Affiliate links on Android Authority may earn us a commission. Learn more.
Google rolls out a new Quick Reply feature in Gmail for Android
- Google is officially rolling out Quick Reply in Gmail, a new UI that makes it easier to compose new replies to your emails.
- The company started testing this new UI with a handful of users back in November 2023, but it wasn’t clear at the time if the UI would stick around.
- With the latest Android feature drop, however, Google has made Quick Reply in Gmail official.
If you open the Gmail app on your Android phone today, you might notice a new UI when replying to emails. Today, Google announced that it is rolling out Quick Reply in Gmail, a new UI that makes it easier to respond to emails. Google has been testing this feature out with a handful of users since November of last year, but it’s only now made the change official with the latest Android Feature Drop.
Before this update, if you opened any email in the Gmail app for Android, you’d need to tap the reply button to start composing a message. Tapping the reply button opens up the full-screen email compose UI you’re all probably familiar with. The full-screen email compose UI is great for drafting longer responses, but if you need to just send a quick message, then it’s not really necessary.
That’s why Google is introducing Quick Reply in Gmail. Quick Reply adds a text box at the bottom of every email that you can quickly tap to enter a short reply, replacing the Reply, Reply All, and Forward buttons at the bottom of the current UI. From left to right, the new Quick Reply box has a button to attach a file, a dropdown to edit the list of recipients or reply to all senders, the aforementioned text box to draft short messages, and an emoji button to react to emails. When you start entering text in the box, the emoji button is replaced by a send button, and a new expand button is added that lets you switch to the more traditional full-screen email compose UI.
I have heard from several users today that they now have this new UI, suggesting a wider rollout is indeed happening. We don’t know how long the rollout will take, but given that Google is marketing Quick Reply in Gmail as a new feature, it’s likely coming to everyone eventually. We don’t know if Quick Reply will land on book-style foldables or tablets, though.
Apart from the rollout of this new Quick Reply UI, we’re also expecting Google to soon roll out a new Gemini button in the Gmail Android app. Android Authority contributor AssembleDebug managed to uncover this new Gemini button, which will let you make more queries in addition to email summaries. Google is working to bring generative AI to its entire product suite, and with Gmail being one of Google’s largest products, it’s no surprise to see it get a lot of love.