Your inbox is overflowing, and you’re constantly playing catch-up.
The result? You’re perennially digging through long email threads and too overwhelmed to craft the perfect reply.
Email overload is a real problem!
Enter: Gemini in Gmail, an AI-powered sidekick that helps you with smarter email management. Whether you want to summarize email threads, draft responses, or fine-tune your tone, Gemini AI is the email productivity tool you need.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to use Google Gemini in Gmail to manage your inbox, save time, and maybe even make email feel less like a chore. Because, let’s face it, your Gmail inbox could probably use a little AI magic.
But that’s not all. We’ll also introduce you to a bonus AI assistant—ClickUp Brain—that not only makes email management a breeze but also makes your work life easier in every possible way! 🤩
How to Use Gemini in Gmail for Smarter Email Management
Summarize this article for me please⏰ 60-Second Summary
Here’s a quick rundown of how you can make the best of using Gemini AI in Gmail (and a sneak peek into a smarter alternative!):
- Access Gemini in Gmail with a Google One AI Premium subscription or a Google Workspace account
- Use Gemini to summarize long email threads, saving time on reading and catching up with updates
- Draft new emails effortlessly with AI-generated suggestions based on your prompts
- Refine drafts for higher clarity with options such as formalize, elaborate, shorten, or rewrite
- Ask Gemini AI inbox-related questions for quick insights on important conversations
- Note Gemini’s limitations—it lacks deep context understanding, prompt customization, and email manipulation
- ClickUp offers a complete email management solution with two-way sync, task automation, and direct email handling
- Use ClickUp’s built-in AI assistant, ClickUp Brain, to summarize and extract insights from email threads as well as draft instant responses
- Integrate ClickUp with Gmail to convert emails into tasks, automate workflows such as sending follow-up emails, and streamline communication
Summarize this article for me pleaseHow to Use Gemini in Gmail
Maybe you are returning from a vacation to a packed inbox, or you just can’t determine which emails need your attention first. Either way, the Gemini-Gmail integration has your back, helping you sort through the clutter and prioritize focusing on the most valuable, urgent, or important tasks.
🔑 To access Gemini in Gmail, you must either subscribe to the Google One AI Premium plan or have Gemini enabled in your Google Workspace account.
Here’s how you can find Gemini in Gmail:
- Head to the top-right corner of your Gmail screen
- Select the ‘Try Gemini’ feature
- Your screen will display the Gmail side panel, which should look something like this:
You can use Gemini’s built-in prompts to generate responses or ask freeform questions like, “Catch me up on emails from <sender>,” and watch Gemini AI work its magic in Gmail.
Now that you know how it works, are you ready to use AI in Gmail for smarter email management?
Let’s show you the three top use cases for Gemini in Gmail:
1. Summarize long email threads
👀 Did You Know? Sophisticated computer logging techniques reveal that the median human attention span is 40 seconds.
No one enjoys reading long emails, and Gemini understands this. Here’s how to use it to make short work of your long emails:
- Open Gmail on your desktop or in the Gmail mobile app
- Look for the Gemini AI icon in the side panel on the right side of your screen. If you don’t see it, click the small arrow to expand the panel.
- Choose the Summarize this email option
- Gemini will generate a short summary, highlighting key points and important details
- Gemini can also summarize long content from your Google Drive files directly in your inbox
💡 Pro Tip: At the end of Gemini’s AI-generated summary, you can select the appropriate thumb gesture to provide positive feedback. Give a thumbs up for a good suggestion, or submit a bad suggestion report if the response needs improvement. This helps the AI model to learn from your preferences and tailor future responses better.
2. Write a new email draft
Ever spent way too long staring at a screen, trying to figure out the perfect first line for your email? Let’s skip that struggle and let Google AI do the heavy lifting for you.
- Click Compose on the top-left corner of your Gmail screen
- Look for the Help me write option in the compose window
- Write the required prompt. For example, try “Write a cover letter for a job in marketing.”
- Click Create
- You’ll get a response nearly instantly in your Gmail compose window
- You can then click on Recreate or Refine to finetune the response till it fits what you need
Follow this method and customize the prompt based on the situation so that it can be used to reply to a conversation.
📖 Also Read: Best Shared Inbox Software (Reviews & Pricing)
🧠 Fun Fact: An email productivity hack by Google’s productivity advisor, Laura Martin, is to divide emails into three categories: respond, read, and revisit. Tackle these during dedicated time slots rather than constantly checking them throughout the day.
3. Refine a draft
Sometimes, that email draft just doesn’t hit the mark, but with Gemini in Gmail, you can quickly refine it and ensure your message lands perfectly.
- Go to Compose at the top-left corner of your inbox
- Write your email manually
- Go to the Help me write option
- Choose your modification preference from the menu
- Polish: Refine your draft
- Formalize: Make the draft more formal
- Elaborate: Add additional details to the existing content
- Shorter: Edit the fluff and make the draft short
- Recreate: Re-write the draft
- Refine: Revise it again
- Click Insert once you get your desired results
- Note that once you ask Gemini AI to recreate a draft, you cannot revert to any previous versions (so copy-paste the sections you want to keep!)
💡Pro Tip: Use Gmail Q/A to ask Gemini questions about the conversations within your inbox. For example, in the prompt box, you can ask, “What was the recent feedback for my Project X?” Gemini will scan the relevant email threads and return a summarized response.
Summarize this article for me pleaseLimitations of Using Gemini in Gmail
Gemini in Gmail brings a mix of convenience and limitations. While it takes the heavy lifting out of analyzing your messages, it still doesn’t quite match up to manually organizing emails.
That said, here are five more things to keep in mind when using Gemini in Gmail:
- Limitations in contextual understanding: Gemini AI is great for summarizing and drafting, but it may not fully capture the nuances or context of every conversation, leading to less personalized responses at times
- Unable to manipulate emails: Gemini AI can’t create, send, delete, or move emails within your inbox—it focuses more on content generation and assistance rather than inbox and email management
- Hallucination risk: Gemini AI can occasionally generate inaccurate or fabricated information, so verifying the details before acting on them is important
- Limited language support: While Gemini supports multiple languages, it may not be as accurate or nuanced in languages other than English, affecting the quality of responses
📖 Also Read: How to Set Up Automatic Forwarding in Gmail?
👀 Did You Know? Gmail blocks nearly 15 billion unwanted messages daily, which is more than 99.9% of spam, phishing, and malware. During the holidays, the number can touch 231 billion spam and phishing messages, 10% higher than the average volume.
Want to learn prompt engineering to get better responses from Gemini and other AI tools? Watch this short crash course on refining your questions for AI 👇🏽
Summarize this article for me pleaseUsing AI and Gmail with ClickUp
Gemini in Gmail acts as an AI email writer that follows your instructions when drafting responses. While it can streamline the writing process, it isn’t a replacement for comprehensive email management software.
That’s where ClickUp comes in. Work today is scattered—emails in one tool, tasks in another, docs buried in endless folders. ClickUp brings it all together.
As the everything app for work, It’s your single source of truth for your projects, docs, whiteboards, automation, dashboards, goals, and more.
It goes beyond helping you with simple email drafting and summarizing. With its built-in email management, you can send, receive, and track emails without leaving your ClickUp workspace. Let’s see how:
Integrate ClickUp with Gmail
The ClickUp and Gmail Integration fills the gaps left by Gemini AI, letting you break information silos and manage your emails and tasks together.
Here’s how it can enhance your workflow:
- Two-way sync: Automatically creates or updates tasks in Gmail based on actions like receiving a new email, starring a conversation, or task completion
- Starred emails become tasks: Converts important emails into actionable tasks, ensuring you never miss a follow-up
- Workflow automation: With ClickUp’s Zapier integration, tasks like transferring information between Gmail and ClickUp are automated, reducing manual effort and minimizing errors
👉🏼 Unlike Gemini AI, which focuses solely on drafting and refining responses, ClickUp offers complete email manipulation alongside task management.
📮ClickUp Insight: Nearly 42% of knowledge workers prefer email for team communication. But it comes at a cost. Since most emails only reach select teammates, knowledge stays fragmented, hampering collaboration and quick decisions. To improve visibility and accelerate collaboration, leverage an everything app for work like ClickUp, which turns your emails into actionable tasks within seconds!
You can send and receive emails directly within ClickUp, create tasks, attach emails to relevant work items, and collaborate with your team without leaving the platform.
The best part? ClickUp’s email integration works with platforms like Microsoft Outlook, IMAP, and Microsoft 365—not just Gmail!
You can generate an email draft using the /Slash Command (/write). Adjust the tone and creativity level, insert the text into your email, and send it without leaving the task interface. Forget about switching tabs and laboring over manual email drafts!
What’s more, you can even automate your emails, triggering them to be sent based on Custom Fields, form submissions, or task events within ClickUp.
This consolidation allows you to enhance productivity by keeping emails, tasks, and conversations in one place!
ClickUp Brain improves your emails
But how does it all work? While Gemini AI boosts your Gmail experience by providing contextual insights and suggested responses, ClickUp Brain—the built-in AI assistant—goes even further.
It integrates directly with your workspace, absorbing workflow data, analyzing team activities, and tracking project timelines.
By understanding the context from within your system, ClickUp Brain provides actionable, intelligent professional advice.
With ClickUp Brain, you can:
- Connect tasks, documents, and emails to generate instant, context-aware answers about your workflow
- Write professional replies to Gmail messages using the built-in AI Writer, saving time
- Convert important emails into tasks or action items within ClickUp, eliminating manual tracking
- Check grammar and spelling with integrated Spell Check for a polished final result
- Generate summaries of long email threads, providing quick overviews without the need to sift through lengthy conversations
- Transcribe voice and video Clips within ClickUp and capture key takeaways from your discussions
📖 Also Read: The Ultimate Guide To Email Project Management
Switch to ClickUp Chat
While pairing AI with your inbox can help tame the email overload, what if we told you it could be eliminated altogether?
ClickUp Chat offers you and your team a real-time communication alternative to email by embedding conversations directly within your workflow and project context.
Switching to chat from emails allows you to:
- Link discussions directly to specific tasks or projects. This ensures that all relevant information is centralized, reducing the need to search through separate email threads
- Organizing conversations into channels, preventing the clutter of overflowing email inboxes
- Get collaborative work done faster by tagging team members, sharing files, and embedding resources directly within the chat and minimizing the delays associated with email
- Make critical decisions quickly and solve problems by brainstorming with colleagues in real time
By using ClickUp Chat for internal communications and project-related discussions, you can significantly reduce the volume of emails in your inbox. Plus, reducing context switching between email and project management platforms can boost your individual and team productivity.
📮 ClickUp Insight: Knowledge workers send an average of 25 messages daily, searching for information and context. This indicates a fair amount of time wasted scrolling, searching, and deciphering fragmented conversations across emails and chats. 😱
If only you had a smart platform that connects tasks, projects, chat, and emails (plus AI!) in one place. But you do!
Summarize this article for me pleaseDo More with Your Emails Using ClickUp
Gemini AI in Gmail is definitely a handy assistant, but if you’re looking for a more comprehensive solution for both project and email task management, ClickUp has you covered.
With ClickUp, you can convert emails into to-dos and keep context intact across conversations and projects—no more app-hopping or missing details.
Teams that switch to ClickUp report better efficiency, collaboration, and visibility in addition to replacing 3 or more tools and saving 3+ hours weekly.
So, you’ve got a choice: Gemini AI offers an in-built summarization and writing assistant for Google apps such as Gmail, Google Sheets, and Google Docs, while ClickUp delivers AI-powered tools for complete email and project management.
If you’re ready for the latter, sign up for ClickUp for free today!
Everything you need to stay organized and get work done.
