Pressing a phone number or email address in Gmail or Inbox now opens the corresponding app

As weird as it might sound, I did not give much attention to the fact that emails I receive in Gmail did not parse out information like phone numbers and email addresses. I just took it for granted that copying and pasting was the route to go. Now that Google updated Gmail and Inbox  to make that information actionable, however, things look to be more convenient for me with future emails.

As previously mentioned, Gmail and Inbox now turn phone numbers, physical addresses, and email addresses into hyperlinks that take you to the appropriate app. For example, pressing on a phone number takes you to your default dialer, pressing on a physical address takes you to Google Maps, and pressing on an email address opens your default email client.

According to Google, it turns this information into hyperlinks in order to make your time more productive:

Precious time can be lost by having to copy and paste this information from an email into other apps and websites, so we wanted to provide a better way to perform these tasks that also saves time.

If the feature sounds familiar, that is because Android Oreo incorporates a similar feature that takes advantage of machine learning, but it requires the update to Oreo. With this, folks who use Gmail and Inbox across different Android versions can take advantage of it.

Google says the feature is rolling out across mobile and the web today, but don’t be surprised if you don’t see it on your end for a few days – these things tend to roll out over a period of time, so everyone will not see it at once.