When it comes to one of the oldest modern means of communication, email, we’ve become accustomed to firing responses to all manner of stuff hitting our email inboxes on the go. At the gym and just got a new invoice request? Reply. An event invite just hit your inbox while on your way home? Reply. It’s become a tradition. However, there are still many of us who are a little bit old school: we prefer the comfort of the desktop for sending all our emails. Never mind that we have lots of apps to choose from on mobile.
In some instances, say, you’re using a BlackBerry or Windows smartphone, you have little choices when it comes to enjoying all the features of Google’s new email app, Inbox. So you end up loading inbox.google.com on your mobile browser. For such users and others, there is a reason to get excited.
Google has finally made available to users of Inbox’s web version of the app a feature it brought to the mobile apps on Android and iOS in November 2015: Smart Reply. As the name insinuates, the feature simply provides alternative means of replying to anything hitting your Gmail inbox that requires a response from you. Users get several options right under the text editor that they can use to auto-reply without having to type a thing. The feature comes in handy for people whose inboxes are flooded with emails and need to figure out a way to clear them without ignoring anyone. So popular is the feature on Inbox’s mobile apps that already 10% of all replies made use the feature.
