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Gmail Notes: How to Add Them
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by
Skyler Reeves
April 19, 2022
· Updated on
February 14, 2025
No matter what system you have for managing your Gmail inbox, we've all received an email from a customer, executive, or direct report that we just can't respond to immediately.
We don't always have all the answers and need to check with colleagues to get their input.
Until we do that, it just sits and lingers in our inbox.
Wouldn't it be great if you could add notes, annotations, memos, and tasks to your emails to give yourself context for when you eventually get back around to responding?
What about being able to have a private conversation with another team member in Google Workspace or add Gmail notes on an email a customer sends you without having to forward or blind-copy things?
Something like Google Doc comments, but for your Gmail account.
Yeah. We'd like that too.
Gmail doesn't offer this sort of functionality, though.
There are some workarounds native to Gmail that can help with scenarios when you need to add notes to Gmail or collaborate with others without creating a mess of FW: chains.
We'll cover 5 (and a half) options native to Gmail and one third-party option that makes it easy to add notes, comments for your team, attachments, tasks, and more without forwarding or jumping through hoops.
Gmail notes are a feature that allows you to save notes and attach them to specific emails. This can be useful if you need to remember something important about an email thread, or if you want to keep track of something related to the email.
You can add an email to Google Tasks to leave notes for yourself in the task description area.
Right-click on the email you want to add notes to and select "Add to tasks." You can also click on the email and use the keyboard shortcut ⇧ + T (Shift + T).
You'll see a task appear in the sidebar to the right of your email message. Click on it and add notes to yourself in the details area.
Click the mail icon below the task to open up the email you've associated with the note.
The Downside: You can't share your Google Tasks with others. If you want to collaborate on an email with a team member within Gmail natively, you'll need to forward the email to them or use Google Chat.
Google Keep can be used to add notes to email in Gmail.
Open the email in which you want to add a note.
Open the sidebar if it's not already by clicking on the arrow on the left side of the screen.
From the sidebar, select the Google Keep icon. Google Keep panel will appear.
In it, you can add as many notes as you need.
The Downside: No text formatting and poor note organization.
You can use Google Chat to collaborate with team members—sort of.
To do this, click Google Chat in the left sidebar of Gmail to trigger a chat pop-up.
Add the team member or members you want to collaborate with. Then copy, paste, and send the contents of the email you want to discuss with your team.
It's helpful to add a link to the specific Gmail message thread so you can easily open it back up later.
The Downside: Other team members can't click the link you've added to reference the original email because it lives in your email inbox—not theirs.
If you don't provide enough details, it may not make much sense to the people you share it with.
This causes a lot of wasted time going back and forth. It usually saves more time to forward the email to team members instead.
You can also use a draft to add notes for yourself. Reply to the email without sending it, and your message gets stored in your Drafts.
Step 1. Sign in to your Gmail account, find the email you want to work with, and copy the text from the body of the email you want to reply inline to.
Step 2. Click reply.
Step 3. Click the Quote button to add a quote block in your email reply.
Step 4. Paste the text you copied from the original message next to the gray quote block line where your cursor is.
Step 5. Press Enter and reply with your response below the quote block.
Now you can't use labels to add a note, but you can use Gmail labels to indicate that a note is needed before a reply can be sent.
Think of it as very, very lightweight process tracking within your inbox.
Missive is an email and chat tool that syncs with email platforms like Google and Outlook to make collaboration easy.
You can use it as a native desktop app on macOS and Microsoft Windows or as a web app in browsers like Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.
Here are some valuable ways we use Missive at our company to add private annotations and collaborate with other team members.
You can add private comments for yourself to refer back to them later.
You can tag other team members in a comment by typing @ + their name. Tagging others will automatically share the email with them (without having to forward anything), so they can see your comment and reply to it.
They can reply with an inline comment or within a thread if they have multiple conversations within the email and want to keep topics organized.
You can turn a comment into a task if you have something you want to delegate to a team member or yourself without having to tab over to a project management tool and bog it down with more tasks.
If you're anything like us, you like keyboard shortcuts. Missive makes it easy to create tasks; just start typing your task description, then switch to task mode by pressing ⌘ + ⇧ + X on Mac or Control + Shift + X on other platforms.
Alternatively, type [ ] or - [ ] at the beginning of your comment. Assign the task to a team member using the @ + their name anywhere in your comment.
Suppose you want to send tasks to a more formal project management tool. In that case, Missive has several add-on integrations with Asana, Trello, ClickUp, Todoist, and a Zapier connector for any others you rely on.
Missive comments support styling options beyond plain text too. You can add styles for bold, italic, strikethrough, quote blocks, inline code, and code blocks!
Make it easy for people to send attachments to customers without spending 10 minutes searching for them in Google Drive by sending them as a comment. We frequently use this to send zip files, PDFs, links, and screenshots without using apps like Slack, where we lose the context of the email itself.
If you want to save time and maximize your productivity, you can use Missive's powerful rule feature to automate comments based on various conditions.
Let's say you receive a new email from a customer that you can't get to immediately and your organization likes to keep customers happy by responding to them within 24 hours.
You can set up a rule in Missive to automatically move the email to a Team Inbox after a certain amount of time and add a comment that goes out to all members, letting them know you need someone to step in to help.
You can set rules to apply to an entire team as well.
For example, you can help your team maintain SLAs established with customers by creating a rule that sends a notification to everyone on the team whenever receiving an email during business hours that goes 30+ minutes without a reply.
It's not uncommon for individual customers to have important details that your team needs to be aware of whenever they're interfacing with them.
For example, imagine you're a major OTR carrier or 3PL provider and have a particular shipper/receiver who restricts certain types of drivers from their facility.
You can use rules to automatically add reminders as comments to email exchanges involving that customer's domain address (e.g., *@acme.com).
You can also add comments, tasks, and attachments using the mobile app for iOS or Android.
This is something I often do when I'm taking a break mid-day to get some fresh air and get drug around the block by my Husky.
Gmail is great for personal email but comes up short for collaboration. While you can use tasks for meta-level Gmail notes on your private emails, things get medieval again when you need to get someone else's input.
Hopping on Zoom for a quick chat is mentally exhausting and makes it harder to be productive remotely.
Teams should start embracing asynchronous communication and the tools that enable it—like Missive.
Gmail Notes and Google Keep are both note-taking apps by Google. While Google Keep was developed to be a personal, simple way to jot down thoughts, Gmail Notes was designed to help users take notes through email seamlessly.
There is no official way to export all your Gmail notes without copy/pasting them individually. Though it’s not a Google-supported feature, it is possible to export notes from Gmail via add-ons.
February 3, 2025
Tasks in Missive: Your Inbox is Now Your Command Center
Our inbox is where work happens. It's where decisions get made. Where commitments are born. And let's be honest - it's what most of us use as a to do list.
Our inbox is where work happens. It's where decisions get made. Where commitments are born. And let's be honest - it's what most of us use as a to do list.
We've spent 10 years at Missive transforming email from a lonely slog into a team sport. But after hundreds of conversations with customers, we realized something obvious:
Instead of fighting how people naturally work, why not make their inbox exceptional at what they're already using it for?
Let's be real - we know the whole "inbox zero" thing is a myth, and that treating your inbox as a pure to-do list has its problems. But here's the thing: people are going to use their inbox to track work, whether we like it or not. So instead of preaching about the "right way" to work, we decided to give you tools that improve the way you already work.
We're putting tasks where they belong - right inside your inbox. But we're doing it thoughtfully.
Now you can prioritize what matters, collaborate effectively, and keep your team in sync - all without leaving your inbox. No more scattered tools. No more lost context. No more wondering who's working on what.
Your inbox is finally becoming what it should have been all along: A clear, organized command center where email and tasks blend seamlessly, exactly where you already are.
This isn't about building another "everything app" or asking you to change how you work. It's about making your inbox better at what you're already using it for. We know that might sound contradictory, adding features while claiming simplicity, but we've been ruthless about only adding what matters.
Everything else? We left it out.
The goal isn't to make your inbox do everything. The goal is to make it do the things you're already using it for, exceptionally well.
Now, let's walk through what's changing and how it makes your work life smoother.
We've completely re-imagined how tasks work in Missive.
You'll now find dedicated views that brings together all your tasks in one place, everything's organized in a single view. And the best part? Tasks now come with assignment, rich-text descriptions, and due dates that automatically sync to your calendar.
To keep everyone aligned, we've introduced a new 'In progress' intermediate status; watch your work progress naturally from "To do" to "In progress" to "Closed" — giving your whole team clear visibility into what's moving forward.
The "Assigned to me" and "Assigned to others" mailboxes have morphed into the Task views. The new Tasks view shows everything assigned to you across all your teams and organizations, while Team Tasks gives you a focused view of what's happening in specific teams.
Want to customize your view? Use filters to zero in on exactly what you need - like seeing only tasks for specific team members or projects. You can even pin your favorite filtered views to your sidebar for quick access. And when you need to check the conversation that sparked a task, just click the conversation pill to jump right to it.
We are also introducing teams spaces, a new way to organize your teams. Every team has now a dedicated space in the sidebar, and every member will see the right elements depending on their role in the team.
In each team space, you will find the team inbox, the team chat and the newly introduced team tasks view. You can always disable the team chat or the team inbox for a specific team in the team settings.
The team inbox, under the team space, can still be expanded to reveal the Closed, Sent and All mailboxes.
When working from a team inbox, as soon as you click reply, the conversation will be turned into an 'In progress' task, assigned to you. And when you're done with the draft, you can just hit 'Send & Close' and the task will be automatically closed.
Some companies will use these team spaces as traditional teams (support, design, etc), and others will use it as dedicated client spaces — with one team space per client. How you decide to use it is entirely up to your business.
If you have a checklist that your team goes through all the time, you can automate the whole thing with the new Create Task rule action. No more manual task creation.
Here's what I mean: Let's say every new client needs five things done — review their needs, check what you have in stock, work up pricing, draft a proposal, and get the thumbs up from your manager.
Instead of creating these tasks by hand every single time, just set up a rule.
Now when an email comes in with "New Client" in the subject (or when someone drops a #newclient tag in the conversation), boom - all five tasks get created automatically, assigned to the right people, with the right due dates. Simple, automatic, and nothing gets missed.
This is just the beginning. We're committed to making Missive the best place for teams to work together, and we have more exciting updates planned.
Your feedback has been invaluable in shaping these improvements, and we can't wait to hear what you think about the new tasks experience.
The best part? All these new features are available in every Missive plan. No upgrades needed.
Want to learn more about tasks in Missive? Check out our help guide for detailed information on how to make the most of these new features.
If you feel uncertain about the new tasks experience, and have any questions, we're here to help. We have 4 webinars scheduled in the next 2 weeks, and we'll be covering everything you need to know about tasks in Missive. Book a seat now using this link and we'll see you there!
Oh, one more thing, we gave Missive a fresh coat of paint too! We hope you like it.✨
November 28, 2024
The 9 Best Email Client Apps for Gmail for Every Use Case
The best email clients for individuals and teams by use case. Including benefits, features, and pricing.
1.8 billion users.
121 billion emails — per day.
Gmail dwarfs most popular email clients.
Still, reading emails in a browser tab feels… clunky?
Don’t get me wrong: I’ve been a Gmail user for years and I love it.
But I’ve found dedicated desktop email apps offer far more email productivity & customization.
Despite its dominance, Google hasn’t released an official desktop version of its email service. So users like you and I keep asking:
What are the best email apps for Gmail?
When I wrote the first version of this article, years ago, my mission was simple:
👉 Find the best email client to supercharge my personal productivity and facilitate team collaboration.
I needed something to simplify my email workflows AND give my team better tools — for clear communication and project management.The search led me to try dozens of apps, judging them on criteria like ease of use, customizability, collaboration, and productivity.
I've kept that original mission in mind while thoroughly re-evaluating and testing the latest offerings.This updated comparison includes a wide range of email clients. Some excel at personal email triage, others at conversational experience. Many boast team collaboration features.Let’s dig in and find your optimal email client for Gmail.
My evaluation focused on key criteria that savvy users care about, based on personal usage and discussions in online communities like Reddit.
These factors included:
I prioritized email apps with clear signs of ongoing development. All the Gmail email clients on the list support OAuth, as it’s the recommended way to connect your Gmail account to an email client according to Google. It will be the only supported way starting in Fall 2024.
For macOS, the top contenders are Apple's stock Mail app and the Gmail optimizer, Mimestream.
I know, most of you are probably screaming at your screen that Apple Mail made the cut, but hear me out — it has an incredible number of useful features for Gmail users.
Apple Mail offers robust custom filters, smart mailbox views, and notification control. It also provides AI-powered search assist, automated unsubscribe detection, send later scheduling, and built-in privacy tools. The user-friendly interface, system-level integration, and regular updates keep it feeling fresh. Best of all, it comes pre-installed with all Mac, so no need to download or update new software.
Free.
Mail lacks true integration with the Gmail platform. Mimestream shines as a purpose-built native app using the official Gmail API under the hood. This direct API connection allows Mimestream to mirror Gmail's interfaces, features, and real label structures in a way Apple's IMAP implementation can't.
Mimestream optimizes viewing and triaging the Gmail inbox with features like nested labels, calendar invites, and support for Gmail's latest search functionality and more. Mimestream provides an optimized experience that makes viewing and triaging your Gmail inbox faster and more efficient — with the added benefits of a native macOS app, not a browser window. The only core Gmail functionality it lacks is scheduled email sending.
$4.99 per user per month.
For Windows, Microsoft Outlook has long been the standard for email due to its ease of use, powerful search capabilities, and tight Office integration. And it’s still on top for the same reasons (especially with a Microsoft 365 account). There's also a full-fledged integrated calendar, eliminating the need to switch between windows to manage your day.
And if you're not an Apple user, Outlook is probably one of the best Android email clients out there.
Unfortunately, the latest Outlook release has been controversial. Microsoft has removed functionality like import/export tools and system tray access that power users loved in previous versions by shifting to essentially becoming a desktop clone of the web app. Shared mailbox management and capabilities like viewing favorite folders have also suffered. Some Reddit users find the web version performs better, but the general consensus is that the new desktop Outlook feels like a downgrade.
Free with ads, or starting at $1.99 per month for the ad-free version.
Email clients designed with teams and productivity in mind offer major advantages over individual email management tools — especially for businesses.
Based on my latest research, core business needs around email are:
No other email client meets those needs better than Missive.
Missive has been a game-changer for my team's productivity and communication. It’s a unified inbox that combines all our accounts into one app, while also offering shared inboxes — the multiplayer mode for email. The collaboration features like shared draft editing with @mentions, internal chat, and one-click assignments.
Shared labels, advanced rules, mobile apps, calendar sync, and a growing library of integrations make Missive a powerful software to consume your business’ Gmail accounts. Management tools like email templates, send later scheduling, snoozing, and follow-up reminders help each of us personally optimize our individual email processes. Missive also excels at email delegation with team members or virtual assistants.
However, according to some Reddit users — Missive is not perfect.
People have shared a learning curve, lack some granular customization, no email tracking, and advanced collaboration features locked behind paid tiers. But in my experience, no other client matches Missive's intuitive yet powerful blend of personal email management and team communication.
Missive’s pricing is competitive compared to other Gmail email clients—especially for small businesses that want to collaborate around emails.
Free plan available and starting at $18 per month per user for advanced features.
For those seeking a free, open-source, and community-driven email client, Thunderbird has made a name for itself. This cross-platform app has evolved a lot over the years with great features like tabbed email viewing, robust custom search tools, and built-in phishing/spam filtering.
Starting is easy with simplified account setup wizards and friendly reminders. Then, customization begins with custom themes, smart foldering, advanced filtering, and extending functionality through add-ons.
Thunderbird's uniqueness lies in its built-in privacy tools like remote image blocking and organization of emails into dedicated "Message Archive" locations outside your inbox. No complex rules needed. The tabbed interface with quick filters also makes email triage fast compared to a standard chronological view.
An open-sourced, Outlook alternative, for those looking for an Android email app.
Free.
If customization is your #1 priority in an email client, eM Client should be at the top of your list to test. This app takes a unique approach by bundling standard email/calendar/tasks management with note-taking.
eM Client lets you tweak things like instantaneous translation of messages, watchlist notifications for contact interactions, advanced attachment search filters, and a library of templates/text snippets.
You can also customize the toolbar layout. For enterprise users, eM Client includes admin deployment tools and integrations.
The flexibility can be both an advantage and a disadvantage, as eM Client can feel overwhelming with so much to configure, especially if you’re coming from a simpler app.
But if you love customizing apps, eM Client is worth considering.
Free for non-commercial use and starting at $59.95 for commercial use.
While the other clients on the list all use the traditional inbox management concepts to varying degrees, Spike goes a step further by completely reinventing email for individual productivity and team collaboration.
While not for everyone, it’s taking its inspiration from chat apps and social media to transform email into an infinitely scrolling feed of conversational "channels". These are organized around contacts and teams instead of the typical chrono-threaded approach.
This different experience lets you chat and share assets like notes, documents, and voice clips in your inbox. It includes features like automating message tone, video calls, and AI prioritization based on relationship context instead of subject lines and sender aliases.
Spike maintains core functions like account unification and calendar support. But its conversation-centric design can be hard to get used to.
Free plan available, starting at $5 per month per user for advanced features.
In the personal productivity front, Superhuman takes a traditional approach with an email interface optimized for speed and efficiency. It adds depth through an AI engine that powers automated split inboxes for VIPs and service emails, intelligent follow-up reminders, social insights about contacts, and error correction.
Superhuman isn't cheap at $30/month, but the premium delivers an unmatched experience that feels like a personal productivity force multiplier.
Starting at $30 per month.
For those who live on their mobile devices and want an extra AI-powered assist for email management on mobile devices. It automatically prioritizes messages, provides AI-written summaries, and generates email drafts based on voice prompts or sentiment reactions.
These AI integrations improve mobile email management, bridging the context and functionality gap compared to desktop experiences.
Its freemium model with premium tiers offers a compelling way to enhance mobile email through intelligent optimization and AI assistance.
Free plan available, starting at $49 per year for advanced features.
Desktop simplicity, intelligent mobile assistance, effective team communication, smart spam filtering, hyper-customized productivity…Whatever your use case, there’s a third-party Gmail client for you.
The key is finding the right fit based on your priorities.
For me, Missive's collaboration-focused experience has been a game-changer for team communication without compromising individual productivity.
But what about you? Maybe you'll prefer Thunderbird's community-driven open-source approach. Or the AI-enhanced efficiency of Superhuman for power users!
No matter the app, upgrading from Gmail's web interface can optimize email and get you closer to inbox zero.
It’s time to take control of your inbox.
