I used Gmail’s AI tool to do hours of work for me in 10 minutes – with 3 prompts

Gmail AI tool demo with colorful background — David Gewirtz/Elyse Betters-Picaro/ZDNET

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In this article, I’m going to show you how I used AI in Gmail to save myself hours of tedium and annoyance. In Gmail. No kidding. Really.

Gmail was announced on April 1, 2004. Back then, email services like Hotmail and Yahoo Mail provided 2MB or 4MB of storage. Google launched Gmail with 1GB of free storage capacity. Since that was 250 times the amount Yahoo offered and 500 times what Hotmail offered, the announcement was widely viewed as an April Fool’s joke. But Gmail was no joke.

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While storage capacities have grown since then (my account has 2,048 GB), much of the Gmail interface remains almost identical to what was launched in 2004. Over the years, Google has released some gimmicks, like the ill-fated Inbox by Gmail offering from 2014 and the mostly useless AI Inbox launched this year.

Even though Google has been actively embedding AI into many of its properties, Gmail AI features mostly feel like poorly integrated patches on top of an aging interface. For example, Gmail plasters AI overviews at the top of messages, a feature that you can’t turn off. I’ve had many long conversations with folks who hate this intrusion into their email flow.

But last week, I had to work on a big, tedious project. I decided to try an AI hack with Gmail to see if I could save some time. What happened blew me away. I had one of those very rare moments where it’s 100% clear that I’m actually living in the future. It’s also fitting that I’m publishing this article on April 1, 22 years to the day since Gmail was first announced.

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What Gmail did in this hack was personal to my email flow and project. To understand just how gobsmackingly insane its behavior was, you need to understand my project. Give me a few minutes to share the backstory, then I’ll show you what I did with Gmail’s built-in AI. I’ll also show you how you can make this hack work for you.

My project

About a year ago, I published an article reviewing the best AI web builders. This was a huge project, taking 70 hours overall. Much of that time was spent wrangling hosting providers who claimed to offer AI, sending and replying to 236 emails to acquire and set up test accounts on their services.

The article has turned out to be a good performer. My editor wants me to update the piece for this year. About a month ago, I sent out a set of emails to the five finalist companies I spotlighted last year. Over the past 30 days, I’ve interacted with most of these companies several times, creating a bunch of new email threads.

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The challenge with a project like this is that you send an email and you wait. So, after a spate of back-and-forth email messages, I went on to other work. Last week, I decided it was time to review the current correspondence and see if I was ready to start testing.

The normal way I have had to do this sort of thing in the past is to dig up the names and email addresses of the folks I’m corresponding with on the project, which is usually fairly easy because I keep the list in an Apple Note. But then I have to go through all the email threads for each person to figure out each company’s status.

This is time-consuming, tedious clerical work that, to be blunt, I truly dislike doing.

That’s when the lightbulb went off. Google’s always talking about its AI in Gmail. Maybe I could use this technology to find a better way.

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I did, and it worked. I’ll walk you through what I did. I’m going to share screenshots of the real conversations with Gmail and the vendors, although I blurred some of those interactions because the details of my correspondents and their conversations aren’t meant to be public.

The Hail Mary prompt

American slang uses the phrase “Hail Mary pass” to describe a wildly desperate football pass, typically tried when all other saner options are unlikely to succeed. The expression goes back at least to the 1930s. It has been adopted to mean a desperate action done with little expectation of success when there are no apparent better alternatives.

I wrote the following prompt as a Hail Mary pass to get me out of digging through hours of email threads. I did not expect it to work:

Take a look at my emails in the last few months and let me know which of these vendors got back to me and provided test accounts and which have not. Give me status updates for each of the five vendors.

I appended the vendor names and email addresses to the prompt.

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Now, here’s where it gets interesting. Instead of opening a sidebar or otherwise trying to find the AI interface, I just pasted the prompt right into the search bar at the top of Gmail.

What I got back was an AI overview that was genuinely very helpful:

Look at that. First, you can see that the prompt was just pasted into the search bar on top.

Second, in one place, I have the status of all five vendors, the logins, and even the coupon codes to set up what I need to update the article. GoDaddy was on hold, but I corresponded with the contact to get that test set up. Without digging through threads, I identified the vendor that had been unresponsive.

I mean, wow.

More follow-up magic with Gmail AI

My project was pretty well on track for four of the five vendors. But the fifth vendor was still off track. I didn’t know whether my contact had left the company or was just unresponsive. So, I decided that I’d reach out to everyone I knew at the vendor to see if I could get a response.

I put this prompt into Gmail’s search bar. I said, “What contacts do I have at [company] and what’s the date of their most recent contacts with me?” I’ve redacted the company name, but here’s what Gmail returned:

That output took like a minute. And I don’t mean “a minute” as slang for a long time. I mean less than 60 seconds.

Sure, Gmail has search. But scanning through all the emails, separating the marketing promotions from the company, and finding the contact information would have been an annoying process at best. Instead, I typed in one short prompt and got this result back instantly.

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See what I mean about living in the future? This is Gmail of all things.

Then I took the process one step further. I had Gmail dig up the original email I sent to the first contact and prepare a message for all the others. I prompted:

Okay, find the email I most recently sent to [name] about the new review opportunity. Prepare that to be sent to the [company] contacts I interacted with in 2025, saying I sent the original message on (insert date), haven’t heard back, and if they want to be included in this update, they’ll need to get back to me soon.

Gmail gave me back this construct in the sidebar:

I found that suggestion a little cramped, so I hit the Edit in Gmail button. Here’s what Gmail prepared for me:

The draft was exactly what I needed, so I just hit Send.

Gmail in 2026

By using AI prompts in Gmail, I cut hours from my work process on this project. All told, I spent about 10 minutes from start to finish. Most of that time was taken up by my awe at what Gmail just did with a few simple prompts.

Apart from this project, I always write my own emails. But I have to say that for processing and aggregating follow-ups on the status of a multi-threaded project, the AI in Gmail was simply amazing. I still have no plans to use the AI to write my daily emails. But if I have another project with a ton of moving parts driven by email, I will undoubtedly use it to save some time understanding and aggregating project status. If the next try works as well as this run did, it’s a win.

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Obviously, your use of AI in Gmail will be different than mine, simply because you’re you and I’m me. That said, consider giving Gmail assignments for projects where you need to cull through a bunch of messages. When you do, provide the app with as much information as possible so it can have a better chance of success. Of course, don’t assume Gmail will get everything right. But definitely keep this approach in mind for tedious thread-scanning projects.

We now have a new superpower. It’s up to us to use it intelligently and responsibly. And that’s no joke.

You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly update newsletter, and follow me on Twitter/X at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, on Bluesky at @DavidGewirtz.com, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.

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Bree Lambert

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Recent Reviews

The 5 modular Android smartphones we all wanted (but never bought)

Modularity was one of the most exciting phone trends of the 2010s. It promised phones that would work like desktop PCs, allowing owners to upgrade individual components, add new functionalities, and replace broken parts with ease, improving longevity and ushering in a new, sustainable smartphone era.

While its early days looked promising thanks to pioneers like Modu, which launched the first modular phone in 2008, Google’s Project Ara, and Motorola’s Moto Z lineup, the modularity dream ultimately fizzled out. But not before begetting a few exciting modular phones that captured our attention, if nothing else.

1

Google Project Ara

Google Project Ara prototype modular phone with various modules placed around it.

After Google acquired modular phone-related patents from Modu, which closed its doors in 2011, Google and Motorola, which Google bought in 2011, began exploring the modular phone concept in 2012. Google Project Ara officially kicked off in 2013, with the design philosophy based on Dave Hakkens’ Phonebloks concept.

The original idea was for Google/Motorola to produce the phone’s base, the so-called “Endo” (exoskeleton) frame, with third-party vendors providing everything else, from displays to cameras to batteries. Modules would attach to the phone via an innovative magnetic mechanism with hot swap support.

A Google Project Ara prototype along with a bunch of modules around it.

The dream was to provide a modular phone where almost everything would be easily replaceable and upgradable. Google had to walk back some of the original design choices, such as the ability to replace the screen and the SoC, due to hardware limitations, but the project didn’t abandon its promise of modularity.

Sadly, after three years of development, Google pulled the plug on Project Ara in September 2016, citing high costs and manufacturing issues. Project Ara (kind of) lived on in Motorola’s Moto Mods, but we’ve never gotten a proper Project Ara modular smartphone.

A crying shame because the college me had his mind blown by the whole modular phone movement of the 2010s. Even today, I’d love nothing more than to play around with Project Ara prototypes, if only for a few minutes.

2

LG G5

LG had a few Android hits back in the early 2010s. The LG G2 is still one of the prettiest Android phones ever, and it sold quite well. The G3 ironed out its predecessor’s kinks while keeping up its sales momentum. But the upward trajectory stalled with the LG G4, so the Korean giant decided to shake up its flagship series.

Enter the LG G5, one of LG’s most ambitious phones ever. The phone’s bottom segment was removable, allowing owners to quickly install modules LG touted as “Friends,” which included various extra functionalities. You had a high-end DAC and Amp, a module that packed extra battery capacity and additional camera controls, and a module with a replaceable battery, allowing you to swap in a new one in a jiff.

LG G5 with a camera module attached to it and another module lying next to it

While the phone piqued the attention of smartphone enthusiasts, myself included, sales showed that the mainstream audience wasn’t exactly engrossed by the concept. Ultimately, the LG G5 had disappointing sales numbers, and LG abandoned its “friends” modular add-ons ecosystem shortly after, with the G5 staying the only modular phone in LG’s lineup.

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Phones weren’t always boring slabs.

3

Essential Phone (Essential PH-1)

Essential Phone PH-1 with Essential written in the foreground.

The Essential Phone had a lot going for it even before it hit the shelves. The brainchild of Andy Rubin, the father of Android, the phone created quite a buzz in the tech world back when it was announced in the spring of 2017. Its bold design, which debuted the notch, ditched the 3.5mm headphone jack, and made the two camera lenses flush with the phone’s slick ceramic back, was a head turner.

Early promotional photos showed the phone with a camera module attached. It was later revealed that the Essential PH-1 features a magnetic Click Connector on the upper right of its back. The connector allowed the PH-1 to be used with custom-made modules, and while Essential only provided one module at launch, the 360° camera, it promised more modules further down the road.

Essential Phone with its 360 camera module attached to it.

Alas, the Essential PH-1 didn’t sell that well, even after receiving a $200 price reduction shortly after launch. This affected Essential’s promise of modularity. Ultimately, we only got one extra module that incorporated a headphone jack and a high-end DAC. While the PH-1 had a lot of promise (I loved its vanilla Android experience, modularity, and flush design), it didn’t pan out. Its successor, the Essential PH-2, was canceled, we never got new modules, and Karl Pei’s Nothing bought the Essential brand in 2021.

4

Motorola Moto Z

A Motorola Moto Z phone against a green background

Motorola’s Moto Mods modular ecosystem is, hands down, the most well-received, popular, and longest-lived modular phone undertaking in history. It all started in 2016 with the release of the Motorola Moto Z, one of the thinnest phones of all time and a real looker even by modern standards.

Drawing on experience from working on Google’s Project Ara, Motorola’s engineers developed a magnetic attachment system powered by pogo pins that used barely any space on the Moto Z’s slender body. The phone arrived with a wide selection of Moto Mods, including a power bank, a great-sounding JBL speaker, as well as more exotic add-ons such as a projector and a full-fledged point-and-shoot camera with a 10x zoom.

Various moto mods modules lying on a table

Unlike other modular phone projects, Motorola provided a wide selection of Moto Mods at launch and greatly expanded the offering over the years. The company supported Moto Mods across four generations of Moto Z devices, with a total of 7 phones compatible with modular add-ons. Even some community-developed Moto Mods projects saw the light of day, like the slide-out keyboard mod.

Unfortunately, the Moto Mods project was abandoned in 2019, with the Moto Z4 being the last modular handset from Motorola. Despite its demise, Moto Mods left the deepest mark on the promise of modularity in Android, which still (kind of) lives on.

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5

Fairphone

While not as exciting as other phones on this list, the Fairphone series of Android smartphones is the closest thing we’ve gotten to Google’s Project Ara. Aside from the original Fairphone, every member of the Fairphone family is an easy-to-repair, modular Android phone.

Instead of extra features, modular parts in Fairphone devices are there to allow for a high degree of repairability. They include the display, camera module with interchangeable lenses, an easy-to-replace battery, the SoC module, and modular daughterboards and flex cables.

They’re straightforward to remove and reattach, allowing owners to repair their phones by themselves from the comfort of their home. All you need are some screwdrivers and tweezers, spare parts you can order directly from the Fairphone spare parts shop, and you’re off to the races.

Despite being one of the easiest phones to repair, the latest Fairphone offering—the Fairphone 6—is anything but popular. It’s a niche device that the mainstream audience, as well as many enthusiasts, aren’t interested in, because being fully modular entails certain compromises (a plastic body, a mid-range chipset, cameras that trail high-end options, and more) that most phone users don’t want to deal with.

While the promise of modularity was exciting in the 2010s, the cold, harsh truth is that most of us will always choose high-end features and hard-to-repair unibody designs over sustainable, repairable modular phones.