One of the advantages of upgrading to Gemini Advanced via the Google One AI Premium paid plan ($19.99 / £18.99 / AU$32.99) is that you get 'Gemini in Gmail'. This gives you access to Gemini's AI features right in your Gmail app, and for me it's been a complete game changer.
You can also get 'Gemini in Gmail' as part of Google Workspace, and it comes free for a year if you've just bought a new Pixel phone, but however you get access, it's worth investing your time in.
Last year, a study conducted by Cost Plus Drugs concluded that adding Gemini to its Google Workspace account saved employees about 5 hours a week using the AI capabilities in Gmail alone. I’ve been using 'Gemini in Gmail' for a few months now and I think that figure is accurate for me too, so here are my top three tips:
1. Adopt the Gemini approach to email
Firstly, let’s get something out of the way. Gmail is, and always has been, a big cluttered and confusing mess. There, I’ve said it. I have always found it impossible to organise a Gmail inbox because you can’t simply drag messages into folders and out of your inbox as you intuitively think you should be able to. Instead you have to create and apply labels. Except nobody has got time for that.
The solution is to forget about trying to organize your inbox. Rather than try to hold back the river, just let the emails flood in and then use Gemini to find what you’re looking for.
If you've got access, you'll see the familiar Gemini star icon is up there next to your profile picture in the phone interface, and in the web browser interface, too. Tap or click this and you can enter a prompt, just as if you were talking to Gemini the AI chatbot. For example, “Show me unread emails from today” is one it often suggests. That can be a great way to get a handle on what’s going on, but you can type pretty much anything you like into the Gemini prompt bar.
For example, I get a lot of emails from the school my sons go to, most of which are not relevant to me. One of my favorite prompts to ask Gemini is, “What do I need to know about [name of school] this week?” and I get a curated list of things I actually need to know.
Another good prompt I use is, “What offers have I received this week?” which summarizes them all down nicely, so I don’t miss anything I would actually be interested in.
Another one I use often is, “What emails have I received mentioning [subject] this week?”, which brings up a search page of results. In fact, you can use Gemini as a more human-like way of searching your inbox than Gmail's usual search feature. Type, “Search my emails for the phrase “roasting marshmallows”” for example, and it launches a Gmail search.
In fact, if you ditch Gmail altogether, and go into the Gemini app on your phone, you can search your Gmail inbox straight from there. You can also use Gemini Live, and talk to Gemini to ask it to search your inbox, however, it currently can’t display the results in Live mode, but it can read them to you.
2. Get Gemini to summarize email chains
Another time-suck in Gmail is vast email chains that involve lots of people replying. The formatting structure of Gmail is pretty impenetrable at the best of times, but once multiple replies are involved it’s very easy to miss a vital part of the conversation.
This is where Gemini summaries can come in very handy. Simply select an email chain, then hit the “Summarize this email” button that appears. Gemini will give you a handy bulleted list of the main parts of the conversation, so you can be sure you're not missing anything important.
3. Get help with responses
Stuck for words? Don’t know how to reply to somebody? We’ve all been there. You know what you want to say, but your mind goes blank when it comes to finding the right words to say it? That’s where Gemini can help
Click or tap to reply to an email and you’ll notice that Gemini comes up with some suggested replies for you. These can be useful, but if you really want to get Gemini to save you time, then tap the pen/star icon and a window called “Help me write” appears.
Here you can type in a functional description of what you are trying to say. The trick is to keep it brief, so say something like: “Ask for more information and ask if they’d like to do a podcast with me, maybe”. Tap the Create button, and the email is drafted with a well-written response that asks the key things I want it to. If you don’t like it, there’s a regenerate button, along with options to polish, formalize, elaborate, and shorten.
It takes a while to get used to trusting AI to write things for you, but it soon feels like using a kind of shorthand. You can always edit the draft before you send it anyway.
With these tips I hope you start to see the potential for Gemini in Gmail, and with the news that it's coming to the Calendar app soon, it looks like it's going to get even better. With a bit of practice you’ll soon be smashing your inbox like an AI pro.
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