Gmail is starting to roll out a change to its interface. It will allow you to respond to your emails a little more quickly, with an online chat-style text field.
Gmail is going to look a little more like an instant messaging app. Google is currently rolling out a slight interface change to the Android beta that removes a button to place a text field. The idea: respond (a little) faster to your messages.
Three buttons disappear, a text field replaces them
Until now, there were three buttons at the bottom of an email to respond to it: “ Answer “, ” Reply to all ” And ” To transfer “. In the latest beta update on Android, these buttons disappear in favor of a text field, as noted AndroidFont. It allows you to respond directly to your email, which means clicking once less. By default, the first choice is the simple answer, but clicking on ” Answer “, choices ” Reply to all ” And ” To transfer » are displayed in a small drop-down list. This also allows you to modify the list of recipients if necessary.
Source: AndroidPolice
Source: AndroidPolice
On the right, in the text field, there is a button to enlarge the response space, if you want to reread your email large before sending it. On the far left, the button to add an attachment is still there. Finally, on the right of this interface we find an emoji button to select some. Gmail has made it so that when we respond, the message we are responding to is displayed, just like our message as well as the smartphone keyboard.
A test for a broader evolution of Gmail?
For the moment, not all users of the Android application in beta have access to this new interface. Google has not given any reason for this change. This is probably a test for the company: it is not said that it will arrive on all smartphones afterwards.
This change, however, is one more step towards a broader transformation of Gmail. The electronic messaging system is aging compared to so-called instant messaging. The Gmail interface has for years allowed conversations to be displayed in a thread, which almost makes it look like a discussion on Messenger, for example. With this text field in the Android app, it’s one step closer to that.