The holiday shopping season is coming, and Google is working on getting ready for the onslaught of online orders that will be placed left and right. The company announced a very useful feature for Gmail today, namely package tracking.
This isn’t ‘package tracking’ of the variety that gives you a link and then sends you away onto the website of the company delivering the goods. No, this is direct tracking right inside your inbox.
The feature is rolling out “in the coming weeks”, across “most major US shipping carriers”. Once it reaches your device, you’ll see a dialog at the top of your inbox asking you to allow tracking to work – since Google needs to check for updates on your behalf, it requires your explicit consent to do so.
Once you agree, you’ll see the estimated arrival date for parcels right underneath the title of the message in the inbox, and when you go into an email the tracking information will be prominently featured at the top. You’ll get updates like “label created”, “arriving tomorrow”, or “delivered today” – that sort of thing. Only the essentials, not in-depth listing of every single place your parcel has been to on its way to you.
Additionally, “in the coming months”, Gmail will proactively show a delay label for delayed packages, and it will also bring the corresponding email to the top of your inbox, so you don’t miss anything.
