Shortwave’s Google Inbox replacement arrives on Android

By wazup on August 4, 2023 Comments Closed / 86 views

Shortwave replicates many of the features that were once found on Google’s now-defunct Inbox client.

By Jess Weatherbed, a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews.

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A smartphone displaying Shortwave’s Android app beside text that says it can be downloaded on Google Play. — a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&>a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray”>Image: Shortwave

Shortwave — an email app for iOS and the web that serves as the spiritual successor to Google Inbox — has fully arrived on Android devices following 18 months of beta testing. Version 1.0 of Shortwave is available to download via Google Play. The basic version is free to use, though you’ll need to pay a $9 monthly subscription to unlock premium features.

Shortwave was specifically developed by a group of former Google employees to fill the gap left after Google shut down its innovative Gmail alternative in 2019. Inbox was fairly radical for its time compared to rival email clients, providing features like Bundles (which automatically organized your email by type) and Delivery Schedules to control when those Bundles would arrive in your inbox. Its demise was mourned by many.

Three smartphones displaying ‘Delivery Schedules’, ‘Bundles’, and ‘Pin, Snooze, Done’ features on Shortwave for Android.

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Shortwave provides many of these same Inbox features, in addition to a sweep button for marking emails en-mass, AI-powered smart replies, and options to quickly pin, snooze, archive, and delete emails. The free version has some limitations (like restricting users to 90 days of searchable email history), which can be unlocked with the $9 monthly subscription. A full list of Shortwave for Android’s features can be found on the company’s blog.

As noted by Android Police, this latest release appears to be a web application rather than a native Android app but the overall 1.0 experience is closer to what you’d find on its iOS counterpart, compared to the previous beta.