you can still have this, until next month, when google takes it away for good. add h/ to the inbox url for https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/ and you will, for a few short weeks, live in a better world.
Install Thunderbird and you'll never have to look at whatever horrors Google wants to afflict you with at all
why not move off gmail entirely? there's plenty of other providers out there that don't have a track record of scanning your emails for ad targeting. here's my picks, if you want some recommendations:
"just give me a free email address" - proton
proton was a pretty decent provider for the time i used it. pretty easy to use, and you get enough storage for personal use on a free plan. the one thing that made me move off though was the lack of 3rd-party client support - while proton mail bridge exists, it requires both a paid plan, and it's an extra background service on your system doing ?????? for ?????? reasons. for the average user though, it's likely good enough.
"i can pay a bit, but i want it batteries included" - fastmail
i've not personally used fastmail before, but i've heard many people say good things about it. there's no free plan, but the "standard" plan (US$5/mo, US$50/yr) costs about the same as proton's "mail plus" (€4.99/mo, €47.88/yr) plan, and you get more out of it, so it certainly seems like the winner to me. double the storage, and you get normal IMAP/SMTP support for your 3rd-party clients.
"i'm a techie willing to bring my own domain" - migadu
migadu is currently powering my emails, and i haven't looked back since i started with them. you'll need to bring your own domain name, which involves getting comfortable with configuring DNS records. but if you can, their micro plan (which i'm nowhere near maxing out) provides the cheapest service of the bunch, with both my .me domain and email coming in at US$33.85/yr total. there's almost nothing you can't do with them - as many domains and mailboxes as you want, full 3rd party client support, they've got it all.
switching doesn't have to be an all at once big deal, either - gmail lets you automatically forward emails to another address, so you can still receive emails in your new account while you get your email address updated everywhere.
(10$/yr before cost of email service that links to it)
fastmail i think walks you through step by step. but that may only be a paid feature, but also it's got a trial i think
the reason you want your own domain and email and whatever, is simple:
if your email provider dies, or does something shitty, you don't have to go and update your email everywhere
you just link the domain to whatever mail service you move to that lets you use custom domains
fastmail also gives you like 10gb of cloud storage as part of its plan, it's what i use to host pictures i hotlink from cohost if i need to post them in a comment






