We’ve seen some of the major new features and improvements that are coming to our devices in iOS 8 such as Notification Center Widgets, Interactive Notifications, Handoff, QuickType and third-party keyboard support, new features in Messages and lots more.
In today’s iOS 8 preview, we take a look at the new features coming to the Mail, one of the most used apps.
The Mail app will get smarter in iOS 8 and give you intelligent notifications, so when you get a dinner reservation via services like Open Table in an email, it will display an “Add to Calendar” notification right at the top so you can add the event to your Calendar so you don’t forget it. You will get a similar “Add to Contacts” notification when someone sends a Contact via email. You can see a sample of the notification in the screenshot below.
In iOS 7, if you want to delete or archive an email, you had to swipe left on the email and then tap on the Trash or Archive option. iOS 8 makes it much easier with the new quick delete feature. You can now swipe all the way across to the left to delete the email. When you swipe to the left, you now get an option to also Flag the email for follow-up. You also have the option to change the swipe options in the Settings app. So you can change swipe to right from Mark as Read to Archive, and swipe to left from Flag to Mark as Read. If you find these swipe gestures annoying then you can also disable it.
iOS 8 also comes with a redesigned compose window to make it easier to jump between a draft email and email in your Inbox, so you can copy the information you need to compose your message. When you tap on the compose button, it will open a new compose window on top of the current window. If you want to go to your Inbox to copy some information then you can swipe down on the compose window to dock it at the bottom as you can see below to access your Inbox. If you’ve more than one email in drafts then it will display the drafts in a drawer, similar to the tab drawer in Safari.
Interactive Notifications, one of the killer features in iOS 8 will be very useful with the Mail app. When you get a notification for a new email, you will be able to mark the email as read, delete or archive the email, or dismiss the notification right on the Lock screen or Notification Center without having to open the Mail app, thus saving you precious time.
You also have the option to receive notifications when anyone replies to specific email thread.
Wrap up
The new features and improvements in iOS 8 Mail app are not major, but they should add up to make email management a lot easier and faster.
What do you think of the new features in iOS 8 Mail app? Are the improvements good enough to make you switch from your favorite third-party app to the Mail app in iOS 8?
iOS 8 Coverage:
- Messages gets a major update
- The biggest changes to the keyboard since the very first iPhone
- Make and receive phone calls, send SMS from your Mac or iPad
- Handoff makes going from iOS to Mac seamless
- Interactive Notifications
- iOS 8 Widgets Explained
- Family Sharing
- New Accessibility features in iOS 8
- Photos, Camera and Image Editing: What’s New
