I have a confession. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it needs to be said… I’m terrible at using my email. Thousands of emails, all unsorted, and a mess of random messy chains can be found littering my email, but I’ve decided that enough is enough.
As we enter a new year, 2026 is going to be the year that I get on top of my email, and I’ve got a plan to do it. Like most of Google’s other tools, built into Gmail is the Gemini AI tool. This integrates a host of AI functions into your email, and can make the entire experience so much easier.
And yet, I don’t effectively use it. But, after some playing around with the tool, I’ve come up with some useful ways that I plan to change my email usage, and they could do the same for you too.
Summarizations
Long email chains are a nightmare. Once you’re 30 emails deep into a chain, it becomes a chore to find key information within.
However, Gemini can make this easier in two main ways. Firstly, Gemini now offers an ‘AI Overview’ of your email chains. At the top of the screen you’ll see a rough overview of the conversation so far.
This can include key dates, financial figures and agreements that have been made throughout the conversation so far. On top of that, you can go a step further by using the Gemini assistant to expand more.
With a conversation open, ask the Gemini assistant (the small star in the corner of your Gmail) to “Summarize this email thread in more detail”. This will then break down everything that has been discussed.
This is by far my favorite function of the Gemini integration, allowing you to instantly recap everything that has been discussed, and pick out key information.”
Tracking down information
Summarizations can be useful for finding information in specific threads, but what if you have no idea where something is?
Gemini can track down specific points when you query for them, such as asking “What date did Alex Hughes say he was going to send the AI report?”. Gemini will then search through your email to find this exact exchange, giving you both the answer and the link to that specific email.
This can be used in a variety of ways, finding the date of the first time someone emailed you, tracking down specific attachments or finding an agreed price without knowing which thread of emails it was mentioned in.
Help me write
Sometimes it can be really hard to get the wording of an email right. If you find yourself repeatedly rewriting a specific email, trying to explain an idea, or worried about having the wrong tone, the Gemini function can help you write it.
This can also be really helpful if you simply need to write a really long email, or something as basic as an out of office. Simply ask Gemini to draft whatever email you need and then ask it to make tweaks where necessary once the draft is complete.
This can also be done with an existing email you’ve wrote out. Ask it to rephrase your email, making it more polite, or assertive, or whichever tone you’re looking to convey.
Deep insights
Gemini has got much better at dealing with more complicated tasks in Gmail. This can allow you to ask for sweeping requests across all of your emails.
You can ask Gemini exactly how much money you’ve agreed to spend in your work budget (if this has all been discussed via email), all of your deadline decisions, or just about any specific point of information, as long as it can be found in your emails.
I used this to find all of my expenses from the year, as well as all of my Christmas gift purchases and even every time I had agreed to a meeting (there was a lot).
An important note here is that this function doesn’t always work. When you’re asking it to do such a big task, it can sometimes fall at the last hurdle, struggling to complete your request. However, for the most part I was impressed with just how well Gemini handles this.
Advanced comparison
If you’re working on a big project, whether that’s in your personal life or at work, you could end up with a lot of information to compare.
Gemini can do that for you, taking on the workload to make the comparisons that you don’t really have the time to do yourself.
This could be a prompt like “I have had three different quotes for roof repairs. Bring them all up and compare them in a table on all of the factors that were raised.”
Gemini will then do the hard work of finding these emails, reading through the information and making an easy comparative table for you to look through.
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