Best Inbox When Ready for Gmail™ Alternatives in 2026

About Inbox When Ready for Gmail™

This Chrome extension will help you check your inbox with reasonable frequency, batch process your email on a regular schedule and minimise the total time you spend in your inbox. If you're a good fit, you'll reclaim about an hour from your inbox every week. ### How it works Inbox When Ready makes some changes to the Gmail interface to help you cultivate a better email workflow. - Hide your inbox by default Search your archives and compose new messages *without getting distracted*. See your inbox only when you deliberately choose to. - Set an inbox budget Decide how many times you want to check your inbox and how much total time you want to spend on it. Then, get visual feedback on how you're doing versus your intention. - Schedule your inbox lockout Define an inbox lockout schedule so you can focus on deep work and then batch process your mail at optimal moments. ### Free or PRO? The free edition of Inbox When Ready puts a small message in your email signature. You can upgrade to Inbox When Ready PRO to permanently disable the signature. All new users enjoy a 14 day free trial of Inbox When Ready PRO. More information here: https://inboxwhenready.org/pricing/ ### What about my privacy? The extension requests the minimum browser permissions that are required to make changes to the Gmail web interface. Inbox When Ready does not require API access to your Gmail account. This makes it much more secure than the vast majority of browser extensions for Gmail, and suitable for use with Google's Advanced Protection Programme. The full terms and privacy policy is here: https://inboxwhenready.org/terms-privacy.html ### Support, feature requests and contributions Please email peter@inboxwhenready.org. ### How is this different from the Inbox Pause extension? The main difference: Inbox When Ready hides your entire inbox by default, while Inbox Pause by Boomerang only hides new incoming mail.