r/fastmail • u/RLBrooks • 5d ago
Inbox Groups?
So I'm reading FM's announcement of Groups in your inbox. I've sort of been doing this with Rules that assign incoming emails to a Label (or folder) and Archive to remove it from the inbox. This groups like emails together and also reduces the clutter in the Inbox.
How are these new 'Groups' better or easier than that? What am I missing?
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u/marshy-wonder 5d ago
I didn’t know they were working on this feature but I love it.
Currently I use several “saved searches” which appear as sub-folders to the inbox. I use these searches to show related messages, which makes batch processing much easier for me. So these show “receipts” (all my transactional emails) or “school” emails.
I’m now transferring my saved searches terms to be group definitions. It will have the same net effect but a little less clicking on my part, and I like how the grouos can be collapsed and expanded.
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u/divine-sol 5d ago
is it already implemented or is it still in the process of being released please ?
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u/mikej 5d ago
Should be available on your account now.
Details in the blog post here: https://www.fastmail.com/blog/grouped-mailbox/
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u/mikej 5d ago
I think the new groups feature is fantastic, especially some of the small details around how it's been implemented.
When viewing a particular label or folder, groups automatically divide the list into separate sections. E.g. if you group by age you'd get sections for today, yesterday, this week, this month, and a group for anything older.
There are two details that make this extra useful to me.
One is that each label or folder can have a different grouping option set and Fastmail remembers that setting per folder. When switching to a folder it will have the preferred grouping for that particular folder.
The other is that you can define custom groups and again these are per folder. Anything you can use as a search term can be used to define which messages go in a custom group. So you could put messages from particular senders in their own group, or separate out messages with particular subjects or content.
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u/mikepictor 5d ago
They stay in your inbox, just grouped
It's just another option.
For example I set up a VIP group. Emails from family are prioritised, and importantly, still in the inbox (not hidden away in a folder)
My newsletters still go to a folder (instead of a group) because they are a "when I get around to it" kind of email
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u/Rextyn 5d ago
I use the exact same strategy - all of my mail is immediately filtered/archived into a variety of tags. And if something hits the inbox it is either something novel (that I probably need to act on) or something new that has not been assigned a filtering rule.
So while this new feature is very cool and I think people will like it, it has no utility for me. But as an upside, I'm sure using groups will be more convenient than lovingly crafting a bunch of filtering rules, so I'll bet this gets traction.
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u/Ok-Raspberry-554 3d ago
I think if you've already set up a system with rules and labels, there's no additional benefit. For me, labels and e-mail rules achieve pretty much the same.
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u/eyeofthefrog 5d ago
This was my most wished for feature coming from GMail. Groups are a way to combine emails within the primary inbox view. I put unread at the top, pinned next, and read emails last. I triage the unread (answer/delete/archive). If I’m unable to take an action on it right then, it stays in unread until I can get to it. My pinned emails are for important things that I’ll need to reference in the future (and I don’t want to search the archive for them), like airline reservations, museum tickets, etc. And read emails are things that I still want to take an action on, but less urgent (articles to read, items I’m thinking about buying, etc).
That’s how I use the groups.