Notion Mail is finally out in the wild, for anyone who has a Gmail account. And it’s quintessential Notion. If you’ve used the standard Notion app, you really can’t confuse it for anything else.
Notion Mail is a minimalist and text-based take on the Mail app that isn’t trying to do anything revolutionary. There are no AI summaries, and no complicated split views like in Superhuman. It’s just your email, sorted in a way that you like.
What does it mean, though, to apply the Notion philosophy to email, and is it good enough for you to make the switch? That is, if you even can. Currently, Notion Mail only works on the Web and on Mac, and it only supports Gmail accounts (leaving out Outlook and enterprise emails). Notion Mail’s iOS app is on the way, and the Android app will launch in 2025 as well. But there’s no app for Windows on the roadmap.
What is Notion?
Notion Mail is the latest product from Notion Labs, which is known for its extremely customizable note taking app. Every note in Notion starts with a blank page, but can be customized with blocks, tables, images and more. Some people even turn it into a database, as Notion makes it easy to link one page to another.
Notion is free to use for individual users, but charges $10 per month per user for businesses. Plus there’s the $10 per month cost for Notion AI, which I’ll come back to below. Essentially, Notion Mail aims to take the same minimalist approach of the note-taking app, and apply it to email.
Notion users will feel at home
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
Let’s start with how Notion Mail looks and works. It has the same unassuming black and white design that Notion is known for. The buttons are gray, and there are none of the pastel colors or rainbow gradients usually found in AI apps these days. In other words, it feels like Gmail did 15 years ago, but modernized.
There’s a sidebar that shows all your views, and then a list of email. And that’s that, as far as design goes. But because this is Notion, there is also a highly useful command palette (Command+K), so you can compose emails or take actions without leaving your keyboard.
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
There’s support for keyboard shortcuts, too, and native Markdown support, which makes formatting long emails a breeze (and is something that’s missing from Gmail and every other major email app).
Notion AI is also integrated into the compose box, so you can highlight text and improve your writing, or write an email with a prompt.
For integrations, you can set up reminders to remind you to reply to an email, in case you miss it. You can also integrate Notion Calendar to easily display your availability.
It’s all about AI Auto Labels
Notion isn’t rocking the boat with its mail app, but its selling point is the Auto Label feature, which is coupled with the sidebar’s Views feature. Let’s talk about the Views first.
When you first click on Views, you’ll be prompted to create feeds for email categories like Promotions, Calendar invites, Updates, and more. You might even be prompted to create custom Views based on your inbox. For instance, the app suggested that I make a view for all my GitHub emails, which is slightly confusing because I’m nowhere near a developer.
But you can go in and create a new View at any time. Notion has some templates ready to go from the start, but the easiest way to go about it is to use a prompt and the AI Auto Label feature.
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
Click the Auto Label button in the top toolbar any time to create a new Label. Here, you’ll see a simple text box. Enter any prompt here to create an auto label. For example, you can enter “Emails from Reddit” or “Emails from Grace” to get started. It can help to get a bit granular: The more detailed or specific that you can make it, the better off you’ll be.
After you enter the prompt, you’ll see a toggle switch asking if you want to separate out these emails from the Inbox or not. Notion will also prompt you to “auto label similar” emails as you go about your business.
Don’t worry: Notion will ask you to approve any labels before applying them. If it’s gotten something wrong, you can remove that email, or add in an email that the system overlooked.
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
After a couple of days of using AI Auto Labels, my experience has been mixed. The first thing to note is that Auto Labels don’t go as far back as I would like. So you can’t use it to sort out all your invoices from Amazon in the past year in one View. For that, you’d still need to use Gmail search, or another AI like Shortwave. Though, you can create a View for all incoming Amazon emails and invoices, so your future emails will at least be all set.
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
While Notion Mail is free, you also only get limited access to Notion AI features in the free plan, including the Auto Labels feature. Notion doesn’t make it clear what the specific limits are for individuals, but I ran into them pretty quickly after doing my casual testing, where I created 5–6 Auto Labels and tested out Notion AI’s writing capabilities. Business limitations are a bit clearer, as Notion says free AI tokens are limited to 500 responses for a workspace. And the more people you add in a workspace, the more Notion raises the free responses limits.
As for me, my Notion AI trial ended after just 10 or so responses. And once that happens, you’ll have to either wait for the next month to get more free AI credits, or pay up the $10/month for unlimited usage. When you run out of free Notion AI credits, the Auto Labels feature will stop working, and the button with have a Red icon on it, too. The same goes for AI writing features.
A Notion wrapper for Gmail
Notion Mail can serve as a nice alternative to Gmail users who are frustrated with growing bloat, or having to dodge Gemini sidebars. For these users, the minimalist, test-heavy, keyboard-first, and Markdown supported take on Gmail should serve as a faster and simpler alternative.
But when it comes to AI, it’s still a developing story. AI writing tools are now pretty standard in almost every email app, so whether Notion will appeal to you depends on how much you like to label your email, and how interested you are in some AI help with that. For something more complex, try Shortwave, which offers free and paid plans and offers some more robust AI inbox integration. It’s less minimal, but also far more powerful.
