Most e-mail apps have sturdy opinions about what your inbox ought to seem like. Notion Mail is the alternative.
The brand new offshoot from productiveness app Notion is all about flexibility. It permits you to slice and cube your emails nevertheless you need: group them by date, create devoted sections for particular contacts, add notes, and even flip your inbox into a listing of motion gadgets. There’s additionally an AI labeling function that may robotically type issues like bundle updates or health-related messages.
It will possibly really feel overwhelming at first—however so can Notion itself. That hasn’t stopped the productiveness platform from amassing 100 million users, with use instances starting from simple note-taking to complex database management. Notion Mail is attempting to carry that very same degree of adaptability to your inbox—and the extra effort you place in, the extra helpful it will get.
Notion Mail is on the market now for Gmail and Google Workspace customers on the net and as a Mac app. An iOS app is coming quickly, and assist for extra e-mail suppliers is on the way in which.
Roll your personal inbox
Notion Mail’s most fascinating function is the flexibility to customise what your default inbox view appears to be like like, each when it comes to the way it’s organized and which emails you’ll see.
For example, I like having some visible separation between current and older emails. By clicking the “Edit View” button and choosing “Teams,” you’ll be able to select a “Date” view that types emails into clusters for as we speak, yesterday, final week, final month, and earlier.
Notion Mail’s “Teams” function has another neat methods to partition your inbox, as effectively. You’ll be able to have emails from particular folks or domains seem on the prime, separate learn emails from unread ones, or group by label.
Inside the identical “Edit View” menu, it’s also possible to arrange filters to cover or present sure varieties of messages. This allows you to filter out issues like Gmail’s Promotions and Updates classes, sure key phrases, or particular addresses.
The place issues get actually fascinating, although, is the “Properties” you’ll be able to apply to every e-mail. A few of these are normal issues just like the sender’s title or labels, however Notion additionally permits you to append varieties of knowledge, equivalent to notes and standing indicators. You’ll be able to then use these properties to type your inbox. By including statuses like “in progress” or “pending” to your emails after which grouping them by standing, as an illustration, you’ll be able to flip your inbox right into a sort of mission administration system.
These views aren’t restricted to your predominant inbox. Notion Mail’s left sidebar permits you to create further views, every with their very own customized properties and groupings. Meaning you’ll be able to maintain a conventional inbox as your default, whereas additionally establishing a mission administration–model view for messages from colleagues. Like the primary Notion app, Notion Mail consists of a number of templates that can assist you get began, and it’ll finally let customers create and share their very own.
Often iffy AI filtering
Notion Mail’s different massive function includes utilizing AI to arrange your emails. With the “Auto Label” function, you’ll be able to enter the kind of emails you’re in search of, and Notion will attempt to fetch messages that match.
Whereas Gmail’s personal filtering guidelines can already label incoming messages robotically, Notion’s AI could make inferences {that a} regular key phrase search wouldn’t choose up. An Auto Label rule for “medical/physician,” as an illustration, may seize health-related emails even when these phrases didn’t seem within the message.
This opens up some doubtlessly intelligent use instances. I arrange a rule for something associated to bundle arrivals, as an illustration, giving me a fast option to see the standing of all my deliveries. I additionally made a “Recommend emails to delete” rule, then used Notion’s Unsubscribe button to take away myself from a bunch of mailing lists.
The draw back to this method is that it could actually miss issues. Once I arrange a “Florida 2025 journey” Auto Label, it tagged a bunch of unrelated emails and excluded just a few related ones. You’ll be able to assist the labeling by tagging or untagging particular messages, however in some instances you’re simply higher off labeling emails manually.
AI labeling can be how Notion plans to earn a living from its mail product. Whereas Notion Mail is free, a $10 per thirty days AI add-on is required to label various hundred emails or so. That improve additionally provides AI composition options, and supplies entry to AI options in Notion correct.
Tying all of it collectively
After just a few days of utilizing Notion Mail, I can see the way it may dig its hooks in.
It’s been some time since I’ve used Notion for on a regular basis notetaking—I switched to Obsidian, an offline-first various, a pair years again—however I nonetheless keep in mind the way it gained me over. I began off utilizing it for easy note-taking, however earlier than lengthy had developed a branching system of subpages for various initiatives, and was utilizing templates to arrange a few of my product critiques. The extra time I spent tweaking my notetaking setup, the extra personally invested in it I felt.
Notion Mail has a reasonably related studying curve. My first step was to arrange a primary inbox view with just some customized tweaks, however I’ve began to experiment with various views and may see how they may be higher at organizing all the data that’s trapped inside Gmail. And I do know that if I maintain sinking extra time into it, the more durable it’ll get to make use of anything.
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