Unibox was recently given some “Cortex love” on the always interesting and ever informative podcast, Cortex. Hosted by CGP Grey of “Humans Need Not Apply” fame and RelayFM's Myke Hurley, Cortex explores the hosts' favorite methods and tools for increasing productivity and fostering creativity. We were thrilled to listen in to episode #29 and hear their thoughts on Unibox, the app that tackles the never ending wheel known as email. It was especially cool to hear that CGP has never used an email app that he was so immediately happy with outside of Apple’s own Mail client for iOS. And, as we want to continue adapting Unibox to be the best email app out there, we're sending out some tips and additional comments around their conversation for our both their listeners and our users to max out their experience.

Listen to Episode #29: Dvorak in its entirety and make sure to check out when they discuss Unibox at the 45:19 mark.

Swipe Gestures

At 53:56 CPG Grey mentions that its possible to swipe on the subject of individual messages to delete, archive, or perform several other actions with that email. This is actually true if you swipe anywhere on the email - a feature designed to benefit one hand usage. You can just swipe on the bottom of the email, keeping your hand where it is. The confirmation button will appear directly below the place where you lifted your thumb so you can just bounce down again to confirm the action with a single gesture.

Threads

Around 54:35, Myke Hurley asks about thread support. With Unibox, if an email is part of a thread, there is an icon in the subject bar that displays the number of messages within that thread. If you tap on the icon, you'll see a list of all included emails from both the selected contact and anyone else who sent a message that are part of this thread.

Inbox Zero

At 59:18 the question arises why Myke sees a list of all people who he has ever sent an email to and why this didn't happen for CPG Grey. Unibox has two modes of operation; default mode and Inbox Zero mode. With the default mode, you see all emails that are in your inbox and sent folders. In the Inbox Zero mode, you only see emails from your inbox folders.

When setting up the first account with Unibox, there is a question asking about how you handle emails that you have dealt with. If you select "Keep in inbox" Unibox will be configured in default mode. If you select "Move to archive (Inbox Zero)" Unibox will be configured in Inbox Zero mode. If you selected the wrong option during setup, unfortunately the current way to fix it is not too intuitive. You will need to go to the "Groups" section of the app settings, select the "Unibox" group and deactivate it.

Swipe Settings

At 1:01:01 there is a discussion about the naming of the two different sections of the settings for swipe gestures; messages and contacts. In messages, the swipe gestures that can be applied to individual emails. In contacts, the swipes that are used in the main list and that are applied to all emails that have been exchanged with a contact. Around 1:03:18, Myke wonders why there is a mark “as read” gesture for contacts but no mark “as unread” gesture. The reason we didn't add it is because the mark as unread action would be applied to all emails of that contact which we thought wouldn't make sense. But looking at the decision again we might add it because at least in the Inbox Zero mode only one or very few emails would be affected.

Thank you again to CGP and Myke for showing Unibox some “Cortex love”!

--The Unibox Team