Gmail Looks Better and Less Geeky Now With Themes

The latest buzz from Google is the newly-launched Gmail themes that allow every user to choose exactly how your Gmail application will look like in your browser. Also Gmail team has rolled out a slight change in the overall default application interface that features a little different colors. But when on a normal day new interface for Gmail could be a hot topic for the day, today people don’t even mention it with the new Gmail Themes introduced being big news.

To be able to switch from a default Gmail interface to using one of the available thirty themes, go to your Settings and choose the Themes tab where you will be able to look at the available themes and choose exactly the one you like.

Google team has mentioned that they will be rolling out themes to all users during a couple of days so if you don’t have themes tab right there yet it might be wise waiting for a while. But in my case cleaning cache helped as I saw the tab instantly after hitting Ctrl+R.

My personal favorite (and the one that I use myself) is a Tree theme, one out of a few available nature themes that change scenery with time depending on the season and your chosen location so that the theme resembles the landscape you see looking out your window. As I live in Siberia, winter is all over my Gmail now as well.

I personally have somewhat mixed feelings about the Gmail themes announcement as we always praised Gmail for its cleanness and minimalist beauty but it looks like Google seems to be ready to target users outside of the usual technological elite and finally offer something mainstream users naturally expect - ability to change the looks of the applications you use on a daily basis. And since Gmail adoption is already significant enough, I think it is just logical to offer functionality that some people just expect you to have.

But even now I can already imagine that users will start complaining that it is impossible to develop and upload your own theme to choose instead of one of the 30 offered by Gmail (and even if Gmail adds more themes in the future, some users will still insist they can’t find anything that suits their tastes perfectly). So I think Gmail team will eventually have to offer upload of themes functionality which will result in emergence of totally new trend with marketplaces for Gmail Themes where developers will be able to sell the best results of their work for anyone to buy and use in their own Gmail inboxes.