Notion Mail is a minimalist but powerful take on email

Notion Mail is simply a batch of things — but, astatine first, it’s conscionable bully to look at. | Photo: David Pierce / The Verge

Notion is launching the 3rd app successful its suite of enactment tools, an email app called Notion Mail. (The different two, of course, are Notion Calendar and Notion itself.) The app, disposable present for web and Mac and successful investigating for iOS, is the adjacent measurement successful Notion’s attempt to compete with Microsoft Office and Google Workspace. Notion wants to beryllium the hub for each your work, and it knows that means getting email right.

I’ve been investigating Notion Mail for the past fewer days, and the app is astir what I expected truthful far. It looks nice, trading Gmail’s countless menus and inscrutable buttons for a simple, text-first look. It’s precise customizable, too: you tin alteration what appears successful your inbox and successful what order, amusement much oregon little accusation with each message, toggle acheronian and airy mode, and more. “We’re reasoning astir it from a Notion perspective,” says Jason Ginsberg, 1 of the leaders connected the Notion Mail team. (Ginsberg and Andrew Milich founded a productivity tools institution called Skiff, which was acquired by Notion past year.) 

One of Notion Mail’s astir almighty features is its AI-powered organization. When you acceptable up the app, it asks whether you’d similar to automatically benignant things similar promotional emails oregon calendar invites into their ain section. Useful, certainly, but truthful acold truthful Gmail. When you unfastened an email, though, a fastener appears astatine the apical of the thread prompting you to “auto statement similar.” If you click it, Notion’s AI volition crawl done your inbox looking for different messages similar it — not conscionable matching sender oregon taxable line, but by really determining what’s successful the email and what you mightiness attraction about. You tin besides make a statement with a chatbot-style prompt. Either way, the app presents you with immoderate guesses, and you prime which ones should and shouldn’t beryllium labeled unneurotic with your existent thread. From past on, immoderate caller email that fits the class gets labeled automatically.

The AI labeler isn’t perfect, but it’s precise handy. I clicked the fastener connected an email containing a receipt, and Notion Mail went and recovered a clump of different receipts to statement arsenic well. (It besides recovered a mates of unrelated emails from Chase and eBay, but those were casual capable to crook off.) Once I deed save, I was presented with a caller “Payment Receipt” conception successful Notion Mail showing each my receipts. Well, not all: there’s nary evident mode to spell backmost successful clip and comb done everything, truthful present I person a whopping 2 days of receipts collated together.

Notion calls these abstracted sections “Views,” and they’re 1 of the much almighty parts of Notion Mail. “Think of each presumption arsenic a postulation of filters,” Milich says, “that you tin harvester nevertheless you want.” You tin person 1 that combines each your confirmation emails and receipts successful 1 mega-travel space. You could person 1 presumption for each your newsletters, and different conscionable for your must-reads. These views sync backmost to the Gmail interface arsenic labels, and they don’t messiness with the sanctity of your inbox, but they bash connection a caller mode to enactment things together. It’s a small similar the thought down Google Inbox, but overmuch little successful your face.

As you commencement to usage the app, you commencement to uncover much of Notion Mail’s features. (One gripe I person with the app truthful far: it hides a batch of what it tin do, arguably for excessively long, successful the sanction of elemental design.) You tin usage Notion-style slash commands to format text, but besides to insert a built-in scheduling instrumentality connected to your calendar, oregon a template that tin automatically adhd accusation similar a Zoom nexus oregon your recipient’s archetypal name. Notion’s AI can adjacent constitute and edit your emails, if you like. You tin find astir things with a CMD-K shortcut to bring up the bid bar, but galore of them are beauteous hidden otherwise.

There are immoderate bugs and missing features successful this archetypal version. It lone works with Gmail accounts, for 1 thing, and Milich wouldn’t springiness maine a day for Outlook oregon different relationship support. It’s besides missing Windows and each mobile platforms — there’s an iOS app coming soon, it appears, but the remainder are apt to beryllium further behind. Even beyond each that, I privation Notion Mail would fto you spot aggregate message accounts astatine once; switching betwixt them is conscionable annoying. I’ve seen others study attachments behaving strangely oregon disappearing altogether, though I haven’t had that contented myself.

In general, the app makes cleanable consciousness for Notion. The idea, Milich says, was to “reinvent the halfway thought of the inbox. It’s not this never-ending list. It’s a database you tin filter, sort, organize, successful the Notion building-block model. It’s similar an app you tin customize.” It’s not a implicit reinvention of the full email system, conscionable a clump of caller ways to interact with and marque consciousness of everything successful that system. That thought has worked awfully good for Notion arsenic a whole, and works for my inbox truthful acold too.