Gmail is easily among the best email services; it offers safe, reliable, and secure email from one of the internet's largest companies.
But anyone who uses Gmail for work, through Google Workspace, knows the pain of out-of-hours emails from your boss that flash up on the screen and ruin your zen.
Google is listening, though, and recently announced an update for Gmail that works with Apple's new Focus mode for iOS, one of the best features for getting digital peace and quiet.
The idea is kind of like notification profiles on Android; you can set specific notifications, apps, and services to be silent in different times of the day, such as when you're at home.
Gmail can now work with these profiles – either automatically generated by Apple or customized by the user – to make sure that you get the exact notifications you want. Aimless emails? Gone. Important, critical updates? Those get through.
“You can now specify which Google Chat and Gmail contacts you still want notifications from when your iOS device is in Focus mode,” explained Google. “This is useful in situations where you need to limit screen time, but don’t want to miss an important message when other notifications are silenced.”
The importance of digital peace
After the pandemic forced everyone to work from home, or at least partially work from home, getting some digital peace became very important.
When there is no obvious boundary between the office and home environment, making sure that notifications don't get through during “you” time is vital.
Managing notifications, especially on iOS before the latest update, was a bit of a pain. You either had to silence them all or dive into Settings every single time.
Apple made the process a lot easier with iOS 15 and we really recommend setting up some different Focus profiles to get the ball rolling, especially if you don't have a work phone that can just be switched off.
The set-up can be a bit of a faff, but once you get past that it's really simple – and perfect for keeping digital peace of mind without missing important updates.
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