Pet & Animal: How to Use Google Inbox

Google Inbox can help you handle emails more efficiently and live at "inbox zero". Available as an Android and iOS app, as well as through the Google Chrome browser, it offers a range of features to make you more efficient. With Inbox, you can bundle your messages by type/label (travel, finance, purchases, etc) and customize when you get notifications about each bundle, set up smart reminders for your to-do list items, and snooze any emails or reminders to handle them at a later date. Start with step 1 to get some help figuring out how it all works!

Steps

Setting Up Inbox

Get invited. For now, Google Inbox is only available by invitation. You can email inbox@google.com to ask for an invitation, or check with friends and ask around on social media to see if anyone has an invitation to send you.

Download the app. When you're invited, you'll receive an email with direct download links for Android and iOS. Once you've downloaded the app in one of those operating systems and set up your email address there, you'll also be able to access Inbox on your Chrome browser at the Inbox website.

Follow the on-screen prompt to sign-in. Google will ask you to sign in to your Gmail account within the Inbox app. This just takes a flash, and then you'll be good to start using the app.

Navigating Inbox

Scroll through your inbox. You'll see most emails listed chronologically, similar to your regular Gmail inbox. However, by default certain types of emails are bundled together by label to maximize inbox efficiency; these allow you to scroll horizontally between all recent emails in that label, rather than having them take up extra vertical space in your inbox. Read more on this below.
- To navigate through a bundled set of emails, find the topic/label in your inbox list, and then swipe right (or click the right arrow on desktop) to see the different emails it contains. Click on any particular email to expand it.

Learn the lingo. Some features of Google Inbox are very similar to Gmail but have their own names. Becoming familiar with these terms will help as you get used to Inbox:
- Inbox lets you mark any email or reminder as "Done" by selecting the checkmark next to or above it, or swiping to the right. This is similar to Gmail's archive; it doesn't delete the item, but moves it out of your inbox and places it in your "Done" folder.
- Inbox uses "Move to Trash" in place of Gmail's "Delete".
- Inbox uses "Move to Spam" in place of Gmail's "Report Spam."
- Both services use "Compose" to mean write a new email.
- Inbox's "Pinning" is very similar to starring an email in Gmail. This marks it for your attention and keeps it in your inbox.

Use the menu on the left-hand side to navigate your email labels/folders. Press the three little lines (☰) in the top left-hand corner to open your menu. This menu will show you the standard email folders, with some fresh Inbox spin:
- You'll see your Inbox, Snoozed, and Done labels at the top. These are like three levels of prioritization for your email processing: Your Inbox contains new emails and reminders, the Snoozed section contains emails you've asked the app to remind you about later, and Done contains all the emails you've marked as completely handled.
- You'll also see folders for Drafts, Sent, Reminders, Trash, and Spam. Click on any of these to see the contained messages, much as you would in classic Gmail.
- Towards the bottom of the menu are your bundled and unbundled categories/labels. The bundled ones will bunch together in your inbox, under that label (e.g., Travel, Purchases, Finances), while the unbundled ones will be labeled but each one will display separately. You can change which labels are bundled or unbundled by clicking on the label and then selecting the settings cog/wheel in the top right-hand corner. You can also add your own labels and automate what emails go into those categories with Google filters.

Search for email. Inbox retains the powerful search feature of Gmail. To find an email by sender, subject, or contents, click on the magnifying glass at the top righthand corner of the app and enter your query.
- The app will pull up any matching results, and you can select one to read in detail.

Customize your bundled labels. By default, Inbox sets up bundled labels for emails related to Travel, Purchases, Finance, Social, Updates, Forums, and Promos, but you can add your own labels, too (bundled or unbundled), just like in Gmail. New emails in these topic areas will be displayed bundled together by topic in your inbox unless you change your settings.
- To change the settings of any label, navigate to the label from the left-hand app menu (accessed by clicking the ☰ icon). Select the label, and you'll see all of the recent emails in that category. Then click the settings cog/wheel in the top right-hand corner to change the settings.
- You can select:
  - whether to bundle the messages under that label or display them each separately in your inbox
  - whether to show the bundle each time as messages arrive, or only once per day or once per week
  - whether you want notifications on or off for emails which have that label attached
- You can use Gmail's automatic filtering options to label new emails with any label (bundled or unbundled), and automate and simplify your inbox processing even more. For example, if you set up a filter for all emails from your mother-in-law, and want them to skip your inbox altogether and be marked as done without notifying you, a combination of a filter and your Inbox label settings will get the job done!

Receiving and Reading Emails

Read incoming emails. When you receive a new email, it'll show up in your inbox, unless you have it set to skip the inbox and go straight to "Done." When you get a new email, you can view the subject, sender, and a snippet of the contents direct from your inbox. To read the rest, click on it and the email will expand.
- From the expanded email view, you'll be able to reply or forward the email, as usual. You'll also be able to pin it, snooze it, mark it done, or group it by label(s).

Pin any important emails that you still need to handle. One big feature of Inbox is that you can "pin" any important emails that need your attention. This will keep them in your inbox, and is similar to starring important emails in Gmail.
- When you select the Pin toggle at the top of your inbox, only pinned emails will appear. Use this to get an overview of what emails you have sitting in your inbox that still require your attention.
- When you're done with an email, you can remove it from your pinned list by tapping the pin again. You can also mark it done and remove it from your inbox by clicking the Done checkmark.

Snooze emails and reminders if needed. If you don't want to deal with an email right now but know that you will need it again later, you can press the clock at the top, or swipe the email left from your inbox. Set either one of the default time options or pick your own date/time or place, and Google Inbox will drop the email into the top of your inbox again at the right time.

Mark an email "done." Hit the checkmark or swipe the email right to do this. Marking an email done is like archiving it: If you've read it, replied as needed, and decided you don't need to pin or snooze it, you can mark it done and get it out of your inbox.
- Emails marked as done are still available in the "Done" folder or under any label that they're categorized as, but they won't clutter up your inbox anymore.

Move emails between labels. If you want to add or change a label on an email you're reading, click the three dots in the top right-hand corner. This will open a menu that says "Move to."
- Click on whatever label/folder you want to apply, and Inbox will take care of the re-labeling for you.

Creating Emails and Reminders

Reply to emails you receive. To reply to an email, click on the arrow in the circle button at the bottom-right, or simply scroll all the way down the email thread until you see the "Reply" or "Reply to all" textbox. Type your response and then click send.
- If you want to expand the textbox to make it bigger, click the button that looks like an upwards and downwards arrow, in the top-right of the text area. This will pop out the whole email text area and give you more space to compose your reply.
- If you want to reply to a certain message in the thread but not the whole thread, click the three dots next to the timestamp for that particular email message, then select "Reply" or "Reply all." You can also forward the email from there if you'd like.

Compose a new email. From your inbox, click the big red plus sign to start a new email. This will suggestion recipients you've recently corresponded with, or you can click the red "Compose" button again to start an email from a blank slate.
- Make sure you fill out the "To" field with the recipient address and your subject and email contents before sending. You can add an attachment by clicking on the paper clip icon, if desired, and then send your email by selecting the paper airplane icon in the top right-hand corner.

Set a reminder. If you want to write yourself a reminder, you don't have to email yourself anymore: Inbox builds this feature right in. Select the big red plus sign from your inbox and then click Reminder (the icon is a string tied around a finger). Fill out what you want to remember.
- Reminders are "smart"; a drop-down menu will give you some options based on your location, contacts, and more. For example, you might select "Call Bob" or "Call Bob's Hair Salon in New York, NY" and Google will fill in the details for you.
- Select the clock to set a time or place when you want Inbox to give you the reminder. If you don't set a time or place, the reminder will just go straight into your inbox, pinned at the current time.

Send invitations. If you have spare invitations to send while Google inbox is still an invitation-only service, these remaining invitations will appear under the compose button, too. If you have some to spare, send them along to your early-adopting friends, encourage them to try it and give feedback to Google, and help the development team make the app better for wide release.

Tips

If you make a mistake while moving an email between labels, look for the "Undo" option that appears at the bottom of the app. If, for some reason you don't see it, you can also open the email again, click the three dots in the right-hand corner, and then select "Remove from (label)" to take it out of the incorrect category.

When you first download Google Inbox, it'll show you navigation and layout tips in a highlighted blue box to help as you explore the app. You can click "Got it" on each one of these to dismiss them when you want.

In the Inbox app, you can use swipe gestures to access a lot of the functions. From the inbox, swipe left on an email to snooze it, swipe right to make it done, and pull the whole window down to refresh your inbox.

While the process is not as immediately obvious as deleting in Gmail, you can delete emails from Inbox, too. Simply follow the step above for moving emails to a new label, and select Trash as your chosen label.