[magixx]

They disable so many features when you remove "Smart features" i.e. Grammar, Spelling, Autocorrect, Smart Compose/Reply (those templated suggested replies), Nudges, Package tracking, Desktop notifications. Google really wants to punish you for doing that.

[johnnyanmac]

Turning off the inbox categories feature was particularly annoying. A feature they had for a good decade before deciding they weren't jsut happy with collecting my data.

[aerotwelve]

It is unbelievably manipulative that they tied this organizational feature with this new LLM-training scam they have running now.

Learning to not rely on inbox categories does make it easier for me to finally leave Gmail for a real email provider though, so maybe this will all work out in the end.

[qwerpy]

Yep I went through this sad journey with my gmail this week. Got tired of seeing "coming soon" packages cluttering up my inbox, so I looked into how to turn them off. It turned off the categories. Reminds me of the dark pattern used by many apps, where if you turn off notifications to avoid ads/spam, you also lose useful notifications.

[dom96]

ugh, yeah, I was going to turn this off but not having inbox categories is a deal breaker