My phone has been buzzing every 75 seconds because I'm now getting a notification for every single email received instead of just the primary inbox. If AI were actually useful they wouldn't be tying it to access to, like, spell check.
Official Vent Thread
- Thread starter sbrylski
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My understanding is you can turn off individual features like Smart Compose but if you disable Smart Features altogether you lose the automated inbox sorting. And with Smart Features enabled google is training its AI on your inbox even if you don't use any of the AI features.
That is my understanding as well. I have entirely disabled Smart Features and Smart Features in Google Workspaces (which applies AI to all the other google products). Yea, it removes some conveniences but I survived just fine before Gemini in all my stuff, I will be just fine without it.
Priority inbox is one of the inbox layout options that existed long before Gemini came along. As far as I know, it is separate from the Gemini implementation and "smart features' option. With all the "smart" stuff turned off, priority inbox still seems to work for me. I also use custom labels with filtering rules, which also still seem to work with all the smart features turned off.
I could not find a way to turn off Gemini other than turning off smart features, and turning off smart features definitely killed priority inbox for me. I would love to be wrong though.
I think we are talking about two different things. Primary inbox is a Smart Features thing that automatically reads your emails and automatically labels them based on the categories listed in your screenshot.
What I'm referring to is Priority Inbox, which is one of the inbox layout options. It is located under the INBOX tab under the settings.
It also pops up under the quick settings under INBOX TYPE:
As you can see in my first screenshot, priority inbox is activated and I have my sections selected. It has the little tooltip that says Smart Features is required for sections like "Important and Unread" however, this is for automated categorizing. Even without Smart Features turned on, you can manually designate what emails are important by activating the importance flag, which looks like this:
It will turn yellow when activated. Emails with this flag will go to the "priority inbox" which are unread emails that are also important. They show up at the top of the gmail browser interface. You can set phone notifications to only alert you when you get emails in the "priority inbox" Other, non-important emails that come in, will appear as unread but show up in the "everything else" section and will not trigger a phone alert.
Other than that, you can create labels to automatically label your emails with traditional email filters and it behaves like the gemini feature. Maybe not as smart at times, but for repetitive type emails like order confirmations, it is fine. I think you m ay have more options to mess with the labels using the Multiple Inboxes layout option, but I have not used or tried that, so I'm not sure how it works. I've used priority inbox since it was first introduced back in 2010. Hopefully, google doesn't decide to remove it and force gemini usage.
Sorry if all of this was useless info. I may have misunderstood the issue.
Thanks for the lead! That seems promising to reduce the biggest pain point. I'm going to have to try again when my brain isn't split across three other spreadsheets, as I'm having trouble getting it to work as you describe.I think we are talking about two different things. Primary inbox is a Smart Features thing that automatically reads your emails and automatically labels them based on the categories listed in your screenshot.
What I'm referring to is Priority Inbox, which is one of the inbox layout options. It is located under the INBOX tab under the settings.
View attachment 14357
It also pops up under the quick settings under INBOX TYPE:
View attachment 14358
As you can see in my first screenshot, priority inbox is activated and I have my sections selected. It has the little tooltip that says Smart Features is required for sections like "Important and Unread" however, this is for automated categorizing. Even without Smart Features turned on, you can manually designate what emails are important by activating the importance flag, which looks like this:
View attachment 14361
It will turn yellow when activated. Emails with this flag will go to the "priority inbox" which are unread emails that are also important. They show up at the top of the gmail browser interface. You can set phone notifications to only alert you when you get emails in the "priority inbox" Other, non-important emails that come in, will appear as unread but show up in the "everything else" section and will not trigger a phone alert.
Other than that, you can create labels to automatically label your emails with traditional email filters and it behaves like the gemini feature. Maybe not as smart at times, but for repetitive type emails like order confirmations, it is fine. I think you m ay have more options to mess with the labels using the Multiple Inboxes layout option, but I have not used or tried that, so I'm not sure how it works. I've used priority inbox since it was first introduced back in 2010. Hopefully, google doesn't decide to remove it and force gemini usage.
Sorry if all of this was useless info. I may have misunderstood the issue.
Bad news. So, as I was messing around with it to screenshot things, something must have reset somewhere and now my beloved priority inbox is crippled.
As you are experiencing, it is now notifying me for all emails received instead of just those marked as "important". Apologize for a long writeup that turns out not to be a solution.
If I figure out a work around, I will post here.
All apologies are owed by gmail, not you. Appreciate the help!
Ok. Quick workaround for now. By doing this, you will no longer get notifications for all UNREAD emails that come in. You will get notifications for emails marked as IMPORTANT, using the important flag I mentioned in my earlier post. You will have to manually flag important emails for this to work from now on and/or use the script method discussed below. This method can also be used to enable notifications for other labels you manually create, which can be assigned using manually created filters.
You can also write a script using scripts.google.com to create more advanced filters, which can be run on a scheduled basis. This includes creating a filter that labels emails you have interacted with (i.e., sent an email to or replied to) as a particular label, which will allow you to activate notifications for that label. Funny enough, I actually used gemini to show me how to write the script. I did not reproduce it here because I have not tested it in depth but it may be something to try out.
1. In your gmail app on your phone, go to SETTINGS then select the account you want to change settings for.
2. Under NOTIFICATIONS, choose ALL if it's not already selected.
3. Under Inbox Notifications, uncheck LABEL NOTIFICATIONS.
4. Under Manage Labels, select IMPORTANT.
5. Tap the SYNC MESSAGES and select "Last 30 Days"
6. Check the "Label Notifications" box and the "Notify for every message" box.
After these steps, you should no longer get notifications for all emails but you will get notifications from emails marked as "important" using the important flag. As I said above, you can use this with other labels in conjunction with other filters and a script can be written to create more advanced filters to help label important messages.
I have tested this so far and my phone is no longer lighting up. However, when I send an email to myself, it does alert me of a new email. Hope this helps!
Hm, doesn't align with what I see in my settings, unfortunately. Alas.
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