Drag – Change the way you work inside Gmail | Hacker News Reader

Drag – Change the way you work inside Gmail

dragapp.com

79 pointsnicktimms56 comments

NO I'm not going to get 3 friends to sign up until I get a chance to try this out. They want us to helpp spread the word about an app we cant use yet, wtf

That growth tactic - what a drag..

I agree though it's an abrupt moment to hit that popup. I think this kind of thing would work for certain things, however for a productivity tool for professionals - not so much.

Fake emails man. They're free.

What is there to try out? It looks like a pretty standard "kanban for gmail" idea. If you need more you either don't use workflow managers or don't have a very good imagination.

Though I'm not really seeing what makes it any better than existing GTD offerings that already exist for gmail, so I agree with you afa I'm not going to be recommending it to anyone; if they had anything more there I'm sure they'd've had a different screenshot.

Even if you have a good understanding of the idea and the functionality, the quality of the implementation is still important. Hard to get a complete sense of that without trying.

Plugging my crazy no-plugins/no-external-tools gmail GTD approach:

http://klinger.io/post/71640845938/dont-drown-in-email-how-t...

Might be useful to some that dont want to use external tools or provide access to their email inbox to 3rd parties

I like the idea but https://inbox.google.com already solved this for me.

Personally, I find inbox intimidating and confusing. When I set a reminder it is disappearing from the inbox! Also, downloading files from inbox is a real pain. Honestly, there is lot more room for someone to give a elegant solution to organising emails.

I've been a full-time Inbox user since I got access and really like it. All of your reminders are viewable in https://inbox.google.com/snoozed

Occasionally I'll set two reminders because I forgot I already set one, but overall I'm doing more and replying to things at the right time without much effort, so it's been a successful switch for me.

I use inbox only in mobile. Regarding reminders, technically I'm not snoozing that email. I would like that email to show up with the reminder time.

Still, it is tricky for such an app to get stickiness from all kind of users.

In mobile, hit the hamburger menu in the upper left. Snoozed is the second item from the top, right below Inbox. But yes, it's a little surprising that you can't put a date on something without hiding it from the Inbox, now that I've tried it. I think it's the right choice, but I see what you're saying.

The only reason I ever use the Gmail app is to download files on Android because Inbox refuses for some files such as .gpx files.

GMail also lets you download all attachments as a zip instead of downloading them one by one. That's the only reason I hop over to GMail.

Great to hear Palerdot. I agree with a lot of your point and for me, so many people like to use their emails/inbox in different ways so Drag is trying to provide the simplest way to do that, just with a slightly different layout.

I like the Inbox UI but I'm scared of using it. I'm pretty thorough about using labels on desktop gmail and I don't want Inbox screwing those up for me. Anyone in a similar situation?

I tried Inbox for a few weeks but then reverted back to Gmail. I used labels quite well too. I loved Inbox classifying my mail, it was a breeze to find emails from trips etc, removing clutter, I liked the remind me later feature too.

After a few weeks of usage one thing that bothered me was that Inbox was slower. I continued to use it until I found that I had missed a few mails because Inbox had classified them incorrectly. I figured I'd rather use Gmail and make sure I didn't miss any mail, even if I have to sift through a few more mails. It basically comes down to what you prefer to tolerate type 1 or type 2 errors. And, search has always been good.

In my experience inbox does not modify the way anything is stored, just alter the representation. The same labels as gmail are used so you should just be able to switch back and forth.

What happens in Gmail when I mark something as done in Inbox though? FME, it gets archived, which I really don't want.

The inbox label gets removed (which is called done in inbox and archive in gmail)

I doesnt screw them up, and the Inbox UI has a "gmail" link that gets you gmail view of the same inbox for when you want to do something the Inbox UI makes difficult.

Hey Bartj3. Inbox (Google) is awesome. What we're trying to do is visually improve your experience managing your emails.

By default the columns are 'To Do', 'Doing' and 'Done' but this is just an example and can be changed. The idea of Drag is to be a universal way to manage your emails. Whether that's a To Do list or simply a better way to categorize your emails.

Some of our internal team are simply creating multiple lists so they're visually available (to be dealt with) in a more intuitive way than Inbox or traditional Gmail.

Love to hear your thoughts. Always good to get feedback from users of like-minded products/features.

q: What does your app have that existing offerings in this space ([0] [1] [2]) do not? Just did a quick search so I'm not necessarily informed on the subject, but as chris9397 points out there isn't much information to work with from the post.

[0] https://yanado.com

[1] https://www.sortd.com

[2] https://www.streak.com

I remember hearing about the Android version of this feature but never actually saw it anywhere. And I didn't know that there was a desktop version of it. I wonder why they don't advertise it a bit more.

Only if inbox let you not load images automatically. The same way Gmail behaves, you choose if you want to see the images.

Why?

Tracking pixels.

I suppose you're aware but all the pixel does is tracking whether you open it or not since Google preloads and proxies it. It's never served from the original server.

I like opting in to read notifications. Using a tracking pixel for this is a privacy violation (albeit minor).

Yup, fair point. Still wanted to emphasize that the tracking pixel is way less intrusive than it used to be when you're using Gmail nowadays.

Correct, that level of tracking alone is enough to make me want images off by default.

I forgot that inbox even exists.

You can't deploy https but you want me to trust you with my email? No thanks.

Hey guys, Nick here (creator of DragApp). Firstly completely rooky mistake. Https is going live today!

Yeah, but then you require me to invite three friends first before I can try it. That's keeping me out currently.

Why so snarky?

Yeah come on. It's launch day, its not easy.

Here is a great article that argues pretty well for why e-mails aren't tasks:

https://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2016/04/email-isnt-the-probl...

One of the arguments that directly comes to mind when I look at dragapp's screenshots is that parsing messages to find out what the underlying task is just takes too much time. Look at the image and you'll see that there is no way to see what part of "Chrome extension for Gmail" is in to-do, progress or complete. You have to read each e-mail to find out.

Backup screenshot: http://imgur.com/a/VtyyO

You are right that emails aren't tasks, and that the two should not be confused. But some emails can lead to tasks, or need to be followed up on, but maybe 'not right now', or maybe the follow-up actions required aren't just a one shot 'reply' thing. And do you really want 'yet another task list' confined to just your email app? Hope you will forgive me for the plug, but in our own app we designed the two to be separate, but very easily connected. . Snoozing emails like you snooze your alarm clock, to get them out of the way but not forgotten, and yes, sometimes one-click transforming selective emails into actionable and trackable tasks, not just for yourself but also for friends and colleagues those are the actions people really seem to be after. That is very different from an ‘every email goes onto the Kanban The article you linked makes a few good points about human nature, communication and work. We tried to incorporate some of that philosophy in our (mostly free) Tasks in a Box (for now the email integration is with Outlook though, no Gmail, yet) https://store.office.com/en-001/app.aspx?assetid=WA104379681

"Drag lives in Gmail, which means all your important stuff stays in one place. " Does it mean that you don't have access to my email? or do you have access? What access? what do you do? what data do you process? there's no privacy policy or anything like that (or I haven't find it out)

I'm going to guess they do have some access. I built an inboxsdk app, and we do indeed have access, to at least what is rendered on the page. But anything that is running js on that machine has that same access. This might be deeper than that if they connect to the API on your behalf.

I think "all your important stuff stays in one place" was intended to refer to the fact that Drag is just a different view over your existing email rather than any claims about security or privacy.

Hey all Nick here (Founder of DragApp).

Firstly thanks so much for everyone's feedback. It's given me a million tasks to do already so prioritizing this and getting as much live as possible in the coming week.

Addressing a few of the points:

1) Accessing the tool. Would love people to share and spread the word however completely understand that you may not want to. We're getting a big number so thank you and also thanks to those who have not but interested to sign up. 2) Paid versions. Some people mentioned about the tool turning to paid only. This is very unlikely as we want to maintain a freemium model which means that on premium features (Enterprise) there may be some paid versions but again this is unconfirmed at these early stages. 3) Http(s) was a rooky mistake! Going live later today.

Please keep the feedback coming!

Agreed with the other comment. This crowd definitely requires HTTPS.

Perhaps move to a host that helps you with that if you are unsure how to deploy HTTPS?

Hey nkristoffersen, Nick here (creator of DragApp). Firstly completely rooky mistake. Https is going live today!

I like the idea, but imo we need to treat inbound email differently than a task list. I think inbound email should have a rich set of filtering/grouping/bulk archiving tools to sift through the junk quickly, and then a seamless way of converting the actionable items into to-dos. I don't think Gmail handles either of these parts very well.

When you think about it, gmail is just one input into your list of things to do for the day - so you could imagine other integrations like Github PRs that end up there. Anyway, I'm glad people are still working on this problem, I consider it very much unsolved.

Yeah, these guys were advocating that 20 years ago... http://cs-www.cs.yale.edu/homes/freeman/lifestreams.html

A tasklist everybody can push tasks to, what can possible go wrong?

Email != ToDo List

That's basically how people have been using email already.

No tool, in particular on top of email, will solve the lack of a proper process. Tools like these will maybe work for some time, but it will be a mess in no time.

GTD has been working for me for 10 years now, with simple lists. I think a part of it's strength is that the GTD-framework includes a method to "start over again" after your system gets inevitably cluttered.

In both Gmail and Inbox I miss emails when two come in at once in the same thread - wish they could solve that without turning off convos altogether.

I would love to try it, but one question: how likely is it that I adjust my gmail workflow with "drag" and then it becomes paid-only?

That was my second thought as well (after really liking the idea of it). Is there any info on that?

looks very much like sortd

Hey dddw, yes it does look like Sortd!

Sortd is cool. We're trying to be a little different in as far as keeping things super-simple and a really quick way to drag 'n drop your tasks into organized lists.

We're also working on the following features: 1. Shared lists (so you can potentially collaborate on a task/email/list with co-workers 2. Adding Notes to emails. Be able to note (or multiple notes if team) on emails inside Drag.

I thought Hackernews only used Fastmail?

I just did: before:2017/01/01 in:inbox is:unread

and selected all to delete.

no more annoying count of unread emails for years ago.

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