Including a redesign of the interface inspired by Material You
The pandemic has led to a surge in the adoption of tools like Google Meet and Chat as working from home has become the norm and millions of people around the world have started hosting online meetings and classes. Google took this opportunity to integrate Chat and Meet with Gmail on mobile. Today, the company is taking that integration one step further with a new layout for Gmail on the web that combines Chat, Spaces, and Meet with the main Inbox view. The company first teased this design last year when it renamed Rooms to Spaces and integrated it with Docs, Meet and other services.
The new layout includes a new navigation menu on the left that will allow users to easily switch between their emails, conversations in Spaces or Chats, and meetings in Meet, all without having to switch browser tabs. . The menu replaces the sidebar entries for those three services found in Gmail’s current design, and everything looks much more in line with Gmail’s Material You redesign on Android.
There will also be notification bubbles to notify users of anything that needs their attention. When in Chat or Spaces, users can view the full list of conversations on a single screen, while the inbox view shows the full list of emails and tags as is currently . Google says in its announcement that it will be rolling out unified search in the coming months to show email and chat results in the search bar — a step up from the current solution that toggles you between those results.
The embedded view will first be available on an opt-in basis to users from February 2022 and will become the default view for Gmail users by April. For a short time, an option to revert to the old layout will be available, but it will be completely removed by the end of Q2 2022. A simplified browsing experience will also be rolling out for Google Chat users on the web around the same time. .
The opt-in option will start rolling out from February 8, 2022, so be prepared for your email workflows to be canceled sooner rather than later.
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