​​2023 Wrapped: Shortwave’s Year of AI

As we enter 2024, I wanted to take some time to reflect on the big new features, product changes, and improvements we made in the last year. The numbers for 2023 should speak for themselves: 117 features launched, 4,638 PRs merged, and 817 additional improvements made in 2023. Our team has been busy!

2023 has been a year of transformation for Shortwave as we refocused our entire business on becoming the gold standard for AI-driven email productivity. We started the year without having shipped even a single AI feature, but ended it with 14 best-in-class AI features, including a conversational AI assistant, AI-assisted email search, Ghostwriter writing personalization, and more.

What we launched this year

AI-enhanced email
Inbox layout, organization, and controls
Email essentials
Brand new mobile apps
Hundreds of improvements

AI-enhanced email

Our AI-powered features have been a game-changer this year, offering users unparalleled assistance with their daily email tasks. Shortwave’s AI Assistant has proven incredibly capable: it can read threads, write drafts, search your entire email history, check your calendar, and more. Our new Ghostwriter technology also helps users draft emails in their own unique voice, critique their writing, and edit for tone, grammar, and length, ensuring their messages are always on point.

AI Assistant

• Summarize every email in just a few bullet points
• Translate any thread to understand every message in any language
• Customize AI Assistant based on role, language, and custom prompts
• Automatically summarize forwarded threads to catch others up

AI-assisted Search

• Get instant, personalized answers based on your entire email history
• Research general knowledge questions without leaving your inbox
• Highlight text in a message and click "Explain" for an contextual explanation of any concept or word

Ghostwriter

• Generate drafts in your voice with an AI that learns from the emails you write
• Edit drafts for tone, grammar, length, and any other custom prompts

Inbox layout, organization, and controls

Users have even more control over their inbox, and their privacy, this year. New features like one-click block and unsubscribe, indicators for blocked tracking pixels, and customizable schedules let you cut through the noise to focus on what’s actually important. We've also introduced new navigation options, including fullscreen navigation and auto-advance settings, and we've improved inbox organization with better bundle controls and redesigned settings for easier customization.

Redesigned layout & customizations

• Make the most of your screen at any size using a multi-pane layout – threads and bundles will now be opened alongside your main inbox when your window has room
• Auto-advance allows you to quickly jump to the next email during triage
• Redesigned all settings and added the Overview page for clarity and control of your Shortwave experience
• Fullscreen navigation option lets you read and triage one item at a time when you need to focus
• Customize your default times for features like delivery schedules, scheduled send, and snooze from your General settings

Block & unsubscribe

• Block unwanted (cmd b) senders and optionally report them as spam to protect your inbox
• Unsubscribe from noisy email lists in one click (or cmd u)
• Screen first-time senders in one click from new sender banners
• See when emails sent to you contain spy trackers blocked by Shortwave
• Manage your blocked contacts from the new Blocked senders settings page

Advanced bundling & delivery controls

• Delivery schedule settings now support individual email addresses, mailing lists, and channels, in addition to labels
• “Add note” action let’s you add a note or reminder without needing to drag & drop threads together
• “Unbundle” action quickly splits apart a bundle to view each thread individually in your inbox
• “Bundle threads like this” action instantly creates sender, channel, and mailing list bundles on web

Email essentials

Even with Shortwave’s AI features, our focus continues to be providing the best-in-class experience for email. So we doubled down on prioritizing table-stakes email features like mark unread, undo send, schedule send, and multi-select. We've also added the ability to pop out threads for easy reference, take quick actions from push notifications, and RSVP to calendar invites for a seamless email experience.

Calendar management

• Respond to calendar invites directly in the app — no more switching tabs between your calendar and email
• Check your availability and coordinate scheduling based on your calendar with the AI Assistant

Undo & schedule send

• Undo send added as a setting and enabled automatically on all outgoing messages
• Schedule send gives you the ability to send an email at a future time

Pop out threads

• Compose new drafts and view any thread in a pop-out window to easily reference messages as you read or write

Multiselect & email actions

• Select multiple emails at once to take bulk actions and quickly clear away clutter with shortcuts like x to select , shift click to select a range, or cmd click to select multiple individual items
• Added ability to mark threads as unread
• Push notification actions let you quickly triage new emails without needing to open the app
• Use Shortwave’s command palette (cmd k) to take actions or navigate across the app without using your mouse

Brand new mobile apps

This year Shortwave’s Android app came out of beta and launched version 1.0 on the Play Store! It shipped with the most requested mobile features, including multi-account support, home screen shortcuts, notification grouping, and a full app redesign to support native gestures. We've also completely redesigned our iOS app with a fresh inbox design, streamlined navigation, and fixes for key issues like background sync and non-image file attachments, making the Shortwave mobile experience smoother and more intuitive than ever.

Android

• Multi-account support with the ability to swipe to change accounts
• Notifications are grouped by account
• Shortwave now appears as a “Share to” option for links & media
• Dual swipe actions are supported in both directions so you can now “Delete” and “Pin” with a swipe
• Top-to-bottom redesigns of our search suggestions, dropdown menu tap targets, email composing experience, and thread & bundle layout in the inbox
• Pinch-to-zoom HTML emails & images
• Home screen app shortcuts

Redesigned iOS

• New inbox design with sticky section headers
• Streamlined navigation menu for common actions
• Designed more informative bundle headers with triage actions
• Reorganized search pages with easier access to favorites
• Added the ability to mute threads
• Background sync supported for faster loading
• Share content directly from other apps to Shortwave on iOS
• Fixed dozens of bugs for dictation, italics, multiselect, non-image file attachments, and other key iOS issues

Hundreds of improvements

Shortwave's commitment to continuous improvement is evident in the hundreds of enhancements and bug fixes we've made across all platforms. We've improved readability by adopting system fonts, bolding sender names for unread messages, and increasing font sizes. Performance has also improved for snappier app experiences, along with improved clarity for common actions, a redesigned inbox for streamlined email workflow, and more billing options to better support a wider range of email users.

Better readability across platforms

• Changed typography to use system fonts
• Senders with unread messages have bolded names in thread previews
• Increased font size for easier reading
• Made icons visually more distinct

Fastest performance yet

• Improved performance across all platforms for faster loading times and more responsive apps

Clearer actions

• See who label auto-apply rules affect before applying
• Toasts are now dismissible and include a “View” option after sending a message from a pop-out
• View your signature while composing and toggle it on or off per message

New plans

• New business plans that support multiple accounts on a single paid plan
• A cheaper Personal plan for individual users
• Annual billing discounts

Looking ahead - AI email innovations in 2024

As we accelerate into 2024, we're doubling down on our commitment to delivering the world’s smartest AI email experience. Expect to see a mobile AI Assistant, as well as even smarter AI email writing, enhanced AI-assisted search, AI-powered filtering and triage features, and more. We'll also continue to hone our core email experience, including improving our inbox, giving you more controls and customizations, and getting the hundreds of details right that you need to reach peak productivity.

If it's been a while since you last checked out Shortwave, or if you've been waiting for that one missing feature, now's the time to sign in (or sign up!). We've improved by leaps and bounds since our initial launch, and we're excited for you to experience how AI can help you stay on top your inbox. As we wave goodbye to an incredible year, we want to extend a heartfelt thank you to all our users. Your feedback and feature requests have been the compass guiding our journey. Here's to making email smarter and your days more productive. See you in 2024!