Say goodbye to your sent folder. You never needed it in the first place.
On Wednesday, May 2, email client Newton decided to change up the way you interact with your inbox once again by ridding users of the sent folder once and for all. It’s a sensible move that streamlines the email experience quite a bit. Now, rather than having to navigate between your inbox and a separate repository for your responses, Newton is putting everything in one place, creating an interface that looks a lot more like a chat app or standard messaging service than a mailbox.
Now, when you send an email using the Newton client, you will see that email right in your inbox, alongside all your other conversations. When you reply to an email, that messaging thread is moved to the top of your inbox. And if you begin a new email correspondence, that message will go to the top until an incoming message or another response of your own pushes it down. All in all, it creates a more all-in-one feeling for your inbox, something that many of us could certainly use.
The impetus for getting rid of the sent folder, Newton explains via a Medium blog post, is that it’s simply no longer necessary. “Long ago, email clients worked by periodically checking a mail-box on the server and downloading email using a protocol called POP,” the team explained. “Once the mail was downloaded, it was deleted from the server and was shown in a folder called Inbox in the client. The client also had folders like Drafts, Sent, Outbox, etc. so that it could save emails you wrote and sent using the client in an appropriate location.” While the technology for email has improved, this formatting has not. And Newton decided it was time for a change.
“Going forward, when you start a new conversation in Newton, you’ll see it right on top in Inbox,” the blog post continues. “Also when you reply. Conversations in inbox will be sorted by activity … There’s absolutely no need to go to Sent folder any more.”
Of course, if you don’t want to have all of your messages in one place, that is fine too. Newton allows you to turn off the feature if you prefer the previous setup. But if you’re looking for fewer folders overall, this new update may be the one for you.
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