I have been using Google’s new email app called Inbox by Gmail since its first invitation-only release and I have to say I am a big fan of it, and I think it is the best email app so far. Its elegant and mobile-friendly design makes it so easy to check and manage your email inbox, and it also goes beyond email by integrating your calendar, reminder, and other stuff in your account to make your daily life much easier. Recently, Google decided to make Inbox by Gmail available to the public with several new updates based on users’ feedback. I don’t want to waste your time on reading my post, instead you should spend time on trying Inbox by Gmail yourself, so go visit their web site: https://www.google.com/inbox and download it.

Unfortunately, this new release is still missing two important features that have been requested by many users since its first release:

1. Empty Trash

Inbox by Gmail lets you move unwanted emails to trash, but it does NOT give your an option to empty your trash. The emails in trash will stay there for 30 days, then they will be permanently deleted automatically. The design idea behind this is that you don’t need to worry about your trash email so you can focus on more important stuff in life. Sounds very thoughtful, right? But only if those trash emails do NOT count against your storage quota. You can accumulate tons of emails in trash in 30 days and they can eat up your space very quickly. So if Google can make it happen that the emails in trash do not count against my storage, then I am happy to let Inbox by Gmail to clean my trash automatically, otherwise, please add the Empty Trash feature as in Gmail.

Workaround: if you want to manually empty your trash to free up some space, you will need to switch back to Gmail, then go to Trash to empty it, then switch back to Inbox by Gmail. All emails are synced between Gmail and Inbox by Gmail.

2. Send Email to a Group

If you create a group in your Google Contacts, then you can use Gmail to send email to the group. When you type in the group name in the To/CC/BCC field in Gmail, Gmail will recognize it so you can send the email to the group. However, Inbox by Gmail does not have the feature that recognizes the groups in Contacts, so you will have to manually type in every email address or contact in the group in order to send group emails.

Workaround: again, you will have to switch to Gmail to send group emails. Tedious, but it is so far the only way.

I hope Google will add the above two features in the next update of Inbox by Gmail, then I will stop complaining :-).