Following on the heels of its acquisition by cloud storage provider Dropbox, the iPhone-only app Mailbox (free) has announced that it has reached the one million user mark as part of its slow rollout of the application, which organizes email using a “to-do” style approach that essentially turns email into a checklist, with a variety of options to date or put off a window when the email will be replied to or acted on. To celebrate the user milestone, the company issued a minor update to the app that adds a “shake to undo” feature.
Mailbox’s approach encourages users to use the Inbox as a focus point, with incoming emails either “archived” (ie the user has done or replied to the mail and its purpose has been fulfilled) or “snooze” it to a later time of the user’s choosing, at which point it will re-enter the inbox. Options for “snoozing” range from “later today” to “someday,” with definitions for those terms determined by the user. Apple’s email programs use a similar idea in its “VIP” designation, which pushes some emails from selected important senders to the front of the user’s attention, through optional push notification and a dedicated mailbox.
Currently the program only works with GMail, and is not yet intended as a dedicated replacement for programs such as Microsoft Outlook or Apple’s Mail. For those whose primary e-mail account is with GMail, however, the program can be used to streamline and priortize email with a different approach than has been seen previously.
The app is a free download on the iTunes Store.
