Keep an closer eye on all your incoming gifts and goodies
With Black Friday right around the corner — and sales already running at various big box retailers — your already-unruly inbox is about to be chock full of shipment information and tracking codes necessary for keeping an eye on your incoming packages. Whether you’re buying gifts for the entire family or finally fulfilling a long-awaited item on your wish list, managing all of those orders might be tough. Google’s getting ahead of the holiday rush with a new tracking feature for Gmail, coming to your accounts within the next few weeks.
Package tracking in Gmail has been a long time coming. It makes plenty of sense — all of your online order details are stored in your email, and aside from a handful of sites like Amazon, you probably head to your inbox to search for delivery statuses. With these changes, Gmail now displays an arrival estimate along with each message.
Opening the email in question delivers a tracking card, complete with order status and quick links for more details. Using this card, Gmail can display whether your package has its label created, is in transit, or is out for delivery. Google says most US carriers are supported, presumably including USPS, FedEx, and UPS.
This service is opt-in, with Gmail delivering a prompt to users once the feature is rolled out. If you don’t feel comfortable with Google automatically searching for your tracking numbers, you can leave the setting off. It’s coming to users over the coming weeks, presumably in an effort to beat the holiday shopping rush. While Black Friday is the “official” kick-off to the shopping season, deals began in earnest with Amazon’s Prime Early Access sale a couple of weeks ago. Let’s hope the feature’s close to launching — I know I already have some early purchases on the way.
Source: Google
Meanwhile, in the coming months, the company also plans to add delay notifications to emails, automatically resurfacing them to the front of your inbox. Unfortunately, you’ll likely need to wait until well after the holidays to take advantage of those notifications.
