• by Ray Schultz , February 4, 2019

Gmail users mourning the old Inbox app, which is slated to disappear in March, were reassured on Friday when reports said some of its features are returning.

A new test version of Gmail for Android comes with Inbox features such as reminders, pinned messages and category bundles.

Reddit, which released screenshots of the test version, cautioned that this is still in an early stage, and it appears that different design versions are being tried, according to reports. However, all this accords with promises made by the company.

“Four years after launching Inbox in 2014, we've learned a lot about how to make email better — and we’ve taken popular Inbox experiences and added them into Gmail to help more than a billion people get more done with their emails everyday,” wrote Michael Izatt, product manager for Gmail, in a blog post last September.  

The company said at that time that it expects to “focus solely on Gmail,” and that Inbox is no longer necessary.

Gmail Inbox has been “a great place to experiment with new ideas like snoozing emails to later, as well as try the latest AI-powered experiences like Smart Reply, Nudges and high-priority notifications to help you stay productive,” the company added.