Over the years, Google has killed off many of its apps and services that were much-loved by the community. One of these was the Inbox by Gmail app, which was shut down back in 2019, with many of its features being transferred to the current Gmail client. However, a team of ex-Google employees has now resurrected Google Inbox with a new email platform called Shortwave. So, let’s take a look at the details and how Shortwave is a spiritual successor of Inbox by Gmail, unlike other Inbox alternatives.
Shortwave, announced back in September 2021, is an email platform that lets users categorize and manage their emails with an easy-to-use interface and nifty features, much like Inbox. In an official blog post, Shortwave founder and CEO Andrew Lee wrote that emails would replace traditional messaging platforms like iMessage, WhatsApp, Slack, and WeChat, which is something extravagant to imagine. However, with Shortwave, the company is aiming to change the way how we manage and interact with our emails.
Furthermore, it treats the emails as items in a to-do list, and you can mark an email or an entire bundle of email threads as ‘done’ with the tickmark(s) button once you have read them (see the screenshot below). Upon marking them as “done”, the emails or the bundles disappears from your inbox, de-cluttering it in the process, and move to a dedicated “Done” tab that you can access from the side menu.
Other than these, you can also pin important groups or email threads to the top of the list to easily access them when you open Shortwave, drag and drop emails to create “custom bundles”, and snooze emails or bundles with the pre-set time periods. Plus, Shortwave supports markdown options when composing an email, with full access to GIFs and emojis.
However, there are a few hiccups in Shortwave currently. For starters, the platform only supports Google accounts as of now and no other email platform. Moreover, while there is an iOS app, which surprisingly works like a charm, the platform currently doesn’t have an Android app other than a barebones beta version. Plus, the web client of Shortwave is just a website.
