LittleBITS: Unlocking the Commons and Extending the Gmail App

Originally published at: LittleBITS: Unlocking the Commons and Extending the Gmail App - TidBITS

TidBITS Talk readers shared an insightful essay that nicely describes the motivation of many TidBITS members in supporting us and a tip that the Gmail app now supports non-Gmail accounts.

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Gmail in iOS suffers one deficiency that regular Mail also does - there is no easy way to file your messages. Thereā€™s no equivalent to the keyboard shortcuts in Gmail via the web. I find myself using Outlook on my iPhone just because of that. At least it has a basic filing feature - you can search for folders to file in. I donā€™t understand why standard Apple Mail doesnā€™t add something basic like that.

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Perhaps only tangentially related to the subject, but my ISP uses Gmail, and Apple Mail never worked properly with it in Mojave. Messages were not marked as read or deleted, so I had to log into their server every day to delete messages I had read or moved to folders in Apple Mail. And it took forever for Mail to quit.

This was corrected in Catalina and continues to work as it should in Big Sur.

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I donā€™t think that I understand what you mean by ā€œfilingā€; do you mean putting an email into a folder?

Regarding iOS Mail, hereā€™s how to create folders and file email:

Regarding iOS Gmail, have you ever used ā€œLabelsā€ in Gmail? See this support page for details. With Labels, you can put the same email into multiple folders (without making a copy of the email).

When combined with ā€œFiltersā€ā€”only available in Gmail through the web interfaceā€”you can automatically assign labels based on a variety of criteria as they arrive; no need to ā€œfileā€ manually!

Of course, I suppose that Labels work only on Gmail, not other email providers; I havenā€™t tested this. Maybe thatā€™s your point.

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Also with the iOS gmail app, you can go into settings to change the swipe actions to include move as one of the swipes. That should save some tapping.

And perhaps one method to triage mail in the gmail app on iOS and iPadOS is to create a label called ā€œ_move laterā€ that will show up at the top of the list of labels, use the gmail app to move messages that you want to file into that label, and then do them in bulk at a computer later.

Iā€™m not sure what you mean. I assume that you mean filing your messages into mailboxes you have defined in the specific IMAP mail account. At the bottom of the message viewing screen, there is a folder icon. Tap that andyou mail either see a list of accounts followed by a list of Mailboxes in the account you select or two buttonā€“one with a preselected mailbox (based on your history and the mail message headers) and one for doing a selection as above.

Note: the ā€˜Replyā€™ option actually provides access to all message processing optionsā€“all the other icons select only one or two of them.

Yes, but with both apps you need to scroll and scroll and scroll to find your folder. I have a lot of folders, and nested hierarchies of them.

At least with Outlook thereā€™s a field to start typing the name of a folder and the choices are immediately narrowed down so you can file very quickly.

Iā€™m surprised the Gmail app doesnā€™t have some means for quick multiple labeling like via the web, or with MimeStream on there Mac.

Are you talking about the Gmail iOS app now?

This is what I see at the bottom of my screen, under the notice I got of your message.

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The swipe doesnā€™t really help. You still have to plow through all the folders. Itā€™s easier to just open the Outlook app in iOS and enter part of a folder name and youā€™re done.

Also I believe the Gmail app doesnā€™t allow markup of images/screenshot. Outlook for iOS does. Spark doesnā€™t either, though it has nice filing.

doug

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No, I was referring to the IOS Mail app. My gmail mailbox is a secondary mailbox and is maintained using genuine IMAP mail apps.

Yes, at the bottom of iOS Mail there is the folder you mention. But it saves no time because you still have to scroll through the entire hierarchy of folders to file something.

Iā€™ve suggested it for years to Apple Feedback (aka ā€œthe black holeā€) but why canā€™t they simply put a search field at the top? Thatā€™s what Outlook for iOS does. I could enter ā€œtiā€ and ā€œTidBitsā€ would pop right up for filing.

Gmail for iOS is no better in this respect.

Spark is really good about filing. But has other problems, like no image annotation,

doug

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Does the iOS gmail app have the capability to display pdf attachments? Canā€™t for the life of me figure it out. When selecting the attachment, the screen shows the name of the pdf then underneath that ā€œdataā€

Doug

It does for all of my PDF files. I just tap them and then a file viewer appears with a share control and a control to add the file to Google drive.

Agree with douglerner. What the other posters donā€™t realise I think, is the filing (aka moving email) difficulty when you have a large number of nested email folders, and/or use necessarily long folder names that cannot be seen as the name is cut-off.

I have a large number, but cannot be bothered to file email on my iPhone, as scrolling through endless email folders is a PIA. Apple should add three things to Mail on iOS:

  1. Add a search box, available after you hit the move email button.
    Then users can search the likely folder name, find it, and add the email straight to it; rather than endlessly scrolling long nested email folder lists.

  2. Make folder names scrollable, for those with names longer than the width of whatā€™s available on your iPhone screen.

  3. Have a ā€œNew Folderā€ option when you hit the move email button.
    Exactly how saving a file in Finder on Mac gives you the option to create a New Folder before filing something. Iā€™ve never understood why in email, users have to create the folder first, before moving the email to it?!

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Yep, this was one reason I just gave up on using Gmail, and its proprietary functionalities.

All I wanted (and still do) was for all my email accounts to be available inside a client. Clients are not as slow as web interfaces, give more possibilities of filing emails between accounts, and are much much quicker to deal with medium to large volumes of emails.

For Apple & Google to not get this to work for TEN OS versions ā€“from 10.5 Leopard until finally 10.15 Catalinaā€“ is one good reason I chose wisely, it seems!

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  1. Have a way to easily go to a folder.

Everyoneā€™s working style is different, of course, but Iā€™d suggest that if you spend a lot of time filing email, you should build filters so you donā€™t have to in most situations. Thatā€™s what computers are for!

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