Google to add emoji reactions to its Android Gmail app (and how to enable them)

LiveLM, 8 months ago

To non-Gmail users, those reactions would appear as regular email replies with a big emoji

The second I ever see one of these in my inbox, I’m adding a rule to auto-trash any message containing “X reacted via Gmail”

Scrollone, 8 months ago

Thanks, I hate it.

Fuck Google, just stick to the standards.

They’re doing the same thing Apple does with iMessage and Google complains about

skullgiver, 8 months ago

I mean, if they document their weird little format, there’s nothing stopping anyone else from using the same technique.

This isn’t like their proprietary encryption on top of RCS. It’s more like how Outlook will add special metadata to some emails to indicate whether or not you’ve accepted an invite.

Email is an extensible protocol and this seems fine to me. Not that I won’t block you the moment you start sending me 💯 as an email response…

Midnitte, 8 months ago

Also I'm totally fine with Outlook adding this (as they have).

Some emails just need a 👍🏻, not an actual response.

FrankTheHealer, 8 months ago

Was literally anybody asking for this?

Aurenkin, 8 months ago

💯

💯

👍

🤣

AlecSadler, 8 months ago

Outlook does this and it’s stupid and useless.

So is this.

smallaubergine, 8 months ago

But why? Gmail (and email in general) is, to me, for long form communication and professional communication. Emoji are the opposite of that

HubertManne, 8 months ago

came to the thread because I felt this exact same sentiment. Talk about a solution looking for the problem.

WarmSoda, 8 months ago

Oh boy, let me hurry up and root my phone so I can finally have emojis in my… emails

hperrin, 8 months ago

There is a standard that Delta Chat uses to do the same thing. I’d bet $50 they are not using that standard.

dingleberry, 8 months ago

Unless it’s open source, they have no reason to. In fact given Google’s influence and size, whatever Google decides, will become standard.

skullgiver, 8 months ago

Delta Chat is open source. I don’t know if emoji reactions are possible without also enabling the end to end encryption layer of the protocol, though.

hperrin, 8 months ago

They are. It’s just a new email header. It’s defined in an experimental RFC:

www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9078

And I can tell Google is not following this spec, because the content is more than just a single line of emoji character(s).

skullgiver, 8 months ago

It’s possible Google is following the spec; the multiline message could just be another MIME body part that’s designed for the client to be rendered. The standard allows for a plaintext body of just the emoji and an HTML message with the emoji and a whole copy of the Bible if you feel so inclined.

What I meant is that I don’t think Delta uses these types of emoji reactions. I couldn’t find the protocol docs, but in the code they seem to serialise their emoji responses to JSON, which is clearly different from this standard.

hperrin, 8 months ago

Ah, ok. Maybe Google is following the spec then. We can hope.

I remember reading somewhere that Delta used this spec specifically, but I could be wrong.

db2, 8 months ago

Gross. No.

MentalEdge, 8 months ago

Step one in trying to turn gmail into a slack/teams frankenstein thing.

trashgirlfriend, 8 months ago

Our gmail at work already has chats/spaces (very badly) integrated

idk if it’s the Gmail app in chromeOS or some specific distribution of it for companies?

Granixo, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

Why can’t Google just let me install Gmail Go on my phone?

I just don’t care at all about these useless “features”.

JackGreenEarth, 8 months ago

Just use K-9 mail or other email clients, no one’s forcing you to use Gmail.

Granixo, 8 months ago

I will try it out!

I originally used MyMail as an alternative to Gmail, but when i eventually discovered it’s garbage collection was even worse than Gmail’s, i switched back.