Daft Stuff I've Built: No. 2, Gmail Inbox Zero Indicator

19 November, 2021

Google has killed a lot of things in its time:

Google+
Google Wave (which Microsoft seem to have rebuilt).
Jeeves from Ask Jeeves
Privacy

But the only one I really miss is Google Inbox.

Google Inbox

Google Inbox was basically an alternative email client for your Gmail account, and ended up being a lab for prospective Gmail features.

Features like:

Snoozing emails
Autocompletion
Archiving emails
Swiping to snooze/archive in the App
Bundling: Inbox would parse all of the content of your email (yeah, I know) and group it accordingly.

Most of them have ended up in Gmail you'll notice.

One of my favourite features however, was that was you got a nice picture of a sun when you hit Inbox Zero.

Inbox Zero

Inbox Zero for those of you uneducated in the ways of the workflow is when you clear your Inbox - usually this is achieved by snoozing or deleting all of your emails. The feature where you are rewarded with a twee picture when you hit zero never made it across from Inbox to the Gmail web app - although bafflingly made it into GMail's mobile app.

Anyway I built a Chrome Extension that does it for me...

There is nothing to learn from this. It doesn't really improve my workflow at all.

It's just daft.