Gmail is killing its HTML version that works like magic on slow connections

Google has announced that it will discontinue the Basic HTML version of its Gmail service in January 2024. It’s unclear when Google decided to discontinue Basic HTML support, but information about it can be found on this support page titled “Use the latest version of Gmail in your browser”. “You can display Gmail on your browser in Basic HTML view until January 2024. After this date, Gmail automatically changes to Standard view,” Google said. Moreover, the company mentioned on its support page that until January 2024, if you use an unsupported browser, you can open Gmail in Basic HTML view — on your computer and your mobile browser.

Over the past few years, the average internet speeds across the world have improved significantly. This could be one of the reasons, if not the only reason, behind Google’s decision to send the HTML view to the graveyard. And while a majority of Gmail users access the Standard view on their PCs, the HTML version of Gmail offers some advantages. For instance, it loads faster — almost instantly, appears fine on any sort of machine — even the older ones, and opens with slow internet connections. All these points may not mean much today, but there are rare events when your phone is stuck with a 2G connection and you need to access your Gmail inbox.

Meanwhile, Google is adding a useful “Select all” button to Gmail on Android, allowing users to clean up their inbox more easily and quickly. According to 9to5Google, Gmail for Android will start showing a “Select all” button when users start selecting multiple emails at once. This feature has been available on Gmail’s web app for quite some time but has never been available on mobile devices. While the name suggests that this will select every email in your inbox, it is actually limited to 50 — the same as the web version, making it slightly less useful, but it’s still a useful feature, the report said.

— Written with inputs from IANS