Google Inbox Adds Improved Calendar Integration, More

When Google first announced Inbox, it’s “other” email interface for web and mobile, I didn’t get it. But Inbox is a wonderful email client, and it’s getting better this week with Google Calendar integration and more.

For the unfamiliar, Google Inbox is another way to access your Gmail-based email. Compared to Gmail, which is itself a fine email interface, Inbox is much more streamlined and even more efficient. Basically, it provides a more modern take on email, one that deviates from old-school folder folder management and other vestigial interfaces. I’ve come to really like using Inbox, and if you’re familiar with my aversion to Microsoft Outlook (on the desktop; the mobile client is excellent), I guess I’d just say that this app is about as far from the cluttered nonsense of Outlook as you can get. Inbox is so good it makes Gmail look stodgy.

Anyway.

Today, Google announced three improvements to Inbox. It appears that each is coming to the web and mobile (Android and iOS), though one requires a new extension for Chrome on Windows, as you’ll see.

These improvements are:

Improved Google Calendar integration. According to Google, Inbox now gathers emails from a single event together and shows you what’s changed at a glance. When you tap on an event, you’ll see a comprehensive overview, all in one place.

Newsletters. While Inbox uses a concept called bundles to help you manage things like trips and purchases, it now handles email-based newsletters differently than before: You can tap a newsletter to expand the view to a list of topics, and then tap it again to view it inline in the Inbox app.

Save to Inbox. Since so many people email themselves web links for later exploration, this new feature puts an Inbox option in your phone’s Share interface so you can do this directly from any app. (From a PC, you can share to Inbox using Google’s new Inbox extension.) Shared links are grouped in Inbox using the new Saved view.

Nice!