Gmail introduces ‘Priority Inbox’

Gmail have launched a new feature called ‘Priority Inbox’.

It takes your email usage patterns, and prioritises messages that it thinks you’ll be most likely to read.

Gmail then divides your inbox into three sections: ‘important and unread’, ‘starred’, and ‘everything else’.

You can then mark messages as ‘less important’ or ‘more important’, and Gmail will reclassify accordingly, improving the system over time.

Doug Aberdeen, software engineer for Gmail, called this “a new way of taking on information overload”.

He also explained the system: “Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, including the people you email most (if you email Bob a lot, a message from Bob is probably important) and which messages you open and reply to (these are likely more important than the ones you skip over).”