Google is working hard to bring a much requested email feature of recalling an email that has been sent, the Inbox development team confirmed during a recent Reddit AMA session. The team also added that they are already working on cross browser support for Google Inbox.
All those who use email for regular communication would have been in a situation when they have regretted sending an email and wished that it can be undone. There are times when the email is sent in haste or has been sent to the wrong recipient or has been sent with incomplete information which could prove dangerous at times. ‘Undo send’ has been on the wishlist of email user since the advent of email and Google Inbox will deliver the feature.
Google is already providing a similar option in its current UI, but users have to enable it by adding the option through Google Labs. One more caveat is that users are required to ‘Undo send’ within 30 seconds [the maximum you can set] of sending the email – a time restriction, which many found to be rather too demanding.
In a recent AMA on Reddit when asked if Google Inbox will be receiving the ‘Undo send’ option, one of the software engineers at Google Inbox replied “Yes, we’re working on it right now.”
Further, when the team was asked if they were working on bringing Inbox to other browsers, the team was affirmative on that as well.
“We’re working as fast as we can on enabling other browsers as soon as possible,” the reply from Google read. “We’re already doing Google-wide testing for cross-browser support, but we want to make sure that everything works perfectly before enabling it for all of our users.”
There were questions on why Google decided to launch Google Inbox as a separate platform rather than integrate the features right into Gmail. To this Google Inbox Lead Designer replied that since the launch of Gmail, there has been a lot of change in the way people use emails.
With Inbox, we took a step back and did a lot of research into how most people are using email today. What we found was that email works as a todo list for many people, that phone usage is starting to eclipse desktop usage, and that many people have negative feelings towards email because it feels like so much work.
He added that they didn’t feel that they could have solved problems by incorporating the features of Inbox in Gmail.
We needed to start from scratch to build a tool that really helps you stay on top of your life.
