{"slug": "gmail", "name": "Gmail", "category": "communication", "category_name": "Email and chat", "description": "Google's web-based email service with labels, search, filters and spam filtering.", "recommenders": 11, "commenters": 59, "warners": 16, "score": 4.397, "rising": 1.71, "first": "2025-12-05", "latest": "2026-10-25", "why": "Liked for spam filtering that usually works well, flexible labels, filters and search operators, and sending from a custom domain while staying in Gmail.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 11, "neutral": 32, "compare": 0, "warn": 16}, "spark": [0, 0, 2, 2, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 3, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": ["Custom domains", "Organization tools"], "caveat": "Interface quality", "short_quote": "the GMail spam check works usually exceptionally well", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.google.com/gmail/", "pricing": "freemium", "aliases": ["Gmail"], "verdict": [{"text": "Liked for spam filtering that usually works well,", "cites": [{"id": 790877120, "item_id": 49429820, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49429820", "by": "serbuvlad", "date": "2026-08-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use my gmail address for everything and I don't really get spam", "excerpt": "I find this very interesting in 2026. I use my gmail address for everything and I don't really get spam (except from services I've subscribed to legitimately but haven't bothered to configure to not send promotional mail). I never really get promotional mail from 3rd parties at all. Is this just gmail filters being very good?", "context": "", "use_case": "personal email", "switched_from": "", "story": "iCloud+ Hide My Email addresses will remain on icloud.com"}, {"id": 747927120, "item_id": 46745445, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46745445", "by": "TacticalCoder", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the GMail spam check works usually exceptionally well", "excerpt": "I use Gmail since the beta (I got invite from a googler) and I don't remember when they began adding spam control but in my experience the GMail spam check works usually exceptionally well: I very rarely need to add a custom filter. My email, over two decades+ (2004?), hasn't been in a many public leaks (only one on https://haveibeenpwned.com/ ) but obviously has made its way to various spammy actors but thankfully n", "context": "Gmail user since the beta", "use_case": "email with spam filtering", "switched_from": "", "story": "We are experiencing an issue with Gmail beginning on Saturday, 2026-01-24 13:02"}, {"id": 746169792, "item_id": 46635612, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46635612", "by": "gus_massa", "date": "2026-01-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use gmail, and with similar posts, after marking it as spam a few times they just go to the spam folder.", "excerpt": "I use gmail, and with similar posts, after marking it as spam a few times they just go to the spam folder. In some very annoying case, I created a filter to ensure it's send 110% of the times to the spam folder.", "context": "", "use_case": "email with spam filtering", "switched_from": "", "story": "How to make spamming us uncomfortable for LinkedIn and friends"}]}, {"text": " flexible labels, filters and search operators,", "cites": [{"id": 796734129, "item_id": 49795883, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49795883", "by": "tharkun__", "date": "2026-09-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the one thing GMail got right vs. the real world analog of a folder", "excerpt": "But categorizing is fine if you can put multiple categories on things. That's the whole difference between flexible tagging and rigid folder, i.e. the one thing GMail got right vs. the real world analog of a folder. The real world solves it too btw. in the same way a relational database did: Indexes ;) Tagging is nothing but different indexes of the same underlying thing. Be it a book or an email or whatever else. An", "context": "", "use_case": "email tagging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Attention is all you have"}, {"id": 747452224, "item_id": 46715764, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46715764", "by": "ljoshua", "date": "2026-01-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I also learned to operate Gmail purely via the keyboard with the built in keyboard shortcuts.", "excerpt": "Xoogler here (so I can\u2019t help with any changes or feature requests now unfortunately) but yes, all of Google runs on Gmail. The amount of email I got as a software engineer there was crazy voluminous. I and most Googlers around me made heavy use of filters, labels, and all the text search operators available (see https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7190?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&oco=0). I also learned to o", "context": "former Google software engineer", "use_case": "heavy work email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Do people at Google use Gmail?"}, {"id": 763130256, "item_id": 47695641, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47695641", "by": "dlcarrier", "date": "2026-04-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Gmail's support for aliases, by putting a '+' symbol after my user name", "excerpt": "Assuming the message actually contains information, and not a login link, lots of email updates is great. It means I automatically get a local copy of the message stored, so if I want to look it up, I have it immediately available, regardless of my current network connectivity. I use Gmail's support for aliases, by putting a '+' symbol after my user name, followed by a alias, so that the messages can be easily filter", "context": "", "use_case": "plus aliases and server-side filtering", "switched_from": "", "story": "One item purchased, Ten emails"}]}, {"text": " and sending from a custom domain while staying in Gmail.", "cites": [{"id": 793079440, "item_id": 49567465, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49567465", "by": "avsteele", "date": "2026-09-04", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Then I use GMail's send-as to remain in gmail but still use my name@mydomain.com mailbox.", "excerpt": "I use it. It is useful for anyone who has a personal domain from which they'd like to send/receive without needing to migrate off Google entirely. My registrar gives a few email addresses with SMTP support. Then I use GMail's send-as to remain in gmail but still use my name@mydomain.com mailbox.", "context": "", "use_case": "send-as with personal domain", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gmail to end support for \"Send as\" for third-party addresses, such as @yahoo.com"}, {"id": 801583489, "item_id": 50098968, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50098968", "by": "schrodinger", "date": "2026-10-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I just forward all email to my GMail address and use a custom reply-to in GMail", "excerpt": "If Apple \"pushes an iCloud address onto you\" that you don't want, why not just freaking ignore it completely? Don't share it with friends, they won't know about it. Don't ever log into it. Ignore it. Who cares? FWIW I use my free iCloud email account with my custom domain since Apple (unlike Google) offers that as a free service. However, I just forward all email to my GMail address and use a custom reply-to in GMail", "context": "", "use_case": "main inbox and replying", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: I wrote an email app that accepts only one sender per inbox"}, {"id": 754961456, "item_id": 47185091, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47185091", "by": "pavel_lishin", "date": "2026-02-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Gmail is fine, imo.", "excerpt": "> I always thought I loved Gmail. Turns out I just had the habit of typing in \u201cgmail.com\u201d in my search bar. I honestly can\u2019t tell you a single feature of Gmail that I miss. > Leaving Gmail also gave me the opportunity to start implementing better digital hygiene. I no longer give my primary email to fly-by-night sites, and I'm deliberate with what things I'm signing up for. I also do this, but with my own custom doma", "context": "", "use_case": "email with custom domain and filters", "switched_from": "", "story": "Leaving Google has actively improved my life"}]}, {"text": " The most common complaint is a web interface and app that commenters say have become slower, more bloated and worse over time,", "cites": [{"id": 788246689, "item_id": 49265418, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49265418", "by": "frollogaston", "date": "2026-08-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Gmail.com still has no infinite scrolling", "excerpt": "Mail.app is nice, I used it even when working at Google. Gmail.com still has no infinite scrolling, which I think is the entire reason my peers focused a lot on email filtering while I didn't care. Also their UI kept changing, usually for the worse. The one big downside with Mail.app is it can only fetch emails from Gmail, there's no push.", "context": "former Google employee", "use_case": "email web client", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jeff Dean leaving Alphabet"}, {"id": 774050689, "item_id": 48378168, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48378168", "by": "tambourine_man", "date": "2026-06-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I only ever use Gmail's backend.", "excerpt": "I only ever use Gmail's backend. I've been using it for years with Mail.app on both Mac and iOS. Every time I load the web interface I'm appalled. Not that Mail.app is amazing. It sometimes corrupts its sqlite db (I have 300k+ emails dating back to the late 90s). But it's still way better than the dreadful web interface that only seems to get worse and slower.", "context": "", "use_case": "email backend", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left"}, {"id": 744324368, "item_id": 46520273, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46520273", "by": "1vuio0pswjnm7", "date": "2026-01-06", "stance": "warn", "quote": "But unless there is a \"Gmail app\" alternative, e.g., a 12MB version, this does not leave the computer owner much choice.", "excerpt": "HN commentators usually attempt to defend this sort of bloat. Whether such \"justifications\" are legit is a question left for the reader In any event, the storage space, RAM, file descriptors, sockets and bandwidth all belong to the computer owner, not the app developer Are the 700 MBs worth more when used for Google's \"app\" or when they are used for something else, e.g., the computer owners' files, other apps, etc. T", "context": "", "use_case": "receive-only email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?"}, {"id": 744623121, "item_id": 46538945, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46538945", "by": "rcMgD2BwE72F", "date": "2026-01-08", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Gmail (which I've been using for 22 years) is just crap nowadays.", "excerpt": "Move to Fastmail. It has snoozing and memos https://www.fastmail.com/blog/introducing-memos/ That's the ideal combination. I use it 20x a day. Got an email I can't act on now? Snooze it to when it's the right time and add a note with the reminder. eg - grandpa ask to bring a tool: snooze to early Saturday with a note \"get him the tool\" - send \"GDPR art. 17 account deletion request email\" and snooze in 2 months to che", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Napoleon Technique: Postponing Things to Increase Productivity"}]}, {"text": " followed by privacy concerns and fear of automated account bans.", "cites": [{"id": 747951152, "item_id": 46746947, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46746947", "by": "tklenke", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "now...what they are saying is that...we are going to use your email to train our LLMs. I'm not okay with that.", "excerpt": "Recently I was surprised to see a Google Gemini summary at the top of my email on my phone. A day or two later this appeared in my web client as well. Look, I love our new overlords (for the record m'lords I nearly always use please and thank you. I was an early adopter. I still am a frequent user..I mean someone who has all the answers and blows smoke up my ass..perfect right! Despite that, it appears it's not good ", "context": "early adopter, direct marketer", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bye Bye Gmail"}, {"id": 781155185, "item_id": 48822199, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48822199", "by": "meristohm", "date": "2026-07-07", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I still have a gmail account because I'm skeptical it won't be reused in a potentially-harmful-to-me-or-others way", "excerpt": "Fair question (I'm neither the blog author or the person who linked it here). I read the short blog entry and the why is not answered. My own reasons for de-Googling is that I'm uncomfortable with how I pay for Google's services (with my usage data, time, attention, media data, etc). I still have a gmail account because I'm skeptical it won't be reused in a potentially-harmful-to-me-or-others way and because I haven'", "context": "de-Googling user", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Life Without Google"}, {"id": 792246608, "item_id": 49515413, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49515413", "by": "saejox", "date": "2026-08-31", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Google for me died when they banned my many years old gmail account out of blue.", "excerpt": "Google for me died when they banned my many years old gmail account out of blue. Because i used vpn to access it. It was such a big hit to my online life to lose my email like that. Their appeal system is fully automated, impossible to get a human to look at your case. This is warning to any reader of this comment, do not depend on your google account to be forever.", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO"}, {"id": 801468289, "item_id": 50091768, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50091768", "by": "rdtsc", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "until I still host my main gmail account there", "excerpt": "That's why I stay away from trying Gemini or doing anything much with Google until I still host my main gmail account there. One misstep and I'll find myself locked out. Because it's Google's job to spy on everyone, if I have other accounts there, those will also locked out too (\"oh! you're trying to circumvent our ban? we noticed!\" kind of a thing). Then the only recourse from what I understand is to make an HN post", "context": "", "use_case": "main email account", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google is silently linking your phone number across all signed-in accounts"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Custom domains", "summary": "Commenters use send-as or Google's SMTP to send from their own domain while staying in Gmail.", "quotes": [{"id": 793079440, "item_id": 49567465, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49567465", "by": "avsteele", "date": "2026-09-04", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Then I use GMail's send-as to remain in gmail but still use my name@mydomain.com mailbox.", "excerpt": "I use it. It is useful for anyone who has a personal domain from which they'd like to send/receive without needing to migrate off Google entirely. My registrar gives a few email addresses with SMTP support. Then I use GMail's send-as to remain in gmail but still use my name@mydomain.com mailbox.", "context": "", "use_case": "send-as with personal domain", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gmail to end support for \"Send as\" for third-party addresses, such as @yahoo.com"}, {"id": 793067136, "item_id": 49566696, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49566696", "by": "nottorp", "date": "2026-09-04", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Google's SMTP to send mail as that domain", "excerpt": "Hmm I'm confused. I have my own domain that is totally not hosted on google. However, I use Google's SMTP to send mail as that domain (specifically the one email address that is enabled on my custom domain). For that I'm authenticating to the SMTP with my google account, and I somehow proved to google i own the email a couple billion years ago when we all had pet dinosaurs. Are they discontinuing that or something el", "context": "has own domain not hosted on Google", "use_case": "SMTP for custom domain email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gmail to end support for \"Send as\" for third-party addresses, such as @yahoo.com"}, {"id": 801583489, "item_id": 50098968, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50098968", "by": "schrodinger", "date": "2026-10-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I just forward all email to my GMail address and use a custom reply-to in GMail", "excerpt": "If Apple \"pushes an iCloud address onto you\" that you don't want, why not just freaking ignore it completely? Don't share it with friends, they won't know about it. Don't ever log into it. Ignore it. Who cares? FWIW I use my free iCloud email account with my custom domain since Apple (unlike Google) offers that as a free service. However, I just forward all email to my GMail address and use a custom reply-to in GMail", "context": "", "use_case": "main inbox and replying", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: I wrote an email app that accepts only one sender per inbox"}]}, {"label": "Organization tools", "summary": "Labels, filters, search operators, + aliases and auto categorization help commenters manage high email volume.", "quotes": [{"id": 796734129, "item_id": 49795883, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49795883", "by": "tharkun__", "date": "2026-09-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the one thing GMail got right vs. the real world analog of a folder", "excerpt": "But categorizing is fine if you can put multiple categories on things. That's the whole difference between flexible tagging and rigid folder, i.e. the one thing GMail got right vs. the real world analog of a folder. The real world solves it too btw. in the same way a relational database did: Indexes ;) Tagging is nothing but different indexes of the same underlying thing. Be it a book or an email or whatever else. An", "context": "", "use_case": "email tagging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Attention is all you have"}, {"id": 747452224, "item_id": 46715764, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46715764", "by": "ljoshua", "date": "2026-01-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I also learned to operate Gmail purely via the keyboard with the built in keyboard shortcuts.", "excerpt": "Xoogler here (so I can\u2019t help with any changes or feature requests now unfortunately) but yes, all of Google runs on Gmail. The amount of email I got as a software engineer there was crazy voluminous. I and most Googlers around me made heavy use of filters, labels, and all the text search operators available (see https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7190?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&oco=0). I also learned to o", "context": "former Google software engineer", "use_case": "heavy work email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Do people at Google use Gmail?"}, {"id": 763114528, "item_id": 47694658, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47694658", "by": "arjie", "date": "2026-04-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Gmail\u2019s auto categorization so it just goes in the \u201cUpdates\u201d folder", "excerpt": "I actually really enjoy getting this sequence of emails but I use Gmail\u2019s auto categorization so it just goes in the \u201cUpdates\u201d folder and gets auto-forwarded to my claw-like so it\u2019s not super interrupty. I prefer to have the full trace on my side rather than on the provider side because their site might go down and so on. I can see why people get annoyed. It\u2019s just the alternative that I really dislike. This way I ca", "context": "", "use_case": "auto-categorizing and forwarding email", "switched_from": "", "story": "One item purchased, Ten emails"}]}, {"label": "Spam filtering", "summary": "Several long-time users say very little spam reaches their inbox.", "quotes": [{"id": 747927120, "item_id": 46745445, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46745445", "by": "TacticalCoder", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the GMail spam check works usually exceptionally well", "excerpt": "I use Gmail since the beta (I got invite from a googler) and I don't remember when they began adding spam control but in my experience the GMail spam check works usually exceptionally well: I very rarely need to add a custom filter. My email, over two decades+ (2004?), hasn't been in a many public leaks (only one on https://haveibeenpwned.com/ ) but obviously has made its way to various spammy actors but thankfully n", "context": "Gmail user since the beta", "use_case": "email with spam filtering", "switched_from": "", "story": "We are experiencing an issue with Gmail beginning on Saturday, 2026-01-24 13:02"}, {"id": 790877120, "item_id": 49429820, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49429820", "by": "serbuvlad", "date": "2026-08-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use my gmail address for everything and I don't really get spam", "excerpt": "I find this very interesting in 2026. I use my gmail address for everything and I don't really get spam (except from services I've subscribed to legitimately but haven't bothered to configure to not send promotional mail). I never really get promotional mail from 3rd parties at all. Is this just gmail filters being very good?", "context": "", "use_case": "personal email", "switched_from": "", "story": "iCloud+ Hide My Email addresses will remain on icloud.com"}, {"id": 751839249, "item_id": 46989953, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46989953", "by": "afavour", "date": "2026-02-12", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Google might be too strict in its filtering but it does serve a legitimate purpose.", "excerpt": "I have some level of sympathy with Google here, which isn\u2019t something I often say. I recently switched from Gmail to Fastmail and by and large I\u2019m happy with it. But I\u2019ve been surprised by the amount of spam and (particularly) phishing emails I get in a regular basis. Google might be too strict in its filtering but it does serve a legitimate purpose.", "context": "", "use_case": "email spam filtering", "switched_from": "", "story": "Email is tough: Major European Payment Processor's Emails aren't RFC-Compliant"}]}, {"label": "Ease of use", "summary": "Commenters praise easy-to-read threads and say alternatives felt worse after switching.", "quotes": [{"id": 769937233, "item_id": 48121077, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48121077", "by": "rc_kas", "date": "2026-05-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Gmail had sepearated the logs into separate emails in a very natural way.", "excerpt": "I switched to Protonmail a month ago. It is patently inferior to gmail. Every day I get annoyed by some weakness in the UI that google had apparently just always solved without me ever having to think about it. For example, reading long email chains in the proton UI is horrific. I don't know what google did that made it natural to read and proton does so badly, but it is painful to read these long chains of emails. A", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Moved My Digital Stack to Europe"}, {"id": 780424080, "item_id": 48776505, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48776505", "by": "jesse_dot_id", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "People use GMail because it makes email easy to use", "excerpt": "You're being pedantic while also just kind of continuing to make my point for me because you're describing a regressive user experience over and over again. The Internet at large has evolved beyond forums and IRC for a reason. Users have become used to having quick and easy access to a lake of content. When I go to PeerTube's website, I should see content first, and if I'm a creator, I want a guarantee that my conten", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform"}, {"id": 754977313, "item_id": 47186082, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47186082", "by": "andrewk17", "date": "2026-02-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I recently switched back to GMail.", "excerpt": "I spent the effort to de-google a several years back and switched to Proton. After years of being on Proton, I recently switched back to GMail. It didn't really make my life any better. And at this point, I think I see more value in having AI be able to piece together information to serve me up useful information than trying to protect my privacy within email (I couldn't get off Google Photos, it's just too useful).", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "Proton Mail", "story": "Leaving Google has actively improved my life"}]}, {"label": "Reliability", "summary": "Commenters call it a stable, reliable service that costs essentially nothing, with mail that reliably reaches recipients.", "quotes": [{"id": 789279616, "item_id": 49329976, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49329976", "by": "skeledrew", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "they're however a stable entity which offers a very reliable service for essentially free", "excerpt": "I've been using GMail roughly since it existed I think, and have thought on and off over the years about self-hosting. The notion scares me every time because with it comes thoughts of what would happen if I were to lose the domain name or server, or even if there was an outage at the \"wrong time\". And then there's also the idea of updating the 1 million+1 services, etc that I used it to sign up for. As much as I'm n", "context": "Gmail user since it existed", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Self hosted email continues to steeply decline"}, {"id": 801782321, "item_id": 50111395, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50111395", "by": "ebrahimh", "date": "2026-10-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "If I use Gmail/proton etc, then I can be pretty sure that the other person got my email.", "excerpt": "I've never tried to set it up even though I know it can easily be done with things like mailcow. The downside is never really knowing if your email reached your recipient (maybe it got blocked by Gmail because of your IP, maybe some other reason). If I use Gmail/proton etc, then I can be pretty sure that the other person got my email.", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 775785520, "item_id": 48486595, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48486595", "by": "majormajor", "date": "2026-06-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Gmail, Search, Docs/Drive, Maps, Street View, Chrome, all solid but old consumer apps.", "excerpt": "Most of their best products are VERY old. Gmail, Search, Docs/Drive, Maps, Street View, Chrome, all solid but old consumer apps. A lot of early entrants/market defining products, too! Most of them are still very good. Calendar is... fine. Gmail/Calendar as corporate products in some ways feel like downgrades compared to the functionality of the older Office desktop suite, but they integrate nicely into a lot of thing", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Claude Desktop spins up a VM without no way of stopping it"}]}, {"label": "Free forwarding", "summary": "One commenter switched from Yahoo because Gmail did not put forwarding behind a paywall.", "quotes": [{"id": 789413712, "item_id": 49338357, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338357", "by": "MetaWhirledPeas", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "This is one of the big reasons I switched to GMail when it was new.", "excerpt": "> For anything I missed, I set gmail to forward everything to my new host This is one of the big reasons I switched to GMail when it was new. Most free alternatives like Yahoo would lock forwarding behind a paywall. A very transparent attempt to keep users by force.", "context": "", "use_case": "email with free forwarding", "switched_from": "Yahoo Mail", "story": "An Update on Leaving Gmail for Fastmail"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Interface quality", "summary": "Commenters complain of a slow, changing web UI with no infinite scrolling, a bloated app and the removal of basic HTML.", "quotes": [{"id": 788246689, "item_id": 49265418, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49265418", "by": "frollogaston", "date": "2026-08-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Gmail.com still has no infinite scrolling", "excerpt": "Mail.app is nice, I used it even when working at Google. Gmail.com still has no infinite scrolling, which I think is the entire reason my peers focused a lot on email filtering while I didn't care. Also their UI kept changing, usually for the worse. The one big downside with Mail.app is it can only fetch emails from Gmail, there's no push.", "context": "former Google employee", "use_case": "email web client", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jeff Dean leaving Alphabet"}, {"id": 774050689, "item_id": 48378168, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48378168", "by": "tambourine_man", "date": "2026-06-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I only ever use Gmail's backend.", "excerpt": "I only ever use Gmail's backend. I've been using it for years with Mail.app on both Mac and iOS. Every time I load the web interface I'm appalled. Not that Mail.app is amazing. It sometimes corrupts its sqlite db (I have 300k+ emails dating back to the late 90s). But it's still way better than the dreadful web interface that only seems to get worse and slower.", "context": "", "use_case": "email backend", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left"}, {"id": 744324368, "item_id": 46520273, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46520273", "by": "1vuio0pswjnm7", "date": "2026-01-06", "stance": "warn", "quote": "But unless there is a \"Gmail app\" alternative, e.g., a 12MB version, this does not leave the computer owner much choice.", "excerpt": "HN commentators usually attempt to defend this sort of bloat. Whether such \"justifications\" are legit is a question left for the reader In any event, the storage space, RAM, file descriptors, sockets and bandwidth all belong to the computer owner, not the app developer Are the 700 MBs worth more when used for Google's \"app\" or when they are used for something else, e.g., the computer owners' files, other apps, etc. T", "context": "", "use_case": "receive-only email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?"}]}, {"label": "Privacy and AI", "summary": "Some commenters object to paying with their data, possible LLM training on email, and intrusive writing suggestions.", "quotes": [{"id": 747951152, "item_id": 46746947, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46746947", "by": "tklenke", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "now...what they are saying is that...we are going to use your email to train our LLMs. I'm not okay with that.", "excerpt": "Recently I was surprised to see a Google Gemini summary at the top of my email on my phone. A day or two later this appeared in my web client as well. Look, I love our new overlords (for the record m'lords I nearly always use please and thank you. I was an early adopter. I still am a frequent user..I mean someone who has all the answers and blows smoke up my ass..perfect right! Despite that, it appears it's not good ", "context": "early adopter, direct marketer", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bye Bye Gmail"}, {"id": 781155185, "item_id": 48822199, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48822199", "by": "meristohm", "date": "2026-07-07", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I still have a gmail account because I'm skeptical it won't be reused in a potentially-harmful-to-me-or-others way", "excerpt": "Fair question (I'm neither the blog author or the person who linked it here). I read the short blog entry and the why is not answered. My own reasons for de-Googling is that I'm uncomfortable with how I pay for Google's services (with my usage data, time, attention, media data, etc). I still have a gmail account because I'm skeptical it won't be reused in a potentially-harmful-to-me-or-others way and because I haven'", "context": "de-Googling user", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Life Without Google"}, {"id": 803592496, "item_id": 50224531, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50224531", "by": "Taek", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I now write emails in notepad, and copy-paste them into Gmail when I'm done, that's how much the suggestions annoy me", "excerpt": "[For example, gmail suggests] \"Google shipped their\" -> \"Google shipped its\" (I use 'their' to make it clear I'm talking about the people who build features at Google, and not merely about a faceless corporation) \"feature or whatever\" -> \"feature\" ('or whatever' is chosen to tell everyone that I'm not actually sure what the name of the feature is, and I can't really be bothered to figure it out) \"gmail\" -> \"Gmail\" (m", "context": "", "use_case": "email writing suggestions", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why is AI generated language so hard to understand?"}]}, {"label": "Account bans", "summary": "Commenters warn that accounts can be banned suddenly and that appeals are fully automated.", "quotes": [{"id": 792246608, "item_id": 49515413, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49515413", "by": "saejox", "date": "2026-08-31", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Google for me died when they banned my many years old gmail account out of blue.", "excerpt": "Google for me died when they banned my many years old gmail account out of blue. Because i used vpn to access it. It was such a big hit to my online life to lose my email like that. Their appeal system is fully automated, impossible to get a human to look at your case. This is warning to any reader of this comment, do not depend on your google account to be forever.", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO"}, {"id": 801468289, "item_id": 50091768, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50091768", "by": "rdtsc", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "until I still host my main gmail account there", "excerpt": "That's why I stay away from trying Gemini or doing anything much with Google until I still host my main gmail account there. One misstep and I'll find myself locked out. Because it's Google's job to spy on everyone, if I have other accounts there, those will also locked out too (\"oh! you're trying to circumvent our ban? we noticed!\" kind of a thing). Then the only recourse from what I understand is to make an HN post", "context": "", "use_case": "main email account", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google is silently linking your phone number across all signed-in accounts"}]}, {"label": "Spam misfires", "summary": "Some say marketing mail gets through, while others find legitimate mail in the spam folder.", "quotes": [{"id": 774024081, "item_id": 48376505, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48376505", "by": "manoDev", "date": "2026-06-02", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I've also noticed Gmail spam filter became useless for anything but the most obvious scam/phishing", "excerpt": "I've also noticed Gmail spam filter became useless for anything but the most obvious scam/phishing, it seems any mass marketing gets thru as long as they follow some \"best practices\". I've been using iCloud email with a custom domain for a while, and it has been super conveninent, stable and spam-free. I also trust Apple more than Google in terms of privacy rn. So if you already pay for iCloud, give it a try.", "context": "", "use_case": "email spam filtering", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left"}, {"id": 747927120, "item_id": 46745445, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46745445", "by": "TacticalCoder", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the GMail spam check works usually exceptionally well", "excerpt": "I use Gmail since the beta (I got invite from a googler) and I don't remember when they began adding spam control but in my experience the GMail spam check works usually exceptionally well: I very rarely need to add a custom filter. My email, over two decades+ (2004?), hasn't been in a many public leaks (only one on https://haveibeenpwned.com/ ) but obviously has made its way to various spammy actors but thankfully n", "context": "Gmail user since the beta", "use_case": "email with spam filtering", "switched_from": "", "story": "We are experiencing an issue with Gmail beginning on Saturday, 2026-01-24 13:02"}, {"id": 790834545, "item_id": 49427159, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49427159", "by": "Quothling", "date": "2026-08-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "if mails I wanted ended up in the spam folder I'd not use gmail", "excerpt": "Maybe it's because I live in a country where e-mai isn't really used that much for personal communication, but wouldn't this mainly be a gmail issue? If mails I wanted ended up in the spam folder I'd not use gmail. I mean, I pay for protonmail, so I wouldn't use gmail to begin with, but if mails I wanted ended up in my protonmail spamfolder and I couldn't do anything about it, then I'd switch away from protonmail.", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "iCloud+ Hide My Email addresses will remain on icloud.com"}]}, {"label": "Email search", "summary": "One heavy user says search often fails to find emails they know exist.", "quotes": [{"id": 739921856, "item_id": 46245116, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46245116", "by": "gortok", "date": "2025-12-12", "stance": "warn", "quote": "all of them are pretty terrible at search as it pertains to email", "excerpt": "My biggest complaints about search come from day-to-day uses: I use search in my email pretty heavily, and I\u2019m most interested in specific words in the email; and when those emails are from specific folks or a specific domain. But, the mobile version of Gmail produces different results than the mobile Outlook app than the desktop version of Gmail, and all of them are pretty terrible at search as it pertains to email.", "context": "heavy email search user", "use_case": "email search", "switched_from": "", "story": "From text to token: How tokenization pipelines work"}, {"id": 747452224, "item_id": 46715764, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46715764", "by": "ljoshua", "date": "2026-01-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I also learned to operate Gmail purely via the keyboard with the built in keyboard shortcuts.", "excerpt": "Xoogler here (so I can\u2019t help with any changes or feature requests now unfortunately) but yes, all of Google runs on Gmail. The amount of email I got as a software engineer there was crazy voluminous. I and most Googlers around me made heavy use of filters, labels, and all the text search operators available (see https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7190?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&oco=0). I also learned to o", "context": "former Google software engineer", "use_case": "heavy work email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Do people at Google use Gmail?"}]}, {"label": "Bulk deletion", "summary": "One commenter says deleting mail in bulk from a sender has become harder.", "quotes": [{"id": 738615185, "item_id": 46163449, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46163449", "by": "N3mor", "date": "2025-12-05", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I think Google really doesn't want you to delete emails. They made it harder to delete emails in bulk.", "excerpt": "I noticed that a few years ago that Google had removed the very handy tool I used to filter all mail from \"x\" sender and I could select all and delete. I believe they did it on purpose because I think Google really doesn't want you to delete emails. They made it harder to delete emails in bulk. I do subscribe to things I find interesting but other times they are emails from services I joing. I am now using Office 365", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Making RSS More Fun"}]}], "who": [{"by": "harshalizee", "context": "works in an MS-stack company as a dotnet developer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50133349", "date": "2026-10-17"}, {"by": "nottorp", "context": "has own domain not hosted on Google", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49566696", "date": "2026-09-04"}, {"by": "skeledrew", "context": "Gmail user since it existed", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49329976", "date": "2026-08-17"}, {"by": "nasretdinov", "context": "former Google employee", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48587277", "date": "2026-06-18"}, {"by": "TacticalCoder", "context": "Gmail user since the beta", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46745445", "date": "2026-01-24"}, {"by": "xinbenlv", "context": "Xoogler", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46720442", "date": "2026-01-22"}, {"by": "ljoshua", "context": "former Google software engineer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46715764", "date": "2026-01-21"}], "tags": ["for custom-domain email", "for high-volume inboxes", "for keyboard users", "works with IMAP clients"], "use_cases": ["email", "mail client", "personal email", "email spam filtering", "email with spam filtering", "email writing suggestions"], "compared": [{"slug": "fastmail", "name": "Fastmail", "co": 24, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 15}, {"slug": "proton", "name": "Proton", "co": 11, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 5}, {"slug": "mailbox-org", "name": "mailbox.org", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 3}, {"slug": "apple-mail", "name": "Apple Mail", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "thunderbird", "name": "Thunderbird", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "hotmail", "name": "Hotmail", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "icloud-mail", "name": "iCloud Mail", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "microsoft-outlook", "name": "Microsoft Outlook", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48375016", "title": "Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left", "mentions": 5}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334409", "title": "An Update on Leaving Gmail for Fastmail", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50072913", "title": "Thunderbird for iOS", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49787726", "title": "Attention is all you have", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49565693", "title": "Gmail to end support for \"Send as\" for third-party addresses, such as @yahoo.com", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49426564", "title": "iCloud+ Hide My Email addresses will remain on icloud.com", "mentions": 2}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {"warn": 2, "neutral": 1}, "2026-01": {"warn": 3, "neutral": 2, "recommend": 2}, "2026-02": {"neutral": 3, "recommend": 2}, "2026-03": {"warn": 1}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 3, "warn": 1}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 2}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 5, "warn": 2, "recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-08": {"warn": 4, "recommend": 3, "neutral": 3}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 3, "recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 8, "warn": 2}}, "quotes": [{"id": 803675330, "item_id": 50229708, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50229708", "by": "p0d", "date": "2026-10-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "free Gmail as my mail client", "excerpt": "I went down this road and reversed. I use cloudflare for domain reg, fastmail as my mail provider and free Gmail as my mail client.", "context": "", "use_case": "mail client", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How do people self host email and maintain deliverability?"}, {"id": 803592496, "item_id": 50224531, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50224531", "by": "Taek", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I now write emails in notepad, and copy-paste them into Gmail when I'm done, that's how much the suggestions annoy me", "excerpt": "[For example, gmail suggests] \"Google shipped their\" -> \"Google shipped its\" (I use 'their' to make it clear I'm talking about the people who build features at Google, and not merely about a faceless corporation) \"feature or whatever\" -> \"feature\" ('or whatever' is chosen to tell everyone that I'm not actually sure what the name of the feature is, and I can't really be bothered to figure it out) \"gmail\" -> \"Gmail\" (m", "context": "", "use_case": "email writing suggestions", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why is AI generated language so hard to understand?"}, {"id": 802242880, "item_id": 50140180, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50140180", "by": "ButlerianJihad", "date": "2026-10-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used \"the + extension\" with Gmail for practically every site", "excerpt": "Years ago, I used \"the + extension\" with Gmail for practically every site and every account I created. (Of course, also before \"Sign in with Google\" became ubiquitous.) This was only manageable because I was already using a password manager app. And so with every service, I'd need to scrounge up the email address I'd made up for it, along with the password. Not always easy or straightforward. Also, when calling Custo", "context": "", "use_case": "plus-address email tracking", "switched_from": "", "story": "The One Question I Can't Stand at Restaurants (\"What's your phone number?\")"}, {"id": 802133587, "item_id": 50133349, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50133349", "by": "harshalizee", "date": "2026-10-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Google Mail for email", "excerpt": "You would severely limit yourself if you're strict about your list without nuance. GitHub is pretty much bog standard in most companies unless you're working for the few using mercurial, etc. I work in a MS stack and most of your list is untrue for my case. We use slack for messaging, Confluence, Wikimedia, and GDrive for documentation, Google Mail for email, I develop primarily dotnet/C# apps on a MacBook pro M5, ha", "context": "works in an MS-stack company as a dotnet developer", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft Teams is a red flag"}, {"id": 801782321, "item_id": 50111395, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50111395", "by": "ebrahimh", "date": "2026-10-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "If I use Gmail/proton etc, then I can be pretty sure that the other person got my email.", "excerpt": "I've never tried to set it up even though I know it can easily be done with things like mailcow. The downside is never really knowing if your email reached your recipient (maybe it got blocked by Gmail because of your IP, maybe some other reason). If I use Gmail/proton etc, then I can be pretty sure that the other person got my email.", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 801583489, "item_id": 50098968, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50098968", "by": "schrodinger", "date": "2026-10-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I just forward all email to my GMail address and use a custom reply-to in GMail", "excerpt": "If Apple \"pushes an iCloud address onto you\" that you don't want, why not just freaking ignore it completely? Don't share it with friends, they won't know about it. Don't ever log into it. Ignore it. Who cares? FWIW I use my free iCloud email account with my custom domain since Apple (unlike Google) offers that as a free service. However, I just forward all email to my GMail address and use a custom reply-to in GMail", "context": "", "use_case": "main inbox and replying", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: I wrote an email app that accepts only one sender per inbox"}, {"id": 801468289, "item_id": 50091768, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50091768", "by": "rdtsc", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "until I still host my main gmail account there", "excerpt": "That's why I stay away from trying Gemini or doing anything much with Google until I still host my main gmail account there. One misstep and I'll find myself locked out. Because it's Google's job to spy on everyone, if I have other accounts there, those will also locked out too (\"oh! you're trying to circumvent our ban? we noticed!\" kind of a thing). Then the only recourse from what I understand is to make an HN post", "context": "", "use_case": "main email account", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google is silently linking your phone number across all signed-in accounts"}, {"id": 801317346, "item_id": 50082334, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50082334", "by": "stackghost", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Unfortunately it doesn\u2019t sync properly with Gmail.", "excerpt": "I recently switched from android back to iOS and tried to use mail.app for everything, as I rather like it. Unfortunately it doesn\u2019t sync properly with Gmail. I am in the process of de-googling my life so that\u2019s okay with me. I use mail.app with my fastmail account and it\u2019s perfect.", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Thunderbird for iOS"}, {"id": 801300658, "item_id": 50081291, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50081291", "by": "SoftTalker", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "On the go I use a web browser on my phone for gmail or outlook.", "excerpt": "On linux I read my mail in emacs, and use notmuch for searching/indexing. It's amazing. On the go I use a web browser on my phone for gmail or outlook. No apps. I try to minimize doing email on my phone because it's so awkward to type.", "context": "", "use_case": "mobile email via browser", "switched_from": "", "story": "Thunderbird for iOS"}, {"id": 799338800, "item_id": 49958675, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49958675", "by": "jibalt", "date": "2026-10-04", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use a combination of gmail as my mail agent", "excerpt": "I just dealt with this due to the impending termination of .name email. I use a combination of gmail as my mail agent, CloudFlare for the domain, and SMTP2Go for low volume outbound with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. I don't have any Apple usage or requirements. Oh, I just remembered that I send mail received by my CloudFlare domain to both gmail and zohomail, and use Thunderbird as the mail agent for the latter.", "context": "", "use_case": "mail client", "switched_from": "", "story": "All I wanted was a custom domain email"}, {"id": 796759985, "item_id": 49797499, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49797499", "by": "Ajakks", "date": "2026-09-22", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Gmail exclusively for my actual real identity", "excerpt": "I don't really understand why they were able to exist as they do and not lose users. I have not had Chrome for over a decade, I use Gmail exclusively for my actual real identity, which I don't recall the last time I used - I can only access my Gmail from a tablet I never use. I used to use Google search, when all other options failed - but these days, google is the first to fail, I literally do not remember the time ", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Attention is all you have"}, {"id": 796734129, "item_id": 49795883, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49795883", "by": "tharkun__", "date": "2026-09-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the one thing GMail got right vs. the real world analog of a folder", "excerpt": "But categorizing is fine if you can put multiple categories on things. That's the whole difference between flexible tagging and rigid folder, i.e. the one thing GMail got right vs. the real world analog of a folder. The real world solves it too btw. in the same way a relational database did: Indexes ;) Tagging is nothing but different indexes of the same underlying thing. Be it a book or an email or whatever else. An", "context": "", "use_case": "email tagging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Attention is all you have"}, {"id": 793079440, "item_id": 49567465, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49567465", "by": "avsteele", "date": "2026-09-04", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Then I use GMail's send-as to remain in gmail but still use my name@mydomain.com mailbox.", "excerpt": "I use it. It is useful for anyone who has a personal domain from which they'd like to send/receive without needing to migrate off Google entirely. My registrar gives a few email addresses with SMTP support. Then I use GMail's send-as to remain in gmail but still use my name@mydomain.com mailbox.", "context": "", "use_case": "send-as with personal domain", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gmail to end support for \"Send as\" for third-party addresses, such as @yahoo.com"}, {"id": 793067136, "item_id": 49566696, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49566696", "by": "nottorp", "date": "2026-09-04", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Google's SMTP to send mail as that domain", "excerpt": "Hmm I'm confused. I have my own domain that is totally not hosted on google. However, I use Google's SMTP to send mail as that domain (specifically the one email address that is enabled on my custom domain). For that I'm authenticating to the SMTP with my google account, and I somehow proved to google i own the email a couple billion years ago when we all had pet dinosaurs. Are they discontinuing that or something el", "context": "has own domain not hosted on Google", "use_case": "SMTP for custom domain email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gmail to end support for \"Send as\" for third-party addresses, such as @yahoo.com"}, {"id": 792246608, "item_id": 49515413, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49515413", "by": "saejox", "date": "2026-08-31", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Google for me died when they banned my many years old gmail account out of blue.", "excerpt": "Google for me died when they banned my many years old gmail account out of blue. Because i used vpn to access it. It was such a big hit to my online life to lose my email like that. Their appeal system is fully automated, impossible to get a human to look at your case. This is warning to any reader of this comment, do not depend on your google account to be forever.", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO"}, {"id": 790877120, "item_id": 49429820, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49429820", "by": "serbuvlad", "date": "2026-08-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use my gmail address for everything and I don't really get spam", "excerpt": "I find this very interesting in 2026. I use my gmail address for everything and I don't really get spam (except from services I've subscribed to legitimately but haven't bothered to configure to not send promotional mail). I never really get promotional mail from 3rd parties at all. Is this just gmail filters being very good?", "context": "", "use_case": "personal email", "switched_from": "", "story": "iCloud+ Hide My Email addresses will remain on icloud.com"}, {"id": 790834545, "item_id": 49427159, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49427159", "by": "Quothling", "date": "2026-08-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "if mails I wanted ended up in the spam folder I'd not use gmail", "excerpt": "Maybe it's because I live in a country where e-mai isn't really used that much for personal communication, but wouldn't this mainly be a gmail issue? If mails I wanted ended up in the spam folder I'd not use gmail. I mean, I pay for protonmail, so I wouldn't use gmail to begin with, but if mails I wanted ended up in my protonmail spamfolder and I couldn't do anything about it, then I'd switch away from protonmail.", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "iCloud+ Hide My Email addresses will remain on icloud.com"}, {"id": 789443649, "item_id": 49340228, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49340228", "by": "danpalmer", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Gmail is the other way around.", "excerpt": "I have a blog post that I've been meaning to write about why I moved from Fastmail to Gmail. I love Fastmail as a product, but I realised it wasn't what I wanted anymore from my email. I think there's a tension between explicit and implicit organisation. If you want a really good email client, Fastmail is great, but while I did care about that at one point in my life, what I want now is really just the big box at the", "context": "", "use_case": "email with implicit organisation", "switched_from": "Fastmail", "story": "An Update on Leaving Gmail for Fastmail"}, {"id": 789418241, "item_id": 49338640, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338640", "by": "muhammadusman", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I just had to keep my gmail logged in most of the time.", "excerpt": "I moved to using Fastmail as my primary over 7 years ago and I still use it as my main email address but I had hoped I could get rid of my gmail but instead it became a catch-all junk inbox similar to OP's gmail. The main issue is that so many websites use Login in with Google as a way to sign-in that I just had to keep my gmail logged in most of the time. So instead of \"moving away from Gmail to Fastmail\" it's more ", "context": "", "use_case": "Google sign-in for sites", "switched_from": "", "story": "An Update on Leaving Gmail for Fastmail"}, {"id": 789413712, "item_id": 49338357, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338357", "by": "MetaWhirledPeas", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "This is one of the big reasons I switched to GMail when it was new.", "excerpt": "> For anything I missed, I set gmail to forward everything to my new host This is one of the big reasons I switched to GMail when it was new. Most free alternatives like Yahoo would lock forwarding behind a paywall. A very transparent attempt to keep users by force.", "context": "", "use_case": "email with free forwarding", "switched_from": "Yahoo Mail", "story": "An Update on Leaving Gmail for Fastmail"}, {"id": 789402929, "item_id": 49337683, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49337683", "by": "GiorgioG", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I still use gmail for SSO for a lot of things", "excerpt": "I moved to Fastmail from gmail a few years ago. I'm thrilled to not have Google searching my primary email address any longer. I still use gmail for SSO for a lot of things from my 'gmail.com' account.", "context": "", "use_case": "SSO", "switched_from": "", "story": "An Update on Leaving Gmail for Fastmail"}, {"id": 789279616, "item_id": 49329976, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49329976", "by": "skeledrew", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "they're however a stable entity which offers a very reliable service for essentially free", "excerpt": "I've been using GMail roughly since it existed I think, and have thought on and off over the years about self-hosting. The notion scares me every time because with it comes thoughts of what would happen if I were to lose the domain name or server, or even if there was an outage at the \"wrong time\". And then there's also the idea of updating the 1 million+1 services, etc that I used it to sign up for. As much as I'm n", "context": "Gmail user since it existed", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Self hosted email continues to steeply decline"}, {"id": 789223360, "item_id": 49326460, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49326460", "by": "xvxvx", "date": "2026-08-16", "stance": "warn", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I have a firstname.lastname@gmail account and sometimes get emails for firstnamelastname@gmail too. Mostly, it\u2019s accounts being setup using that address then ending up in my mailbox. I assumed they were typos but, if I\u2019m reading this blog correctly, is Google leaking emails from the other account into mine? If that the case, I\u2019m pretty alarmed, as I use my Gmail for a lot of my accounts. Back to Hotmail, I guess?", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gmail might partially be to blame for receiving emails from other Sean Conners"}, {"id": 788246689, "item_id": 49265418, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49265418", "by": "frollogaston", "date": "2026-08-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Gmail.com still has no infinite scrolling", "excerpt": "Mail.app is nice, I used it even when working at Google. Gmail.com still has no infinite scrolling, which I think is the entire reason my peers focused a lot on email filtering while I didn't care. Also their UI kept changing, usually for the worse. The one big downside with Mail.app is it can only fetch emails from Gmail, there's no push.", "context": "former Google employee", "use_case": "email web client", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jeff Dean leaving Alphabet"}, {"id": 782012384, "item_id": 48875774, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48875774", "by": "Aboutplants", "date": "2026-07-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "The only thing that Google has me with right now is YouTube and Gmail.", "excerpt": "My Google usage has gone down fairly significantly in the past couple of years as I use whatever free models to do nearly all of what I used Google search for. The only thing that Google has me with right now is YouTube and Gmail.", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google Search lets creators know more about their reach"}, {"id": 781155185, "item_id": 48822199, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48822199", "by": "meristohm", "date": "2026-07-07", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I still have a gmail account because I'm skeptical it won't be reused in a potentially-harmful-to-me-or-others way", "excerpt": "Fair question (I'm neither the blog author or the person who linked it here). I read the short blog entry and the why is not answered. My own reasons for de-Googling is that I'm uncomfortable with how I pay for Google's services (with my usage data, time, attention, media data, etc). I still have a gmail account because I'm skeptical it won't be reused in a potentially-harmful-to-me-or-others way and because I haven'", "context": "de-Googling user", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Life Without Google"}, {"id": 780424080, "item_id": 48776505, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48776505", "by": "jesse_dot_id", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "People use GMail because it makes email easy to use", "excerpt": "You're being pedantic while also just kind of continuing to make my point for me because you're describing a regressive user experience over and over again. The Internet at large has evolved beyond forums and IRC for a reason. Users have become used to having quick and easy access to a lake of content. When I go to PeerTube's website, I should see content first, and if I'm a creator, I want a guarantee that my conten", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform"}, {"id": 780060465, "item_id": 48753779, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48753779", "by": "godelski", "date": "2026-07-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Looked at the same email in Gmail and Thunderbird, it's just a PDF attachment, no message", "excerpt": "This freaked me out the first time I used Mail. It rendered a PDF about buying bitcoin on PayPal (I don't have PayPal). Looked at the same email in Gmail and Thunderbird, it's just a PDF attachment, no message, and the sender was different. No wonder people are falling for those scams, Mail makes it easy for them. Now if only I had a better client on my phone (never buying an iPhone again)", "context": "", "use_case": "email client", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple 'Hide My Email' Vulnerability Reveals Peoples' Real Email Addresses"}, {"id": 779482465, "item_id": 48717654, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48717654", "by": "theandrewbailey", "date": "2026-06-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "moved off Gmail about five years ago", "excerpt": "I stopped using Google search after the Snowden leaks, moved off Gmail about five years ago, and started using GrapheneOS over a year ago. I barely use anything Google anymore.", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Tell HN: Delete Google"}, {"id": 777396432, "item_id": 48587277, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48587277", "by": "nasretdinov", "date": "2026-06-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used the basic HTML version when I was working at Google", "excerpt": "Isn't it still the case then? I used the basic HTML version when I was working at Google to try to understand whether or not it was slow because of the (unoptimal) frontend or not (it was the backend that sometimes took >=600ms to load messages unfortunately, not the frontend).", "context": "former Google employee", "use_case": "basic HTML webmail", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly"}, {"id": 775785520, "item_id": 48486595, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48486595", "by": "majormajor", "date": "2026-06-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Gmail, Search, Docs/Drive, Maps, Street View, Chrome, all solid but old consumer apps.", "excerpt": "Most of their best products are VERY old. Gmail, Search, Docs/Drive, Maps, Street View, Chrome, all solid but old consumer apps. A lot of early entrants/market defining products, too! Most of them are still very good. Calendar is... fine. Gmail/Calendar as corporate products in some ways feel like downgrades compared to the functionality of the older Office desktop suite, but they integrate nicely into a lot of thing", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Claude Desktop spins up a VM without no way of stopping it"}, {"id": 774071728, "item_id": 48379483, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48379483", "by": "smukherjee19", "date": "2026-06-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Gmail regularly and did not experience anything like that", "excerpt": "That's weird. I use Gmail regularly and did not experience anything like that; it works just the way it did for the past 10+ years. And auto categorization still works just fine, and no AI summarizing my email or trying to write my drafts. I wonder what difference we have in settings. Also, not to be disrespectful to the OP, but seems quite an... overblown reaction. To each their own, though.", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left"}, {"id": 774066416, "item_id": 48379151, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48379151", "by": "anonymousiam", "date": "2026-06-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use IMAP to access my GMail.", "excerpt": "I haven't seen this new annoying AI behavior because I use IMAP to access my GMail. After reading this post, I decided to backup my GMail inbox, which is something I've never bothered to do because it's mostly a secondary backup that I rarely use. So it took a few minutes to finish copying all of the ~1,500 messages or so, and then I went to verify that I got them all. For some odd reason, GMail doesn't let me copy (", "context": "", "use_case": "secondary email backup", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left"}, {"id": 774050689, "item_id": 48378168, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48378168", "by": "tambourine_man", "date": "2026-06-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I only ever use Gmail's backend.", "excerpt": "I only ever use Gmail's backend. I've been using it for years with Mail.app on both Mac and iOS. Every time I load the web interface I'm appalled. Not that Mail.app is amazing. It sometimes corrupts its sqlite db (I have 300k+ emails dating back to the late 90s). But it's still way better than the dreadful web interface that only seems to get worse and slower.", "context": "", "use_case": "email backend", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left"}, {"id": 774024081, "item_id": 48376505, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48376505", "by": "manoDev", "date": "2026-06-02", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I've also noticed Gmail spam filter became useless for anything but the most obvious scam/phishing", "excerpt": "I've also noticed Gmail spam filter became useless for anything but the most obvious scam/phishing, it seems any mass marketing gets thru as long as they follow some \"best practices\". I've been using iCloud email with a custom domain for a while, and it has been super conveninent, stable and spam-free. I also trust Apple more than Google in terms of privacy rn. So if you already pay for iCloud, give it a try.", "context": "", "use_case": "email spam filtering", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left"}, {"id": 774018224, "item_id": 48376139, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48376139", "by": "ddosmax556", "date": "2026-06-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "personally I use gmail for exactly the following things: account recovery, system notifications, and b2b email threads", "excerpt": "I understand that this is frustrating for people who mostly write thoughtful emails. But personally I use gmail for exactly the following things: account recovery, system notifications, and b2b email threads. For the latter, I really couldn't care less about form or shape. It's a tool to an end, to get a point across. I found the auto writing stuff pretty useless so far (suggestions change the intended tone or even m", "context": "", "use_case": "account recovery and b2b email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left"}, {"id": 771609280, "item_id": 48225580, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48225580", "by": "ang_cire", "date": "2026-05-21", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "there are only 2 things I can think of that I use them for anymore, and that's 1) gmail, and 2) google maps.", "excerpt": "It's funny how people talk about de-Googling their lives as a struggle, but there are only 2 things I can think of that I use them for anymore, and that's 1) gmail, and 2) google maps. It's always surprising to me when people mention these google services I've never heard of. What do you mean a Google IDE? Haven't you heard of Vim, bro? Mostly-jokes aside; don't trust Google! Google is asshole.", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google's Antigravity Bait and Switch"}, {"id": 770645296, "item_id": 48165331, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48165331", "by": "throw7", "date": "2026-05-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I still keep a gmail account, but I pay for an email account also.", "excerpt": "AGI is the postmodern tower of babel. Ignore. If you feel that the devices and technology you use are making you the slave, then master it (learn about it and make it your slave) or dump it. I'm not being unrealistic. I had a facebook account for about 2 years and then decided I had enough of being Zuckerberg's dumbfuck and deleted it. I still keep a gmail account, but I pay for an email account also. At the very ext", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "We've made the world too complicated"}, {"id": 769937233, "item_id": 48121077, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48121077", "by": "rc_kas", "date": "2026-05-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Gmail had sepearated the logs into separate emails in a very natural way.", "excerpt": "I switched to Protonmail a month ago. It is patently inferior to gmail. Every day I get annoyed by some weakness in the UI that google had apparently just always solved without me ever having to think about it. For example, reading long email chains in the proton UI is horrific. I don't know what google did that made it natural to read and proton does so badly, but it is painful to read these long chains of emails. A", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Moved My Digital Stack to Europe"}, {"id": 766733680, "item_id": 47920855, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47920855", "by": "sminchev", "date": "2026-04-27", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I share it with an email", "excerpt": "gmail :) Not kidding, Most of the time, when I want to send something from my device to my laptop, I share it with an email. In case of friends, directly in Viber, and Teams.", "context": "", "use_case": "sending files to self", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What file sharing apps do you guys use?"}, {"id": 763130256, "item_id": 47695641, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47695641", "by": "dlcarrier", "date": "2026-04-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Gmail's support for aliases, by putting a '+' symbol after my user name", "excerpt": "Assuming the message actually contains information, and not a login link, lots of email updates is great. It means I automatically get a local copy of the message stored, so if I want to look it up, I have it immediately available, regardless of my current network connectivity. I use Gmail's support for aliases, by putting a '+' symbol after my user name, followed by a alias, so that the messages can be easily filter", "context": "", "use_case": "plus aliases and server-side filtering", "switched_from": "", "story": "One item purchased, Ten emails"}, {"id": 754961456, "item_id": 47185091, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47185091", "by": "pavel_lishin", "date": "2026-02-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Gmail is fine, imo.", "excerpt": "> I always thought I loved Gmail. Turns out I just had the habit of typing in \u201cgmail.com\u201d in my search bar. I honestly can\u2019t tell you a single feature of Gmail that I miss. > Leaving Gmail also gave me the opportunity to start implementing better digital hygiene. I no longer give my primary email to fly-by-night sites, and I'm deliberate with what things I'm signing up for. I also do this, but with my own custom doma", "context": "", "use_case": "email with custom domain and filters", "switched_from": "", "story": "Leaving Google has actively improved my life"}, {"id": 747951152, "item_id": 46746947, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46746947", "by": "tklenke", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "now...what they are saying is that...we are going to use your email to train our LLMs. I'm not okay with that.", "excerpt": "Recently I was surprised to see a Google Gemini summary at the top of my email on my phone. A day or two later this appeared in my web client as well. Look, I love our new overlords (for the record m'lords I nearly always use please and thank you. I was an early adopter. I still am a frequent user..I mean someone who has all the answers and blows smoke up my ass..perfect right! Despite that, it appears it's not good ", "context": "early adopter, direct marketer", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bye Bye Gmail"}, {"id": 747927120, "item_id": 46745445, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46745445", "by": "TacticalCoder", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the GMail spam check works usually exceptionally well", "excerpt": "I use Gmail since the beta (I got invite from a googler) and I don't remember when they began adding spam control but in my experience the GMail spam check works usually exceptionally well: I very rarely need to add a custom filter. My email, over two decades+ (2004?), hasn't been in a many public leaks (only one on https://haveibeenpwned.com/ ) but obviously has made its way to various spammy actors but thankfully n", "context": "Gmail user since the beta", "use_case": "email with spam filtering", "switched_from": "", "story": "We are experiencing an issue with Gmail beginning on Saturday, 2026-01-24 13:02"}, {"id": 747452224, "item_id": 46715764, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46715764", "by": "ljoshua", "date": "2026-01-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I also learned to operate Gmail purely via the keyboard with the built in keyboard shortcuts.", "excerpt": "Xoogler here (so I can\u2019t help with any changes or feature requests now unfortunately) but yes, all of Google runs on Gmail. The amount of email I got as a software engineer there was crazy voluminous. I and most Googlers around me made heavy use of filters, labels, and all the text search operators available (see https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7190?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&oco=0). I also learned to o", "context": "former Google software engineer", "use_case": "heavy work email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Do people at Google use Gmail?"}, {"id": 746169792, "item_id": 46635612, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46635612", "by": "gus_massa", "date": "2026-01-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use gmail, and with similar posts, after marking it as spam a few times they just go to the spam folder.", "excerpt": "I use gmail, and with similar posts, after marking it as spam a few times they just go to the spam folder. In some very annoying case, I created a filter to ensure it's send 110% of the times to the spam folder.", "context": "", "use_case": "email with spam filtering", "switched_from": "", "story": "How to make spamming us uncomfortable for LinkedIn and friends"}, {"id": 744623121, "item_id": 46538945, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46538945", "by": "rcMgD2BwE72F", "date": "2026-01-08", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Gmail (which I've been using for 22 years) is just crap nowadays.", "excerpt": "Move to Fastmail. It has snoozing and memos https://www.fastmail.com/blog/introducing-memos/ That's the ideal combination. I use it 20x a day. Got an email I can't act on now? Snooze it to when it's the right time and add a note with the reminder. eg - grandpa ask to bring a tool: snooze to early Saturday with a note \"get him the tool\" - send \"GDPR art. 17 account deletion request email\" and snooze in 2 months to che", "context": "", "use_case": "email", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Napoleon Technique: Postponing Things to Increase Productivity"}, {"id": 744324368, "item_id": 46520273, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46520273", "by": "1vuio0pswjnm7", "date": "2026-01-06", "stance": "warn", "quote": "But unless there is a \"Gmail app\" alternative, e.g., a 12MB version, this does not leave the computer owner much choice.", "excerpt": "HN commentators usually attempt to defend this sort of bloat. Whether such \"justifications\" are legit is a question left for the reader In any event, the storage space, RAM, file descriptors, sockets and bandwidth all belong to the computer owner, not the app developer Are the 700 MBs worth more when used for Google's \"app\" or when they are used for something else, e.g., the computer owners' files, other apps, etc. T", "context": "", "use_case": "receive-only email", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?"}]}