Gmail is one of my most-used Android apps in personal and work contexts, but it’s far from what I would consider a great experience.
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My biggest pet peeve with Gmail for Android is that Google hasn’t really done anything new with the UI in years. The main inbox and message layout has remained essentially the same in Material Design, Google Material Themes, and Material U.
The integration of Google Chat and Meet has no real impact on the email experience unless your company (or friend group) actually uses those two services. In those scenarios, Gmail became an “everything” app for communication.
2016-17
At one time it seemed like Google was moving from a navigation drawer to bottom bars. I wonder if this was ever possible for Gmail, the nav drawer turns out to be the best solution for providing quick access to folders and labels wherever you are in the app. Anyway, the timing of the bottom bar redesign would have been before the navigation element was taken up by the workspace. (Unless Google wants to give up Gmail floating/double bar Like chat, which looks extremely busy.)
There’s something to be said about a UI that stays consistent, especially for something as important as email. Especially with the sheer size of its user base, Gmail’s continuity is important. However, this should not come at the expense of trying new things that can help simplify or streamline this form of communication.
2019
That said, this is starting to change. Google has introduced new features over the past year that have improved the way I use Gmail every day. my favorite example is quick reply redesign This allows you to easily refer to previous emails while writing a response. Before this, the Answer interface remained the same for years. The second is how summary card Emails are becoming richer and more attractive to save you from reading entire emails to find or open what’s important.
2024
AI will certainly make new things possible in the areas of auto-organization, summarization, and prioritization, but I think there are a lot of potential outcomes yet to happen before that happens. I would define this category of changes as improvements in quality and utility of life.
Then again, Gmail’s message view hasn’t fundamentally changed in nearly a decade. You get the same three actions in the top-right corner, with everything else located in a very long overflow menu. The big question here is whether this is a good UI on today’s tall phones. The controls are not particularly accessible or ideal for one-handed use.
Another place where particular UI stagnation is actively and negatively impacting Gmail is on tablets and foldables. Despite ample horizontal screen real estate, you only get those three buttons. At a minimum, Gmail should put actions for “Move to” and “Change label” in the toolbar. Meanwhile, Google is adding a Gemini button and it looks pretty busy.
Elsewhere, it would be nice if Gmail’s Android notifications weren’t limited to just replies and archive or delete activities. These three are only visible by default, while I personally would prefer “Mark as read”.
Another fundamental thing would be to ensure that there is complete feature parity between the mobile app and the website, no matter how small the capabilities. For example, you can’t delete individual messages in a thread on the Phone app. Your only option is to trash the entire conversation. I’m sure this is an edge case request, but it’s silly that the mobile app can’t do everything the website can do. It’s really strange that I can only go to my laptop and do anything in this age.
Gmail’s design needed to be completely reconsidered and modernized for today’s mobile devices. When/if this happens, what do you want to say to Google?
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