Shortwave, Google Inbox’s spiritual successor, has announced that it’s finally launching its Android app on the Play Store after previewing it with a small group of beta testers over the last one and a half years. From what we can tell, the app still isn’t a native Android app but rather a web app, but it’s much closer to its iOS counterpart than it’s ever been, complete with an exclusive bottom-based navigation.
For context, Google set out to revolutionize how we deal with emails with its alternative Gmail interface Inbox in 2014. The service eschewed the chronological thread-based nature of regular email clients in favor of a to-do style interface, allowing you to reorder, snooze, and bundle emails. Inbox was killed just five years later, and we’ve been left without a proper in-house replacement ever since. Many companies have tried to fill this space, but Shortwave is arguably the closest — likely owed in part to the fact that it was founded by an ex-Google employee.
Shortwave takes the best features from Inbox — reordering, pinning, bundling, and snoozing emails to help you prioritize them better — and builds on top of them. In its announcement, the company says that “Our 1.0 launch brings the best features of Google’s Inbox app back to life on Android,” and apart from the lack of a native app, this seems very much true.
The biggest change to Shortwave for Android in version 1.0 is its interface. The company redesigned it to be bottom-based, with shortcuts to the account switcher, inbox, search, and compose all aligned at the bottom, something you don't even get on the native iOS app. Another welcome addition is the option to create customizable short and long swipe options, allowing you to quickly archive, delete, snooze, and pin emails without having to open them.
Over the past months, Shortwave also added support for multiple Google accounts and more granular push notification options on Android, complete with the option to deliver bundles on a schedule, e.g. all newsletters on Saturday. Additionally, a dark mode has been added a while ago. The Android app has also received the option to add notes to bundles, in case you need a more specific name for a given project.
On top of these Inbox-inspired features, Shortwave adds some extra tricks. You can easily block or allow new senders without having to solely rely on Gmail’s spam filters, there is a more intuitive search option than on Gmail, and options like scheduling and undoing sending are also on board. Shortwave has additionally jumped on the AI train, allowing you to use a large language model to summarize longer messages for you, draft replies, list open questions for you, or translate. For your privacy, you can also block some tracking content.
In its basic form, Shortwave is free to use. However, it’s limited to 90 days of searchable email history once you’ve marked something done in your inbox and has slower support. When you pay $9 per month, you get unlimited searchable emails and will receive support responses within one business day.
Personally, Shortwave has really clicked for me over the past few months after it was still lacking too many features right after its initial launch. It’s not perfect, but it makes it easy to organize emails according to projects and topics and cuts out the noise, helping me focus on the tasks at hand and reference important information quickly. Shortwave definitely has a steeper learning curve than Inbox back in the day, but once I got past that thanks in part to Shortwave's detailed documentation, there is no turning back (unless I need to search for emails older than 90 days).
You can download Shortwave on the Play Store without jumping through any beta group hoops or get started with the service on the Shortwave website. If you're not ready to do the full switch yet, we've alternatively got 11 tips to get the most out of Gmail itself.