14 DAY TRIAL // Gmail's Priority Inbox feature has proven rather popular and, according to Google as well as anecdotal evidence, rather effective too, or, at the very least, providing an improvement over the regular Inbox. It's no surprise then that Google plans to enable the feature to everyone at some point in the future.
Priority Inbox aims to rank emails based on how likely you are to be interested in them. The idea is to weed out the unwanted messages to enable you to focus on the ones you actually want and need to read.
However, the feature has been optional so far. It's been rolled out to mobile users in the past couple of months, but it still has to be specifically enabled by the users.
This won't be for long though, as Cnet reports, Gmail's product lead Paul McDonald says that Priority Inbox is coming to everyone, whether they opt-in or not.
At the moment, users with Priority Inbox enabled see a link to it above the regular Inbox. But once the feature is fully integrated, there will be only one inbox and several options for sorting the messages.
Users will be able to switch between several layouts, classic - the regular Gmail inbox, unread first, starred first, important first - like the classic inbox with with important messages on top, and finally the Priority Inbox as it is available today.
Users will be prompted to select the view that appeals to them the most and notified about the new features and capabilities. Priority Inbox for Gmail was introduced late last summer. The feature promised to help with the clutter most heavy Gmail users are accustomed to.
Priority Inbox learns from the users, through various indicators and signals, which emails are important and which aren't. The feature has been expanded to mobile users via the Android app as well as the mobile version of Gmail.