Your Gmail Will Soon 'Nudge' You If You Forget to Respond to an Important Email

Soon, artificial intelligence will be able to help you keep track of your inbox. Gmail's new redesign will include functions designed to help you keep on top of important emails, according to Fortune.

One of the most useful new additions is a snooze button for your inbox. If you don't want to deal with a particular email immediately, but don't want the haunting specter of an unread message in your inbox, you can simply ask Gmail to resurface the email later, preventing you from forgetting about that important email you totally, definitely meant to respond to.

By clicking on the small clock icon that appears at the top of the message (next to the archive and delete buttons), you can snooze an email until later that day, the next day, or a specific date and time of your choosing. You can also pick the mysterious "someday" option, which allows you to hide the email indefinitely, until you choose to unsnooze it. No matter how long you snooze a message for, you can always see the emails you've snoozed and put them back in your inbox by going to the "snoozed" tab in the menu, right under the "inbox" button.

Even if you don't purposefully snooze your emails, Gmail's artificial intelligence will subtly remind you to respond to important messages that are sitting unanswered in your inbox. Next to a message's subject line in your inbox, it will tell you how many days have gone by since you received the email, and ask you if you want to respond. While you're free to ignore it, the contrast of the orange reminder font helps those messages stand out in a cluttered inbox.

The new design also makes it easier to access apps like Google Calendar from your inbox, and lets you download attachments and images without opening the message itself (useful for long threads). Some of the other new features for Gmail are only available to companies that pay for Google's corporate email service right now, like an option to remove the recipient's ability to forward, copy, or download an email.

To try the updated Gmail interface for yourself, go to the "settings" tab in the right-hand corner of your inbox and click "Try the new Gmail."

[h/t Fortune]