month, i`ve made my share of mistakes or accidentally sent messages I wished I hadn’t. Gmail is definitely a very large part of my life, and this would be a handy feature.
Marie Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 8:45 pm
In addition to the yellow star, I would also like a red star. Two stars, red and yellow, from which to choose.
Brett Walker Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 9:31 pm
Matt-
Thanks for soliciting feedback. All these responses should confirm how loved Gmail is.
How are you going to organize these? Can I help?
I would love to see
-Contacts++ Tighter synch w/MS Outlook (field mapping!), Merging
-GrandCentral integration, including call Contact
-Responsive Spamkilling. Reporting a phisher took three days to stop
-Easy email size management
-More keyboard shortcuts!
-Remove ’sent on behalf of’
Sincerely,
-Brett
Laurence Gonsalves Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 10:21 pm
I wish that archiving in Gmail was slightly different. Instead of “archive” meaning “not in:inbox”, I wish there was a separate “magic label” that meant “archived”. I subscribe to a number of high-traffic mailing lists that I don’t want in my inbox, so I have filters set up to make them skip the inbox and instead go into other labels. I’d still like to be able to “archive” these mails, which would make them disappear unless I asked to see archived mail. Right now, Gmail replaces archive with “remove label” when looking at a label. This is unsatisfying, because I want the label to still apply for searches. I just want to get stuff I’ve dealt with out of my default view.
Voyagerfan5761 Said,
January 26, 2008 @ 11:28 pm
@Rasheed: Switch your interface to a RTL language; it should automatically switch.
And I’d like to fourth/fifth/twentieth/five-thousandth/whatever the removal of “on behalf of” from messages sent using a custom address.
Up to $0.13…
shyam Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 12:15 am
Hello,
even i like the gmail among all the free email providers just for its simplicity and many links that we see along with our mails which may be useful for us.Just today i was checking out the filter process to stop a lot of spam that i have been getting off late.There are many more things yet to explored.
Cheers
Diego Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 1:45 am
I’d love to be able to automatically delete anything (including spam) that is not in a given language. So I would never see any email, anywhere, that was not in (say) English. And by the looks of my spam folder from day to day, would probably cut 75% or more of the spam that I get.
John Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 2:12 am
I would be happy to see implementation of the features you have brainstormed, delivery scheduling is a nice idea. POP3 access will be helpful.
Susan Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 2:38 am
I use gmail both for personal email and work email, I’d like to see a feature where you an have different signatures depending on the email address you’re sending the message from.
David Airey Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 4:42 am
I really like your second suggestion, Matt, to slow down conversations.
Like you, I tend to respond to emails quickly if it saves me having to spend more time re-reading the message at a later point, but for me too, it leads to more than one email exchange in a short period of time.
I’d like to see GMail let their users know of security issues via email. I receive periodic emails from GMail users who have also found unknown filters in their accounts, even though the issue was resolved months ago.
Dito Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 7:06 am
I would like to see those with Google Apps accounts be able to use all of the same services that a normal Google account provides.
I know this isn’t a “Gmail” feature, but it’s close.
Nascar Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 8:24 am
The delay feature sounds cool. It wouldn’t be turned on by default correct? It is great to see Gmail becoming more extensible as it matures as a product.
Malene Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 8:44 am
I would like to be able to chose between more signatures - and not having gmail placing the signature as a default in the bottom.
And pretty please, a nicer and more user friendly layout!
RobtWms Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 8:51 am
Why oh why can’t we have syncml added to contacts (and calendar, too)?
passerby Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 9:01 am
Standard View: Too slow. Too many scripts spoil the blah. Why not a plugin (like Flashplayer) instead?
Search filters:
label: none
From: & To: contains
Ability to amend and add headers.
Reply without quoting
In-line image & sizing
Drop down menus for some. (eg, labels).
Anand Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 9:26 am
I would very much love the ‘Message Opened’ alerts. There are quite a few ways I can achieve that with Statcounter and stuff..but Gmail should provide a hasslefree way to do that..come on Googlers, it is not that difficult a thing to provide!
VaBeachKevin Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 9:37 am
How about figuring out what needs to be done to finally get the thing out of beta?
Peter Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 10:12 am
And part of me wonders: what feature would you like to see in Gmail?
Well, I’d suggest to stop aggressively scanning private emails and give up the data-mining and targeted ads.
It’s not because it is an automatic process that’s it’s legal or at least ethical.
But hey, Larry, Sergey and Marissa do not know what ethics is.
Anyhow, I don’t use Gmail, nor any Google service.
Sam Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 11:03 am
Delaying emails would be killer; but I can’t get excited about any new features since I *still* haven’t got the Gmail 2.0 upgrade! I think the feature Gmail most needs is a quick way to rollout changes!
Stuart Grimshaw Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 12:13 pm
I’d like to see an outgoing mail filter, specifically to automatically set the From: address. I subscribe to different mailing lists from a few different address, and I’m always forgetting to switch to the right alias.
Chris Dohman Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 12:27 pm
would like a check mail now link on the inbox page to check other pop accounts.
be able to set the time period for mail checks of other pop accounts
robmcm Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 1:18 pm
wow so many comments, sure you won’t gave time to read this, but keeping up with Yahoo! And offering push email would tempt A LOT of blackberry exchange users
thanks
Patrick Altoft Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 2:18 pm
Matt try this for sending emails later:
http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/lettermelater/
DraxOfAvalon Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 4:12 pm
Make it FULLY Opera compatible…
The posibility to create folders… I dont like labels.
Whitelist filters… like the actual filters but to create a whitelist.
Hide labels COMPLETLY if u dont use them (same for chatbox and invites cause I like it simple and clean)
mark Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 5:22 pm
That’s a good feature Matt. I would want it too.
Maybe also a built-in youtube player where we just insert the video id in a special tag?
Ken Wong Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 6:28 pm
Pls add the long-waiting WHITE LIST FOR CONTACTS feature.
Because Gmail blocks mails from Google.
Thanks!
Bruce Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 6:34 pm
Matt, I never reallly thought about the delayed send on email, but I have had several times when I hit the send button only to realize it was mis addressed. Simetimes realized I should have waited a couple minutes to send until I cooled off.
That would be a great feature to have. Write the email and let it know when to send it out.
david Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 6:39 pm
Easily turn contacts, like a group contact, into a filter.
Toby Adams Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 6:51 pm
It may not be very geeky to say, but I love yahoo’s new mail much better than gmail. However, I did switch our business email to gmail ‘ email hosting’ ( https://www.google.com/a/ ) for better spam filtering and to ease server load with our mail server… but only because yahoo doesnt allow partail hosting (with gmail we could just change the MX and CNAME records of the domain)
If yahoo allowed this, I’d ditch gmail in a heartbeat! However, gmail works good for the business, since it works similar to a ticket system our service folks like better. But for a normal email program, yahoo is way ahead of google.
Wayne Schulz Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 7:26 pm
Here’s my list, compiled after a month of use in lieu of Microsoft Outlook:
1. I want to be able to paste images into the email.
2. Ability to paste links into the email and have them format properly (maybe I’m doing something wrong but link pasting is a two step process for me)
3. Contact synch to Blackberry
4. Consisten UI for Contacts - if you use IE you get one view (better imho), Firefox gives you a more rudimentary view
5. Ability to send out update requests to my contacts (ala Plaxo)
6. Query outside email boxes on a time schedule that I set — not just whenever Gmail feels like it
7. Ability to turn off the conversation tracking nature of the emails
8. Beef up Contacts to add minor CRM functionality - notes, tracking of appointments and tasks by contact (this is very close and I’m predicting will be one of the next apps that are improved).
9. Have a way to save templates in Gmail — I often send the same emails out over and over in response to questions.
I do think Gmail is a Microsoft Office killer within 3 years.
Matt Cutts Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 7:37 pm
So it goes without saying that these are great suggestions. Keep the suggestions coming, and I’m going to look at the comments and see if I can suggest shortcuts that can help anyone.
Scott Stawarz Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 7:53 pm
I’d like the ability While Reading an Email to Delete the Email and go to the next email instead of being taken back to the list of emails. It’s the feature I miss most from my yahoo email. I used to keep my inbox clean, but now, it is so hard. I read the email. I don’t want to archive it. I don’t want to keep it, I just want to delete and go to the next email in the list. That sure would be a nice option.
Adaml Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 8:13 pm
I would like to break apart a conversation, after all we dont keep talking about the same things.
IE: If I send an email too all the people I supervise then they all reply to just me and I reply back-and-forth to each Gmail keeps them together, I would rather have the choice of breaking them apart as they truly have no relation anymore.
Mark Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 8:14 pm
I think the three items you mention could be implemented as a single Eudora-style scheduled send time feature. It could default to +2 minutes from now after pushing the Send button, but you could edit that timestamp, to 6 hours later (for slowing down a conversation), or 3 weeks (for the progress check). Perhaps there could be preferences for user to enter three convenient times which would show in a popup menu.
This is trivial, but I’d like a single button in the spam mailbox that selects all unread, marks as read, selects none, and perhaps changes to Inbox. Glancing at the unread spam every once in a while is good for fine-tuning it, but then you need to mark them unread and Google remembers that selection. Very minor annoyance, but it bugs me.
Mark Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 8:17 pm
For the guy who doesn’t like labels, he doesn’t seem to realize that labels are the same as folders, except that (1) an e-mail can be attached to more than one, and (2) there’s no way to get mail out of the All Mail mailbox, because it’s for, well, _all_ the mail.
So if you want folders, just make labels for each folder, never give anything more than one label, and ignore the All Mail mailbox. This is exactly, functionally, mathematically mappably equivalent to folders.
Diego Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 8:46 pm
I saw something show up in my GMail browser window… one of my wishes is already there…
“Compose a message in a new window by pressing “Shift” while clicking Compose Mail or Reply.”
Rajesh Kumar Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 10:29 pm
Matt, I think you can still do delayed mails if you are using a client such as Outlook.
Chris Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 10:42 pm
Hi Matt,
I reckon you could ‘fix’ both those problems by setting a queue time on the outbox. ie You have a setting where you can specify how long to queue a message before it’s gonna be sent. Also maybe a drop down list on the ‘compose message’ interface to override any of those settings if you’d like to send the message immediately.
Other stuff…….
I find Gmail notifier very useful and would really like to see this handy little tool developed more.
Chris Preen Said,
January 27, 2008 @ 11:13 pm
The ability to create pre-defined customised email templates in Gmail
Ed Eichman Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 1:06 am
Inline images. I find my self “surprised” at least once a week that gmail doesn’t have the feature. Images are VERY IMPORTANT in emails - a picture is worth a thousand words.
jonathon Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 1:39 am
is it me or does the pop3 server sometimes stop working when downloading email from gmail.
GoodToBeSEO Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 1:43 am
I wish GMail to wake me up in the morning with a cup of coffee and make my bed when I go to work, buy me a dinner and rent a good movie waiting for me to come back and enjoy.
Jogi Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 3:36 am
Hi,
- I would like to be able to open a message in a new tab. Preferably by a standard Firefox third-button-click.
- From iGoogle: When you open a message, there is no “archive” or “label” option.
- I really like the labels, but the function would be even better if I could type the first letter of the label to scroll faster down the list. Alternatively, there could be an input box with autocomplete once I start typing.
I’m sorry if these suggestions already are functions. In that case, consider this as a feedback to the usability team
CSSteve Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 4:03 am
I would love to see Gmail have the ability to render Internal CCS HTML stationary/newsletters. External & Internal CSS would really be awsome but I would be satisfied with just Internal CSS support at this point. Gmail is the only popular email program that I can think of that requires inline styles. Obviously inline styles make creating custom stationary a real pain. This is a very longstanding and common complaint among hobby html and pro designers.
Jeff Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 4:06 am
How about making Gmail standards compliant?
http://www.email-standards.org/clients/gmail/
Omar Yesid Mariño Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 4:49 am
I would like to see in Gmail an option to compose an e-mail with images and tables. You can compose an email with different colors or fonts, but sometimes you need to paste an image or table to clarify something. The only option to have this is by copying / pasting from a web page.
Brian McDowell Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 4:50 am
HTML signatures would be a huge upgrade. This would help market my web pages a heck of a lot better.
Jeff Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 5:04 am
Delivery/read receipts please!?
Luke Daly Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 5:18 am
FOLDERS!!! I hate the labels feature, I want to add a email to a folder and not see it again until I view that folder.
Danny Sullivan Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 5:24 am
I’d still like to view more than 100 items at a time.
I’d like to see the Gmail team be forced to use a Windows Mobile device — of which there are more than iPhones out there, to my knowledge — and perhaps show us a tiny bit of respect and write a nice app for it rather than falling back on the “we’ve got a Java version” that doesn’t run.
effisk Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 5:48 am
I want to be able to disable the function that automatically adds contacts to my contact list! I’m at 1000+ contacts on gmail and on my synchronized mobile phone, most of them I don’t even know. Gmail still rocks though
SomeGuy Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 6:15 am
The old gmail was better than the new, slower one. I have bookmarked gmail with ui=1 so it always loads the old one. The newer one is very slow with IE7 and Vista.
Also, the ability to recover lost gmail accounts would be nice once identity is proven. Hotmail, Yahoo does this Google doesn’t. I have accidentally deleted mine when trying to delete my Orkut and to this day, I was never able to create the old one again and its been more than 2 years now. I check the availability of my old id every couple of days but no luck. Google really blurs the border on this issue. No emails are replied back.
Your response, Matt?
Jono Ellis Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 6:20 am
It would be really great if Gmail could have expanded emails in the same way that Reader has expanded posts. At least 75% of my email can be dealt with by reading and not replying; if I could go to my inbox and be able to read all of the emails without the need to click on each one I could significantly speed up my email time.
Jonathan Dingman Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 7:12 am
Matt,
I’m definitely on board for getting Gmail Templates added. That’s a feature that has been lacking in Gmail for a long time. It’s time to throw in the towel and just build the function!
Ophir Prusak Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 7:15 am
Two things I’d REALLY like:
- Since I also use my inbox as a todo list, I really need some simple way of scheduling a “follow-up” on an email. There are two main scenarios:
1 - When the ball is in my court and I need to reply, but I won’t have the information I need till 3 days from now. Ideally, I’d like to be able to send a quick reply explaining that I’ll send a detailed answer in 3 days and then get a reminder email attached to the conversation in 3 days (or something like that).
2 - I need to keep on top of when people owe me an email and how not replied.
If I send Jim an email, I want to be able to be reminded in 4 days is they have NOT replied.
I know I could do some of this stuff in my calendar, but I prefer email as my notification mechanism. (also - it’s to many steps to do it in google calendar and there is no easy way to link the conversation to the calendar entry).
The second thing I want (PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE):
I Want to Send Emails with Inline Images.
Please add an “insert image” to the rich text editor.
Thanks
Ophir
netmeg Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 8:11 am
Interesting. One of the very first email systems I ever used was back in the mid-1980’s on our HP 3000 system - it was only for internal use, but THAT had delayed email, and it was wonderful. I could email myself and others with all our marketing deadlines and meeting notifications and everything else, up to a year in advance. Would LOVE to see gmail with this.
The other thing I have really felt a need for (and didn’t see it listed already, although maybe I missed it) is the ability to turn the Get Mail from Other Accounts on and off without having to enter the information in each time. I have clients who go on the road for a week or two, and they want access to their email (and don’t have a webmail interface for it) - I can have them pull it into GMail, but then when they come back, they have to remove the account, and then when they go back out, enter it all in again. Times that times multiple email accounts (I have like 25 myself) and it’s a pain. If we could just put them in once, and then enable or disable them, that would be killer.
My two zlotys worth.
J Coppedge Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 8:47 am
I’d like to see a quick way to search contacts from the current Gmail view. Currently you have to click contacts - wait for that window to render then click in the search box, then click search. Maybe a good candidate for keyboard shortcut?
You’ve also mentioned on numerous occassions using your account as a Todo - list, I do the same - but a simple Todo interface, would make process much easier. There are plugins - but unfortunately they don’t work for Camino.
Joe Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 9:16 am
I want to be able to make a filter that moves email into a folder so it doesnt make a mess of my inbox but I can still view them with 1 click.
Voyagerfan5761 Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 9:27 am
@Joe: You can. Use the “Skip Inbox” checkbox in the filter actions and set the “Apply a label”. Bingo!
Solar Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 9:49 am
I’d love the ability to merge conversations.
John Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 10:05 am
First, make it easier to “mark as read”. For those daily emails we get but don’t always have to read, I’d like to be able to just click “mark as read” without checking and going to the drop down list etc.
I also love the idea of integrating your “@gmail” with google domain apps account. Google domain apps doesn’t let you use your account for Google Groups etc. So you have to have an @gmail address anyway. I often use this for mailing lists and monitor all those messages is a pain, not to mention I don’t want them in my IMAP mail because the download process would slow down Eudora/Penelope. However, if they were integrated in some way (I’d rather just be able to use my domain apps for all the google services) it would make switching users and logging in multiple times a thing of the past.
Quentin Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 10:09 am
I would like to see the following features:
- Ability to break/join conversations (sometimes Gmail doesn’t get it right)
- Ability to be able to use GMail chat on MSN, Yahoo, ICQ and AIM networks.
- Ability to import old emails via uploading an email client file (.dbx, .pst, .mbox, etc…)
Quentin.
John Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 10:18 am
…and one more thing: delayed filters or delayed archive. I like some messages to come into the Inbox (labels applied) but not archived automatically. Make them archive after 2 days or so?
Foot in Mouth Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 10:54 am
I agree with “Luke Daly”, about needing a folder system. I think that the “Starred” option should evolve!
Why not allow users to create different stars? Then you could archive the sent email to a starred category.
This would utilize an existing feature in a new way that would help us overcome the frustrations of trying to create filters for particular senders. It would also allow you to send emails from several different people to the same location to increase their relevance.
Dax Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 11:04 am
Dude, that is a BRILLIANT feature. I need all three of those all the time.
Brian Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 11:20 am
There’s really only one feature I’ve wanted from Gmail since the addition of Gtalk - give me a way to view only emails!! It’s great that there’s an option to view only chats, but I’m forced to see chats and emails mixed together!
SEO-Alabama Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 12:25 pm
Matt,
To delay emails, I found this product: http://www.yankback.com/
Burke
crexatalyst Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 12:25 pm
I’d like Gmail too., but there was still some features which is lack., as the others said.,
VJ Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 1:04 pm
It would be nice to not have the Gmail address show up when an email is sent out through a different account set up through Gmail.
Ex. I have someguy@gmail.com and add an email account (someguy@example.com). Currently, Gmail will show the ’someguy@gmail.com’ address even if I send out an email through ’someguy@example.com’.
Erin Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 1:09 pm
Ironically enough I just spent about an hour last night searching to see if there was a way to make my signature appear above the message if I am replying or forwarding so that my contact information is easier to find. So - I would like:
1. The option to move my signature appear above the message when replying or forwarding
2. Have reader appear as a “folder” along the left hand side (like Yahoo! - this is the only thing I miss!)
3. Remove the “sent on behalf of” from emails sent from pop accounts
4. Make it optional to have all addresses that are replied to be added to my contacts.
5. A to-do list with the possibility to have reminders emailed or texted to a mobile phone (sometimes there isn’t an event that I want to add to my calendar but there is a to-do I must remember)
Angela Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 1:24 pm
FOLDERS!!!!!!!!
SomeGuy Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 1:29 pm
The ability to save the Gmail view (standard, basic HTML, turn chat on/off) within the account settings so the settings are persisted.
Jason Said,
January 28, 2008 @ 1:52 pm
Here is my only needs:
1. The ability to have favorite labels (kind of like the most popular chat list) so that I