We’ve known for some time now that Google is ending the life of the Inbox email app. But in case you were still in denial, we now have an end date in sight: April 2, 2019. The ending actually begins by the end of March but April 2 is when it will all officially shut down completely. They promised us that our favorite features will be brought to the Gmail app but it seems that not all of the features we loved from Inbox have made its way there.
When you go to google.com/inbox, you’ll see the “Inbox is signing off” message that tells you that you only have until the end of March 2019 to actually access this site and the app itself. It tells you also to “find your favorite features” in the Gmail app which they have been improving the past few months. And even if you proceed inside Inbox, you will still get a notification on the side encouraging you to switch to Gmail.
They indeed have brought several Inbox features to Gmail, like snooze, nudges, Smart Replies, etc. But there are also other stuff that are still not there: inline highlighting of actionable links, saving links within the email app, archiving groups of emails, etc. Hopefully they’re still working on those things and will eventually bring them to Gmail.
If you still haven’t gotten used to using Gmail again on your mobile device, you might want to start using it now to prepare yourself for the inevitable disappearance of the Inbox app. There are rumors that the Apple version of Inbox, which is Spark, will soon be launching on Android so you might also check that out once it does.
