‘Snooze’ rolling out to Gmail for Android, but with an unintuitive UI

Abner Li | Apr 25 2018 - 11:34 am PT

An update to Gmail for Android is rolling out today with a corresponding “Snooze” functionality to match the revamped web interface and service. However, the implementation is unfortunately less intuitive than Inbox’s.

As spotted by Android Police, Snooze is coming to the mobile Gmail apps. Compared to Inbox, users cannot just swipe to snooze a message and instead have to tap into the message body. The overflow menu houses a new “Snooze” option just underneath “Move to.”

The panel that pops is similar to Inbox, with six options: Later today, Tomorrow, This weekend, Next week, and Someday, as well as Pick date & time which brings up a standard picker UI. After selecting an option, a snackbar appears to let users quickly undo.

Meanwhile, under “All labels” in the navigation drawer, a new “Snoozed” menu lists your messages and when they are “Snoozed until” in a bright orange font.

This interface is somewhat unintuitive, hidden, and less likely to be discovered than the very discoverable swipe gesture on Inbox. Hopefully, a coming update will redesign the Android and iOS experience.

But in the short-term, Gmail for Android will also pick up new features as part of this morning’s revamp. High priority notifications on mobile will feature cards just above your inbox to take action on “important messages,” as well as delivering suggestions like unsubscribing from mailing lists based on intelligence that determines whether you’re actually reading emails. This will be available in the coming weeks.

Updating to version 8.4 via the Play Store enabled Snooze on my device, but there are also reports of the update rolling out to prior versions of the app.