Woman hand accepting a delivery of boxes from deliveryman
Tracking packages online can be quite cumbersome as trackers often tend to send you back and forth between different websites that sometimes don’t even work. Google aims to address this issue with an upcoming feature for Gmail that will let you keep an eye on your packages directly from your inbox.
Most online retailers email you when your package is being processed or shipped and soon you will no longer have to follow tracking links sent by the company. Gmail will soon let you track your items directly from your inbox. The feature comes ahead of the holiday shopping season when there is always an onslaught of online orders.
Google says that the Gmail package tracking feature will start rolling out over the upcoming weeks to most major US shipping carriers, but we suspect it will eventually roll out to other regions as well. Once the feature becomes available, it will ask your permission to track packages at the top of your inbox. You can choose to disallow package tracking at any time.
This is because Google requires explicit consent before it checks for updates on your behalf.
But if you enable package tracking, it will show you the status of your parcels as well as an estimated time of arrival right underneath the title of the email in your inbox. It will also give you updates such as “label created”, “arriving tomorrow”, or “delivered today”, and more. It will only show essential information to avoid clutters.
But that’s not it as Google plans to expand this feature over the upcoming months. Gmail will also show you a delay label for delayed packages and will bring the corresponding email to the top of your inbox so you don’t miss anything.