What you need to know
- Gmail on the web has opted for new visual improvements to its compose interface.
- The new update was supposed to be released late last year, but was delayed due to performance improvements that needed more work.
- In the recipient field, you can now see the recipient’s profile avatar and right-click menu.
- The offering is scheduled to be completed by the end of September.
Google unveiled visual updates and improvements to the recipient field in Gmail last October, and promised to complete the rollout a month later. It didn’t, but the company has now resumed rolling out the update.
The search giant announced in a Blog post (Opens in a new tab) New changes to the Gmail compose window are starting to appear on many of the best laptops and Chromebooks. These updates were delayed because Google needed to “improve performance”.
Google now expects to complete rollout for all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business users by the end of September. Changing the update address might be a new right-click menu that lets you view the recipient’s full name and email address, copy email addresses, and open the recipient info card.
Additionally, you can use the right-click menu to control how the contact’s display name appears to other recipients. However, you may not see this option if you are using the Workspace for Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, Education Plus, or Teaching and Learning Upgrade category.
Each recipient will now also be given an avatar slide with a profile picture. Previously, you could only see the recipient’s name and non-Gmail domain.
Gmail will also highlight contacts outside your organization in a bold yellow, assuming you’ve sent or received email from them in the past. Otherwise, the email client will display a warning banner and an out-of-organization avatar for contacts you’ve never interacted with.
For different domain names within the same organization, Gmail will no longer mark them as “external” recipients. This comes in handy for different brands of the same parent company, eliminating confusion and unnecessary warnings.
When recipients are selected, the email client will also mark a contact with a check mark to indicate that they are already selected. Duplicate entries within the same fields will also be removed automatically when you drag and drop between the To, Cc and Bcc fields.
However, Google warns that these changes may affect some Chrome extensions.
“This update changes the infrastructure of address fields in Gmail Compose,” Google said at the time An update was announced last year (Opens in a new tab). “Therefore, administrators who maintain Chrome extensions that depend on the existing Gmail user interface, around recipient search, selection, or authoring, should check their integrity against the updated user interface.”
Updates started coming in a few days after Gmail got a major redesign, making the experience clutter-free.