I see Google is putting a ton of effort into reinventing email with their new Inbox option. I’ve loved Gmail’s automated folder system since it debuted, and out of the box, it properly sorted about 90% of my email, only showing me the most important bits front and center, and cutting my personal stress and anxiety by shuffling the rest of the junk off into the corners. I suspect that maybe email marketing companies were tired of being relegated to the Promotions tab and forced Google’s hand back into a single inbox with grouping. For my uses of email, that 90% of noise is back in my Inbox front and center, and I dislike it greatly. I hope to god they never disable Gmail entirely.

One long-standing pet peeve with Gmail (and all similar email apps) is that they don’t offer a “slow” reading option. Email is a fast, efficient, intensive sort of activity, so the UI is as practical as possible, but if I ever need to write more than four paragraphs, I find myself often composing text in Google Docs or even Medium draft posts, both that get shared as a link over email. I know how much I don’t like reading tons of text in an email interface so I purposely push them to a place with larger fonts, more comfortable margins, and a way to soak in the words in a calmer UI. Go read stuff over there, where words are respected properly instead of your punch-clock email machine here.

Why doesn’t Gmail sense when an email is greater than a thousand words and automatically offer up a “pretty” option for more relaxed reading for recipients? It knows I wrote a couple pages at Google Docs, why can’t that be embedded somehow in Gmail with a similar layout as what it would have at Google Docs?