Yahoo Mail rolls out new AI tools in 'most significant' update in 10 years

When you think of email service providers, Gmail and Outlook likely come to mind first, as the glory days of AOL and Yahoo are long gone. However, Yahoo Mail is alive, freshly redesigned, and still kicking. 

On Tuesday, Yahoo Mail rolled out a redesign dubbed “one of the most significant updates to its desktop experience in nearly a decade.” The upgrade includes a cleaner user interface, and new AI-powered features to elevate your email experience. 

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The most evident change, as seen in the image below, is the new modern desktop look, which has a cleaner design to help with readability, navigation, and visual elements, according to the company. 

With the redesign, users can take actions straight from their inboxes, including adding an event to their calendar, viewing a schedule, tracking a package, and more. A new starred view panel lets users quickly scan their most important tasks. 

Then comes the AI magic. A new Priority inbox tab will populate the most important messages accompanied by AI-generated, one-line summaries of the emails. (Yahoo claims its email service is the first to offer this feature.) The feature does differ slightly from competitors such as Gmail, which requires you to ask for a summary instead of just being populated. 

Once a user opens an email, AI will generate a bulleted list with proposed actions or responses relevant to the email’s contents, as seen below. According to Yahoo, this is meant to help parents, students, and professionals allocate their time towards doing instead of catching up. 

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Could you experience some of these features on your non-Yahoo account? Yes: Now Yahoo allows users to link other email accounts to a Yahoo Mail account, regardless of provider. This means you can enjoy the new features in one spot, even if you have a Gmail, Outlook, or other email account.

Users will have the opportunity to opt-in to access the new desktop experience in the upcoming months. Yahoo said the mobile experience will follow the desktop rollout.