Introducing multiple sign-in and preferences on Gmail for mobile

The Gmail for mobile team works hard to bring you features that make you more productive on the go. Today, we will highlight some new features for Gmail in your mobile browser.

Multiple sign-in support

Just like on your desktop, you can now to sign into multiple accounts simultaneously. To sign into an additional account, click on the account switcher at the bottom of the threadlist, then click ”Sign into an another account.” You can quickly switch between accounts by selecting the desired account from the Accounts menu.

Mobile-specific signature

We know that autocorrect and other mobile spell-checks can be frustrating as you are typing on the go. Let your friends know that you are responding via your mobile phone so that they understand why you might have sent a message that you are meeting for "monitors" and not "mojitos". It's an easy way to make them understand why your message might be short or have a few typos. To create a mobile signature, from the menu view, press the new settings icon, choose your signature, and then check the box that tells us you want to activate it. If you ever want to disable the mobile signature, you can uncheck the box and we will use your desktop signature instead.


Vacation Auto-Responder

Ever forgotten to set your out-of-office auto-reply in Gmail before going on a trip? You don’t have to worry about that anymore, since you can now set your auto-reply using the mobile interface. Simply choose a start and end date and specify your message, just like on the desktop interface.

As part of added multiple sign-in support, we’ve updated URLs so that each account can have a separate bookmark. For those who have previously bookmarked Gmail for Mobile, please update your bookmark. If you haven’t, now is a great time to head to mail.google.com on your smartphone or tablet browser and add a bookmark to your home screen.

A new way to connect with Gmail and friends

Today, the Google+ team launched Pages, a new way for you to build relationships with the things you love. We’re looking forward to connecting with you on our new Gmail page on Google+.




When you add the Gmail page to your Google+ Circles, you'll see updates from our team, including launches, tips and tricks, and more. You'll be able to discuss those updates with other Gmail users in the comments on the posts. Mention +Gmail when you share your own tips -- if we see a really stellar tip, we might reshare it. We’re also planning to hold regular Hangouts, so you can shoot the breeze with Google community managers, engineers, product managers and designers.


In addition to Gmail news, we’ll feature some of your other favorite Google products, including Google Calendar, Google Voice, Google Chat and Google Tasks. Be sure to add the Gmail page to your Circles and let us know what you think.

Suggested times in Google Calendar

Creating an event is easy, but finding a time that works for everyone is sometimes tricky and time consuming. To make this easier and save you time, we’ve added a new 'Suggested times' feature to Google Calendar.


To get started, create a calendar event, add guests and click Suggested times. The resulting list will include upcoming times where all participants are available. For example if you want to create an hour long meeting with Kara, and she already has an hour long meeting at 3pm, then times like 2pm and 4pm will be suggested.




As part of our ongoing commitment to accessibility, the list can also be navigated using the arrow keys and is accessible with a screen reader.

Introducing the Gmail app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch

Waiting. Walking. Watching TV. Working out. Winding down. Waking up. We check email pretty much everywhere these days. And when we do, we want easy access to our important messages so we can respond quickly and get back to life -- or slinging birds at thieving green pigs.

With that in mind, we’ve created a new Gmail app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. We’ve combined your favorite features from the Gmail mobile web app and iOS into one app so you can be more productive on the go. It’s designed to be fast, efficient and take full advantage of the touchscreen and notification capabilities of your device. And it’s one more reason to switch to Gmail.

Speed
We want to give you the information you need quickly, with minimal effort and distraction. So we’ve included some time-saving features:

• Get alerted to new messages with push notifications and sounds
• Find an email in seconds with search across your entire inbox
• Autocomplete email addresses from your Gmail contacts or select from your device’s address book
• Upload photos with a click using the new attachment button in compose view
• On iPad, navigate your inbox and read your mail simultaneously with split view

Upload photos	Reply, move, label and more

Efficiency
Our inboxes overflow with dozens and even hundreds of messages a day—and this can be even more challenging on a smaller screen. The new Gmail app helps organize your mail so you don’t have to go wading through your inbox to find that key message from your boss or loved one: 

• Focus on your important messages first with Priority Inbox
• Quickly scan countless emails on the same subject with threaded conversations
• Organize your mail by archiving, labelling, starring, deleting and reporting spam

Threaded conversations on the iPad
Touch
We’ve also optimized the interface so you can perform common actions in Gmail with the lightest touch: 

• Pull down your inbox to rapidly refresh if you’re eager for new mail
• Swipe right to view your labels without ever leaving your inbox
• Swiftly scroll through dozens of emails just by sliding your finger

Pull down to refresh	Swipe right to view labels

We hope the Gmail app makes checking email on the go a little easier. It is available in the App Store today and works on all devices running iOS 4+. For more information, check out our help center.

Changing information density in Gmail’s new look

When our design team looked at tackling a redesign across Google properties, responsive design was high on our list of priorities. Responsive design implies that a page or application should dynamically re-adjust itself based on your environment. The specifics of the device that a user is using, and in particular the size of their browser window, should have an impact on the way the application presents itself. To put it simply, Gmail needs to look and feel great on a tiny netbook screen, on a high resolution 30” monitor, or anything in between.


You can try this out yourself if you are using Gmail’s new look. Open up Gmail and make your browser window much smaller. Everything should crunch down as you adjust to give you a better experience in a smaller window. No matter what size your browser window is, Gmail should look and feel great out of the box.


We also thought quite a bit about the density of the information on the screen in the new design. Gmail’s old design packs a huge amount of information into a small space. While this is perfect for some, many people appreciate a more airy design with more whitespace between lines and elements on the page. This is especially true on larger monitors.


We wanted Gmail to be more attractive and easier to read by default, so if you’re on a larger monitor you will see that the items in your inbox are spaced farther apart than they were in the old design. We believe that this results in a better overall experience, but it does take some getting used to. In our internal testing we found that most of us adjusted to the new spacing after about a week and found the old spacing cramped and uncomfortable when they looked back at the old design.


Others, however, found the original spacing to be ideal and wanted to see as much information as possible without scrolling, even on a large monitor. We added a density setting to the gear menu in the toolbar to make sure that everybody can find a setting that works for them: Comfortable, Cozy, or Compact.


Comfortable is the spacing that we recommend for most people. With your density set to Comfortable, the display adjusts fluidly based on screen size.




Compact is the densest setting and matches the line spacing that existing Gmail users are used to. With your density set to Compact the display will stay dense no matter what size your window is.




Cozy is somewhere in the middle. With your density set to Cozy the display will get a little denser when you make your window small but the changes aren’t as dramatic.


Mathletes among you may recognize that the density setting is really a ceiling function.


We think Gmail should be smart enough to always make itself look good on your screen, so we incorporated responsive design. We also think you should be able to see what happens when you change your settings, so we put the density settings in the gear menu right next to your inbox. When you make a change, you can immediately see what it looks like. Our density settings reflect our design philosophy that Gmail’s new look should be more responsive, personal, and beautiful. 


You can switch to the new look today by clicking on Switch to the new look in the bottom-right of Gmail.

Improving themes in Gmail’s new look

One of the most visible improvements in last week’s Gmail update is the entirely new theme system and the new high definition themes that it supports. This refresh to themes both simplifies them and makes them more immersive. You can browse what some of the new themes look like below:





Themes are now implemented as semitransparent layers on top of a large background image. Each theme uses either a dark or light variant of most UI elements to balance legibility and visibility of the background image, allowing the background image to peek through and provide color and personality. Background imagery can also change based on date, time, or weather. Bringing all these changes together really makes the new themes shine:

Old	New

Old	New

In addition, these changes also reduce the technical complexity of the theme system, which will enable us to create more beautiful and unique themes in the future.


Like the new themes? You can switch to the new look today by clicking on Switch to the new look in the bottom-right of Gmail.

Gmail app for iOS available in the App Store (again)

Two weeks ago, we introduced our Gmail app for iOS. Unfortunately it contained a bug which broke notifications and displayed an error message, so we removed it from the App Store. We’ve fixed the bug and notifications are now working, and the app is back in the App Store. For an overview of what’s available in the Gmail app for your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, 

In the short time the app was public we received a lot of helpful feedback and feature requests. This included requests for everything from bigger features like multiple account support to customizations like improved notifications and mobile specific signatures. 

We’re just getting started with the Gmail app for iOS and will be iterating rapidly to bring you more features, including all the ones listed above plus many more. Based on your comments we have already improved our handling of image HTML messages - they are now sized to fit to the screen and you can pinch to zoom in. 

To try out the Gmail app today, install it from App Store on any iOS 4+ device. Those who already have the Gmail app released Nov 2 must uninstall or log out of the old app prior to installing the new app

How to Get Gmail Alerts on your Mobile Phone

Gmail is the fastest growing email service and has one of the best Spam filters andclean interface for navigation.There are lots of features like Gmail Preview Pane and Addtional Chat Emotions which are not enabled by default but you can activate them from Gmail Labs.Email forwading to mobile phones  is feature which automatically sends email to mobile phone as soon as it arrives in your Inbox.This feature is still not supported by Gmail but you can enable it using third party services like way2sms or 160by2.