Gmail Inbox Categories
Having recently migrated our O365 Exchange/Outlook email to Google Workspace, one of the most useful benefits is the automated assignment of Inbox Categories (Promotions, Updates, Forums) that mostly keeps my Primary Inbox free of automated items. However, using the Gmail browser-based UI is painfully awkward compared with Outlook so a good desktop app is an essential I'm keen to find.
Thunderbird is the only app I've seen that comes close to matching Outlook's functionality and ease of use, but it doesn't support Gmail's critically important Inbox Categories, so all the automated stuff is in my main Inbox making it unworkable for me.
If Google had enabled filters to work based on these categories, it would be a simple matter to automatically move the automated items to my 'Automated' Label which would keep my Primary Inbox clear and this would reflect in my Thunderbird Inbox, but in their wisdom, they've not yet implemented this despite the obvious benefits to the user.
They've also not exposed this categorisation to the MAPI interface which is, I'm guessing, the main reason why the Inbox Categories are not supported in Thunderbird, right?
However, Canary is one app that does support these. It's pretty lame as a client, but it does show that it's possible to offer Inbox Categories in a desktop app without replicating the entire Gmail UX (as Kiwi does).
Thunderbird is the only app I've seen that offers an Outlook-style approach to handling email so the addition of support for Gmail Inbox categories would make it the perfect solution for users that want to combine the flexibility and power of this way of working with the solidity and reliability of Gmail.
I can't imagine I'm the first to notice this so I'd be surprised if it's not already being looked at, but if not, what would it take to initiate this?
All Replies (8)
I do not fully grasp what you are asking. Have you looked to see if there are folders to which you are not subscribed? You can verify that by highlighting the account name on main pane, rightclick and select 'subscribe' to see if there are folders (labels in Gmail) that are available.
Hi David.
All my Gmail Labels are fine and are all recreated faithfully as Folders in TB. This happened automatically by default without any need to specify a 'subscription'. This goes for Gmail System labels (Starred, Sent, Drafts etc.) as well as my custom ones.
Gmail Inbox Categories (Promotions, Updates etc.) are not the same thing and don't behave in the same way even in Gmail, hence my comments.
I still do not understand what you are either requesting or suggesting. That is, are you experiencing a problem, or are you making a suggestion for a new feature?
Gmail sorts incoming mail into Inbox Categories (Primary, Promotions, Social, Updates, Forums). These are not the same as Inbox Labels, which are applied separately to incoming mail.
This is convenient because as Tolqua mentioned, Gmail sorts items from "automated" sources (advertisements, lists, etc) into these Categories automatically, which leaves my Primary (inbox) relatively uncluttered and mostly populated with email from actual humans instead of ads.
The problem is that the use of Inbox Categories is not made available to external email clients such as Thunderbird, so that *all* of my incoming email is displayed in my Inbox. This makes it much harder to pick out the emails from family/friends/co-workers, in fact it makes Thunderbird almost unusable, for me anyway.
Tolqua (and I) are requesting that Google make the Categories functionality available to external email clients like Thunderbird, or perhaps another usable workaround.
Now I understand. I suggest you take your idea to connect.mozilla.org and post it there. Developers periodically review the idea section. This is the tech support site to help users use what is already in Thunderbird. Thank you.
Thanks David Read for the support (I didn't think I could be the only one who felt like this).
Not sure why 'david' missed the point (maybe I focussed too much on the reasons I moved from Outlook to Gmail so thanks for the concise summary), but I've now posted this as he suggested:
link to suggestion on Mozilla Ideas
Please do give this a like and comment.
The point is Google do not offer the categories as folders in IMAP. See https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/labels The link will open in your own account to confirm that.
Nor do they offer them out as IMAP labels (The usual important work etc.)
So implementation will be rather problematic. I guess Thunderbird could try and reinvent the whole thing. But it can not be the same for obvious reasons in the land of the intellectual property.
I have heard discussions over the years of automatic identifiers and action buttons for mail. But fundamentally you are asking for Thunderbird to do something with information that is not available to it. So really I do not think the idea will fly.
Thanks for your comments, Matt, but I'm not sure you've read my original post as I did say:
"They've also not exposed this categorisation to the MAPI interface which is, I'm guessing, the main reason why the Inbox Categories are not supported in Thunderbird, right?"
I may have used the wrong acronym there, but as I then went on to say, another desktop client (Canary) does, indeed, support Inbox Categories. The filtration that Google uses to assign Inbox Categories is complex and, as you point out, proprietary, so Canary can only achieve this by accessing some identifier that replicates the categories faithfully in Canary (see screenshot). How it does this is not clear, but it does show it's possible - This is my point.
This topic has now been raised on the Ideas forum, so probably best to comment there: link to suggestion on Mozilla Ideas Forum
