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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

Those that don’t use inbox, why? I’m sure there are features of gmail that are missing from inbox but what are they? Why do Google keep these two “forks” of the same product?

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I find the lack of visual density and regularity in Inbox very annoying. Gmail (compact) fits 3/4x times more emails on the same screen, with a single text line of identical size for each. It's very quick and easy to scan through.

Inbox looks like a jumbled mess to me, with randomly sized images and pre-rendered images, and it makes me scroll a lot more.

Annoyingly, the new UI is slightly less dense than before, but it's still much better than Inbox.

I think the key idea behind inbox is that you don't have more than say 5 or 10 emails in your "to do" view. I never had to scroll. I only look at the inbox view (i.e. things I need to deal with) - and that is always fewer than one screen. If I need something from the "already dealt with" screen I do a search, never a visual scan. This might be due to the volume of emails received obviously, but that's why I was wondering. It might also depend on the usage pattern, e.g. I reply to probably fewer than 1 in 100 emails for example.

If I had more emails, or more emails I actually had to address by replies, it might be different. I never noticed the "images" in inbox though. Are those for things like purchases or travels that it renders differently? My emails just look like subject lines, with about the same density in inbox as in classic gmail (Quick check: An inbox email on desktop is a 32px div with 6px padding, while a gmail email is a 39px table row - so quick estimate is 5px more per email for inbox)

Yes, for some reason Inbox expands some attachments inline for me, and pre-renders some links (with a picture from the page a short summary). It doesn't seem to do it systematically, and it could be something that can be turned off in options (it didn't seem to be when I first checked). It seems to pick the most useless items for expansion (recurring bills! 150px vertically for this month's G drive bill!).

A quick an dirty screenshot-on-my-current-machine shows inbox compact emails at 60px vertical, vs 50 for the new gmail. All of the difference seems to be whitespace, the fonts are more or less identical. There's extra waste for "Today" and "This month", and with a couple of expanded pictures, I can't even fit 10 emails vertically on my screen (MB 12"). Gmail shows 20 emails in the same space just fine.

It's quite possible that if you have just the right volume of email, the Inbox format is perfect. It's also possible that most people don't mind scrolling. Me though, I like to see as much as I possibly can at a glance.

I dont need anything Inbox provides. I just want a list of all my emails, untouched.

I think we are the same ;) and I would apply that to any other service that has a feed (Insta, Facebook etc). But for the people who have a red dot with the number 999999 on their iPhone, there must be something Google should do.

True, I’m up to 20k in my gmail red dot. It’s a big reason I’m desensitized to it now, and I currently have lots of red bubbles on my home screen that I’m too lazy to deal with (and usually social apps that I would t otherwise consider deleting). Considering how many apps abuse the red dot though, I consider being desensitized a plus. It also drives anyone who looks at my phone crazy.

Don't like the design one bit, too much wasted space, and overall huge elements. And I find the additional features unnecessary.

I just want an as simple as possible list of emails. Basically the compact view in current gmail, sorted by unread - not by some automatic folders or anything similar.

If I have to do something at a specific time I'll create a calendar entry. If it's a newsletter that I don't care about I'll unsubscribe. Email for me should be a list of messages, nothing more, nothing less.

Same goes for other goole services, such as google play music. Everything is super large and with a ton of padding, and you can't see more than a few songs in a list because the elements are so huge.

When I used Gmail, I didn't use inbox because I sorted my email in folders, which were missing from inbox at the time. But now I use Thunderbird to manage all my mail and I'm more than happy with it.

I hated that it seemed to move my emails. I just want to see them come and then I sort them how I want.

Because Inbox doesn't allow you to separate reminders from your email, which means I have to scroll two pages to see a single email, and then carefully hunt for it among 50 reminders.

This is exactly what I'm wondering (for example) - what is a reminder?

Edit: nvm I found a video explaining it. Probably never missed it bevause I use a separate calebdar and never use Google for that.

I switched back from Inbox for the sole reason that it was appallingly slow on Firefox.

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