4 Apps For Managing the Absolute Chaos That Is Your Email Inbox
Email is no longer just about communicating with friends or colleagues. These days, our inboxes are also the repository for office tasks, travel plans, social network notifications, shopping offers, and login info for dozens of other services. But unless you're militant about deleting or sorting emails as they arrive, it's likely you're still hundreds to thousands of emails away from the promised land known as Inbox Zero. The best new apps for sorting and managing your email have one thing in common They help you quickly clear messages, whether it's into a folder or straight into the digital trash. From Google's brand new Inbox app, which retools the email interface, to an app that deals with newsletter subscriptions in one fell swoop, these email apps sort out the inboxes that have become the hub of nearly all our online activity, Gmail users have seen a fair number of redesigns since Google's email service launched a decade ago. Google's spam filters are already the best at clearing the chaff from the wheat. Priority Inbox separates the inbox into important and less important mail. Last year's introduction of the tabbed inbox further sorts less important email into categories such as promotions and updates. Now Google has launched Inbox, a standalone app for Gmail accounts that drills deeper into organizing your email. Email is still bundled by conversation thread, but the new interface displays messages in auto-sorted bundles travel, finance, promotions, social and updates, plus individual email that's addressed to you personally. Tap on a category to see every new email by its subject line. The travel and finance categories are particularly useful additions to the original tabbed inbox. These categories make it easy to find itineraries and transaction confirmations. Even more useful is the ability to check off whole bundles of email without having to open them, such as updates which include social network notifications and order confirmations or promotions offers that aren't particularly relevant. At the top of each bundle is an option to check it as done, which sends it to an archive you can peruse later, or move the email to another folder. If you open a message, more one-click options await. You can pin important email so that it stays at the top of the inbox, snooze messages so they reappear at the top of the inbox at a specified time or checkmark them done an action that delivers a particular thrill of achievement. If a conversation thread contains images, calendar appointments or PDF attachments, a preview appears beneath the subject line, handy when you're scanning for particular files. In this new, minimal interface, a + icon in the bottom right serves as the compose function for new email, reminders or contacting your last three messaged contacts. Google's instant messenger has been moved up to the toolbar, where you can access other Google services such as Calender or YouTube as well as toggle a switch to see only pinned messages. All other features, including sent mail, drafts and custom folders, are hidden away in a drop-down settings menu at the top left. An app for iPhones and Android phones offers added features including swipe actions to deal with email. Like the desktop app, the apps let you checkmark a bundle of email as done or tap on the bundle to view all email then swipe right to check off or left to snooze until a particular time. On the phone, you can also set the snooze alarm to occur at a specific place by GPS location  handy if you want an email pop-up at the office or a shopping offer to reappear when you're back home. Supports Gmail, Great for Sorting email without having to create complex rules scanning a busy inbox for important information and attachments, But It's only for Gmail accounts, Overall Accurately sorts emails into an intuitive interface that makes it very easy to take action on the important emails and clear the less important ones, Get it Sign up for a beta invite at inbox.google.com download the smartphone app from Google Play or App Store. If you deal with email mostly on your phone, Mailbox offers a sleek, compact interface with an impressive number of ways to deal with an email based on lengths of a swipe. From the inbox  that is, without opening an email  you can swipe to the very right of your screen to mark the email as done or swipe to a slightly nearer right to trash it. Swiping to the very left lets you add the email to a list to buy, read, watch or any number of custom lists such as Work or Logins, in my case, while swiping to the mid-left snoozes the email for a variety of time periods, including Someday set by default to three months later. Granted, learning the right length of swipe to do what you want takes some doing, but once you get the hang of it, checking off dozens of emails without having to click away from the inbox becomes incredibly simple. Auto-Swipe alerts the app to start learning what you normally swipe on. In time, it'll prompt you to ask whether it should "always snooze till later," for example, for your Twitter updates. Supports Gmail and iCloud, Great for Gmail and iCloud mail users who deal with email mostly on their phones, although there's also a beta desktop client for Mac OS X Yosemite users, But Emails are not sorted they appear in a single list, where updates mingle with newsletters and conversations with friends. If you use Gmail with the tabbed inbox, Mailbox can seem chaotic. Overall It offers excellent functionality packed into the swiping gesture that's so natural on mobile, but you'll find fewer organizational features than in Inbox or even regular old Gmail. Get it iTunes and Google Play, If you're suffering from subscription email overload, Unroll.me offers an incredibly swift means of dealing with all those messages. Once you've linked Unroll.me to your email, it presents all the services that are sending you regular emails 221 for me plus the option to unsubscribe to them individually from a single page. After that, any remaining subscription emails get condensed into a single email that Unroll.me sends you once a day. After all, who knows when that Groupon email might contain the mythical deal of a lifetime?, Supports All email services, Great for Managing subscription email cleverly you can still get wind of offers without having them mixed among email that requires action, But Unroll.me alone probably won't be enough to completely streamline your email, Overall It's an easy, intuitive way to bundle subscription email you want and get rid of the ones you don't. Get it Unroll.me, While the other services on this list clean up your email for you by sorting bulk mail into folders you can check later, Mailstrom goes deeper. Once synced to your email account, it scans and analyzes your inbox so that you can view it by different parameters  sender, recipient, subject, when it was received and more  and do the bulk sorting yourself. It's an enlightening way to view your emails. You can dig up forgotten emails from particular senders or recipients or see what month of the year you've received the most email. Mailstrom also provides a much quicker way to bulk delete. For example, you can delete everything from, say, your telecoms provider, especially if it was sent last year, or you can delete every email pertaining to a particular subject line, no matter who the senders and recipients are. Mailstrom offers a wide variety of actions. In addition to delete and archive, you can also choose chill, which hides selected messages until a later date, or expire, which auto-forwards future emails from the sender to a set folder. You can also check off selected mails to mark as spam or block in future. It's worth noting that some of these features are also possible in email services such as Gmail or Outlook by creating custom rules. Check out our latest tips for using Gmail here., Mailstrom has a subscription fee of 49.99 a year with a free trial that lets you delete up to 1,234 messages. When I reached around 500 deleted messages, I was offered a discount on the annual fee to 39.99., Supports IMAP email, including Gmail, Outlook.com, iCloud, Great for Reaching inbox zero, But The annual subscription fee of 49.99 may be a touch high if you don't need its unique inbox analysis features. Overall This is one of the most comprehensive inbox control apps out there however, it may offer more features than many users need. Get it Mailstrom.co, More from Techlicious, Researchers Develop a Smartphone Screen that Corrects for Vision Problems Amazon Now Lets You "Make an Offer" 1.2M Smartphones Stolen in 2013, Thefts Down in 2014 Colleges Using Big Data to Track At-Risk Students