OnMail Introduces New Inbox Break to Stop Email Interruptions

Take back control over being in the moment by pausing constant distractions at will.

Key Takeaways:

• Screen time overload has reached new heights as more of us work from home, with email overload being a constant source of distractions at work or with family.
• Finding pockets of time to disconnect at will during the day is more important than ever to preserve wellness, concentration and meaningful interactions.
• Inbox Break is a new feature released in OnMail to help you restore balance to managing email, empowering you to temporarily pause emails from entering your inbox for a set period of time.

Among many challenges brought on by the pandemic, maintaining a work-life-balance is one that many of us struggle with daily. When work from home situations increased significantly last year, it felt as though workloads grew sharply alongside them. In April of 2020, people were working an average of three additional hours per day while they worked from home. Friends and co-workers complained of feeling pressure to be available 24/7 as the separation between work and home life seemingly disappeared.

A year later, the pendulum seems to have shifted as remote workers settled into preferring the flexibility offered to them. A recent survey commissioned by the World Economic Forum found that about two thirds of people around the world want continued work flexibility once the pandemic is over, with as much as a third of respondents saying they would consider quitting their jobs if expected to return to the office five days a week.

Office workers everywhere have seemingly drawn a line in the sand regarding the balance between their home and work lives, however, the struggle of managing expectations of constant availability continues. According to a constant connectivity study published by the University of

Florida, “Advances in communications technology, including mobile devices like smartphones, tablets, and laptops, have allowed organizations to remain constantly connected to their employees both during and after work hours.”

On top of that, there’s the culture of “productivity hacks’’ that have proliferated our lives that don’t address the root causes of many productivity issues. For example, email hacks that tell you to batch check your emails or close your program only do so much when the core issue is that there are simply too many emails coming in at all hours of the day.

As office work seems to be trending toward a hybrid model more permanently, finding ways to be able to disconnect at the end of the day or on the weekend is more important now than ever before. After all, you should be able to enjoy your well-earned vacation, a dinner party with friends, or even a family trip to the zoo without the constant stress of checking the emails filling your inbox at all hours.

To solve the problem of modern email overload, OnMail today released a brand new feature to restore your control over when messages can have your attention — introducing Inbox Break.

Why Inbox Break is Important

Inbox Break gives you full control over when you receive email. We’ve all seen the effects of an inbox that won’t take a break — a sideline of parents with their heads buried in their phone during their kid’s soccer game, the quieter family meals at the dinner table as everyone gazes into their phones while eating, or even the distracted glances in between date night activities or important work meetings.

Without being able to take a break from the noise, people find themselves chained to their emails. Even with phone features like Do Not Disturb, you’re still able to see the messages come in in the Notifications Center. Inbox Break is here to change that.

Offered for both free and paid OnMail users, you can now set an Inbox Break during which all emails are paused from entering your inbox. Once your break is over, all the messages you received while on your Break will fully populate your inbox for you to triage. Inbox Breaks sync seamlessly across all your devices, from Android to iOS to web, so there are never any interruptions. Inbox Break also works not only with your OnMail accounts, but also the accounts you’ve imported (i.e. Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, Outlook, and more).

Setting Up Breaks

On mobile devices you can toggle breaks on and off from the Inbox Menu or Settings. On webmail you can toggle breaks on and off from Settings and from the menu that appears when you select your avatar. When you toggle your break on, users also have the option to let the people emailing you know that you’re currently taking a breather from your inbox. Whether you want to make the reason general, “Katie is on a break,” or more specific, “At the dentist, be back in a few hours,” those emailing you can see why it is you won’t be getting back to them for the time being.

Inbox Breaks are also specific and customizable. You can customize whether an away message gets sent or not per each of your accounts — for example, if you want to share different information in different accounts, you can set these autoreply and notification preferences from the Advanced Options section found under the Inbox Break screen.

Scheduled Breaks

For the repeating events you have in your life that you’d rather not be disturbed during, you can also schedule Inbox Breaks in advance from your Settings menu. A feature offered for our premium users, schedule your Breaks by day of the week, time, and account so no weekly date nights, game nights, or book clubs need to be interrupted by any message dings.

Ending Your Inbox Break

If you want to end an Inbox Break, or end a scheduled break early, there are a few different ways to do so. You can enter your inbox and toggle the Break off via the switch at the top of the inbox, you can tap on the inbox you’d like to end the Break for and swipe right, or you can toggle it off via the menu found above Settings.

If you’d like to take a look at your inbox before your Break is up, you can do so. While you won’t see any messages that have come in during your Break, you’ll be able to manage all the ones that came in previously. Simply select the inbox you’d like to open and tap Go to Inbox.

Inbox Break is the newest in a line of OnMail features designed to give you back power over your inbox. It follows in the footsteps of our hallmark features like Accept Sender, Account Import, and Done. Available immediately on web, iOS, and Android, Inbox Break is another step toward the future of email that you can control.

Download OnMail for iOS and Android. For updates, follow us at @GetOnMail or contact us at support.onmail.com.