Searching Gmail on your phone is (hopefully) about to get way better

When it comes to Gmail, I’m a native app loyalist. Try as I might to explore third-party clients for Android or iPhone — and yes, even my Mac — I always come back around to Google’s own app for simplicity’s sake. So anytime the company says meaningful improvements are coming, it’s cause for celebration. This particular Friday is one of those days: the mobile Gmail app will now display “top results” whenever you do a search, and Google at least claims that these are likely to be much more relevant and nail what you’re looking for.

“When searching in Gmail, machine learning models will use the search term, most recent emails and other relevant factors to show you the results that best match your search query,” the company wrote on its Workspace blog. “These results will now appear at the top of the list in a dedicated section, followed by all results sorted by recency.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle at the next line of Google’s blog post: “this highly requested feature gives you the most relevant information first, allowing you to more quickly and easily find specific emails or files.”

People want to cut through the hellscape that is their email inbox faster and more efficiently? You don’t say! Seems like that ought to be the Gmail team’s unending mission and not just a popular customer request. I’ve never found Gmail’s previous search to be bad, per se, but if the new AI-curated top results can save me a few seconds pulling up a receipt at the store or an important work email, I’m here for it.

The Gmail app for Android and iOS will start showing top results as early as today for some users and will continue rolling out to everyone over the next couple of weeks. The feature is available both for consumers and business / Workspace Gmail customers. Machine learning models are one thing, but the real question is how long it’ll be until Bard starts creeping into the Gmail experience.