Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Outlook has introduced a small but highly useful feature on its Android and iOS apps, allowing users to minimize email drafts instead of exiting them entirely.
- This feature makes it easier to switch between drafting an email and referencing other messages or calendar events.
- The ability to minimize drafts has been a staple of desktop email clients for years, making it surprising that Gmail has yet to implement a similar feature on mobile.
The smallest features can have the biggest impact on an app’s usability. Outlook recently introduced one such tweak to its Android and iOS apps that we really wish the Gmail app would adopt as well.
If you use Gmail on mobile, you’ve probably encountered one of its most annoying quirks. When drafting an email or reply, if you need to copy something from another email or reference an older message, you’re forced to exit the draft entirely. To continue writing, you have to dig it out of the drafts folder and reopen it. It’s an unnecessary hassle, especially when you’re in a hurry and just want to quickly switch back and forth.
Well, Outlook just added an option to minimize email drafts on its mobile app. The feature is available to Android Beta users running version 4.2447.0 or later of the app and iOS TestFlight users running version 4.2449.0 or later. It is also beginning to roll out to production users. It’s such a simple solution and one that has existed on the desktop version of email clients for years.
Do you want a minimize button for email drafts in the Gmail app?
2 votes
Outlook’s implementation is a new minimize button on the top right corner of email drafts (see picture below). Just by making this small tweak, Outlook users now have the ability to switch between composing emails and their inbox or calendar events without losing their chain of thought. Users will be able to renter the email draft through a button in the Mail or Calendar tab of the Outlook app.
Now, why didn’t someone think of this earlier? Surely, Gmail can easily implement the option to minimize email drafts on its Android and iOS apps. Right?
