Reviews & Comments of Simplify Gmail chrome extension

Very well done extension that added great value to our experience running our business on Google Workspace. They were also very professional when we reached out with an issue and promptly answered and dealt with it.

It does not work with new Gmail interface :(

I don't write reviews very often but Simplify is great and does what is claims to do , make Gmail simpler and much more productive. It keeps getting better and the tech support is fantastic !

Its the best thing that could happen to my gmail.

Hands down my favorite extension. Improves gmail so much. Definitely worth the sub. I had one question though. I'm not sure if this is related to the newest gmail update or the fact that I was finally forced off hangouts, but it seems like the simplify options related to Chat are no longer working? Would also love a way to pin the friends list to the left as it seems ridiculous to have to open the nav bar and hover over chat just to find the friend I want to message. Thanks for your work!

Fantastic product. I've experimented with lot's of Gmail enhancement products and this one is hands down the best. The $2 per month is well worth the benefits it offers. Had I not found this extension when I did, I would have dumped Gmail after the Inbox went away... Well done sir, thank you!

I like this tool, the re-skinned Gmail was fantastic. Though I use RAM BOX, I never got any warnings that my trial ended as RAMBox adds it into their system as a toggle. Anyways, great extension, but not worth the price. If the developer was to charge a lifetime license, let's say $24 ($2 a month) it might be worth it. But also, you can load up Gmail in an email client like Outlook, Thunderbird, or others which have a very nice and aesthetically pleasing interface.

I love this and can't recommend it enough! I've hacked at my own stylesheet to clean up Gmail in the past and it is a moving target, it's no easy task to create or maintain your own. Well worth a couple of dollars a month to get the cleanest, slickest Gmail experience you'll ever work in.

I only use a few extensions because I'm a simple kinda guy. Simplify Gmail makes Gmail usable again. Definitely worth the yearly subscription. Google Inbox was a sweet sweet offering that was killed off too soon. Simplify Gmail brings back some of the magic. I can focus on the content of my emails. I'd love it if Simplify Gmail just became Simplify. Twitter is pretty messy at the moment. Just saying...

Any chance you can add back the "archive all visible items" button to each email section? They moved it to the 3 button dropdown and now it takes 2 clicks every time I want to archive all visible. Very frustrating. Thanks for the great extension!

The Simplify causes my Gmail to lag (on my powerful PC). When I turn off the extension, everything works fast and without any problems. I ended up uninstalling Simplify. I configured my Gmail via CSS (by using Stylish) as I wanted. I just don't need all the extra functionality of this extension. Simplify had a good start, but the development was not the best.

This was awesome when it was free.. but not enough for $2 a month for a minimal twist on a perfectly functional website, I can get the same thing for free now with extensions like Stylish. I understand it takes a lot to keep this up and running, but this is simply hard to justify $24 a year.. Was awesome while it lasted, but I think I'll go back to running free, open-source, minimal html themes. Real shame

An exceptional extension that pricey for an extension.

Tried to live without it - I couldn't. It's just so much better on the eyes.

Beautiful extension, like Apple redesigned the UI.

This is just perfect. I dearly miss Inbox, but thanks to Michael we still have the same awesome user experience! Using Simplify Gmail since it's inception back in 2019. Oh, it's moving to a paid plan. Not ideal, but you'd want to be paid for your hard work. Wouldn't you? Thnx Michael!

I understand and appreciate everyone has their own opinions. For me I found the extension fun to use but not critically beneficial to use. I don't find that it revolutionized my experience with gmail, however I can respect that creating an extension this integrated with gmail is no easy feat. I can respect that this extension took thousands of hours to write and will take thousands more to maintain. I'm not here to debate whether or not there should be a subscription fee. However I will say that because there are so many companies asking for subscriptions to software I have to pick and choose which ones I need to subscribe to and which ones are really just nice to have. Unfortunately, for me, this falls into the nice to have but don't need category. No doubt it is an impressive piece of software but its not as beneficial as something like grammarly, which can keep you from making critical communication errors. I was happy staying with features the unpaid version provided but eventually I had been automatically upgraded to v2 and at some point my trial auto-started. I will say that, honestly, when my trial stopped I didn't even notice. The only thing that clued me in was the injected simplify icon indicating it was inactive. I'm not here to try and convince people one way or the other. My advice is to try it. If you do find it worth the subscription then subscribe! There's plenty of people who will help you justify why it is worth the subscription. I simply can't justify the cost/benefit and am not here to debate its value.

Baited and switched. The extension was great after Inbox was killed by Google, then suddenly the developer decided to start charging people a not insignificant sum of money to subscribe to the software. Why didn't he simply allow existing users to pay once and stay on their current version? Why did the costs of maintaining the extension suddenly become super expensive? No idea, don't care either. All I know is this Comcast style introductory free period before forcing you to pay more than is reasonable later on is despicable. Everyone needs to make a living we get it, but it seems this developer is trying to make this extension his full time income judging by the price. Oh well, time to rotate to any of the other million similar extensions out there.

Worth the price I wasn't sure after this extension changed from free to a subscription model, but after starring at the old Gmail without it for only 5 minutes, I had to subscribe. Thanks Michael for this great extension!

Not worth the money.

I have been using this for quite some time now on the free model. Initially I was undecided if I would continue with the paid version or not as I really only use it for the cosmetic change, however, after a few hours of staring at the default Gmail layout it made the decision pretty easy. For those self entitled whiners leaving leaving negative reviews just because the the developer can no longer afford to do this on a free model, you do realize it costs less than 10 cents a day right. If you don't think it's worth that or can't afford it, why not just thank the guy for providing the extension you've been using for Free for as long as he could and move on instead of giving it a 1 star review.

Used to use it as it was the closest thing to the discontinued epic Google Inbox. It wasn't able to be as good as Inbox, but was at least nice and clean. Now it's become a paid app it's not worth the money in the slightest. I'll wait and pray that someone makes something like Inbox in the future

Was a beautiful free modification to gmail frontend, suddenly switched to a paid subscription service with an annoying pop-up to "log-in" (meaning activate a monthly subscription). Understandable that the creator wants to make a profit, but it certainly did not make the transition in an elegant way. Classic bait & switch :)

Loved the extension until it started showing that my "trial" was about to expire. I thought Simplify was supposed to be free! Please don't do this. I'll have to look for alternatives.

Love it!

Used this extension for a year now. I like the look and loved having it, but recently they're moving to a paid model. Having to pay for what is essentially a skin is absolutely laughable. Will be uninstalling once my "free trial" is over.

This extension used to be awesome, then they moved into a paid service without a single notice. Uninstalled

When Google killed off Inbox, I was incredibly frustrated. I do a lot of work in emails and having to switch over to what I viewed as an inferior product (Gmail), was hard to do. I spent a few weeks looking for an alternative email platform until I stumbled on this extension. Simplify was able to resolve most of my issues with using Gmail and the styling was perfect, plus it allowed me to remain in the Google-sphere, which was convenient. I was happy, crisis averted! Then I saw that Simplify was moving to becoming a premium extension. I'll be honest, I didn't even know you could make subscription based extensions, and I wasn't exactly thrilled about it. Then I thought about the actual work that it would take to not only build an extension like this, but then to maintain it with the constant changes to page elements, scripts, and then of course the styling/CSS that Google would be doing. I've had to do something similar, on a much smaller scale, and I absolutely hated it. My app would break almost every week with just the slightest of changes and it would take me hours to fix. When I thought about it, $24 is about what I can spend on a single meal, and then you have to factor in the fees and taxes, so the dev isn't even getting that much from a single person in the end, at least compared to the amount of work he probably puts into this. So because of all that, yeah, I have no problem dishing out like $24 a year to have the perfect email service and not have to think about it. I'm happy to support him, because his work makes my life easier.

Wonderful extension and used for a while. But logged on today to see that my "free trial" was expiring soon. What free trial? Oh, it's moving to paid. Not ideal, lets check the pricing. £3 a month?! Yeah, not worth that, as it doesn't really do much except make Gmail look prettier. If it had been £3 for life, maybe even £5 I'd have handed you my money in a heartbeat. But moving to this model seems more greedy than ensuring consistent updates, and it seems many others agree.

Just logged in to see a pop up telling me that my "free trial" (after being an early adopter) is over. LOL. I do appreciate the work and the extension, and I'd pay $2 for it if it were a one time fee. But a monthly fee for a friggin' chrome extension is kind of ridiculous. Uninstalled. I'll deal with ugly GMail instead.

Disappointed with a new paid subscription.

I'm retired and I just don't get that much benefit for a monthly/annual subscription. Would be happy to pay a reasonable one time fee, though. Guess this is goodby.

Works really well, but not really worth paying a subscription for. One time for $20? Maybe, but not $24 a year.

Liked the extension a lot, but it changed to a monthly subscription model, which I definitely don't appreciate. I can understand the need for the dev to make money, but I would think that the core product that was free should remain so and the subscription can be for extended functionality. Oh well.

It was fun while it lasted. I can't blame you for making money out of your product. This is such a great product. Unfortunately I am not ready to pay for a Chrome extension yet even though I've been using it since a long time now. Again, this is a great extension. Thank you! :)

Whilst I understand the need for monetary compensation, this calculates to around $40-60AUD a year for this extension and really adds up. I really love this, and I'd be happy to pay $1.50-2 a month to support your work, but for me its just a tad too much.

Was okay until it went paid.

Hi Michael. May I suggest you slash the price for those who had ALREADY installed the app before this? I had used your extension for a while, and it was great. I uninstalled it because I felt like the notifications were pretty annoying. I understand you feel you need to be compensated; that's fair enough. So how about this: give those who had already installed the app a way to subscribe for $1 a month -- or even less. You might end up doubling your sales and making up the difference. This move will help you appease some of your former users. Do remember that while you did a lot of hard work for this app, this community (that is used to getting free stuff) supported your work. But on the other hand, if you didn't get the amount of installs (you got for offering this app for free), you won't have shot up the Web Store charts and have that presence you have now. Let's do some math. Your app costs $24 for someone who pays for a full year of Simplify. For those who pay on a monthly basis, it's $36 for 12 months. Adobe Photoshop Elements is $99 and you can sometimes find it on discount, at $69. Now do you see why some of your (ex) users say it is too expensive? Anyway, am just sharing some thoughts. Have a great weekend!

Never have felt the urge to leave a rating as much as I have with this app. GAME CHANGER AND A MUST!

Was a wonderful extension for the years that I used it, until someone decided they wanted to lock it behind a paywall. Find something else.

Now wants a monthly fee ... for a chrome extension, lol. How about no.

Awesome extension with lots of flexibility and options. Great support too. I reported a bug and had a response within an hour and it was fixed the same day.

I haven't even started reviewing it yet but just looking at the page with my dark mode turned on, the interface looks amazing, clutter free and conducive to focus on work. The engineers who designed gmail know how to make it work under the hood but really need help with creating minimalistic frontend that improves efficiency.

This is Hey.com meets Gmail at a very attractive price.

Love, love this extension I can't live with the cramped view of gmail, even in "Comfortable" or "Default" as opposed to "Compact" setting. Gives me the heebies. I've used this extension for forever now. Thank you, Michael Leggett, for the extension and the transparency. I miss Inbox so much. It was the best.

I am not sure if I ever wrote a google extension review but I need to for this. Its very well done, I removed the first one, but this version is staying. Thank you for your work, to keep this ad or tracker free I would be happy to pay some sort of fee for your work. Well done.

I really liked this but i don't think I can use it anymore because it interferes with my hubspot extension

background now too white, please make an option to make it transparent

This is more of a question, but is there like a free version and a premium version?

full screen advertisements before i check my email? no thanks.

I loved v1, I'm willing to pay for v2, but the new design doesn't work for my eyes. It's impossible to see which emails have been opened or not, besides the bold title. the news keyboard selection makes it look like the currently selected email has been opened but it's not. It's become "so simple" that I can't even see what's important :( We need the ability to highlight unread emails better for people with eyesight issues. Also, is there a discourse forum or github project where we can discuss this kind of things besides the chrome web store comment section?

I have to say that while I've been a long-term fan of Simplify (I honestly forgot what gmail looks like normally), the current build is extremely annoying. Every day or so I get some kind of upsell to use their new paid subscription, and it's become irritating enough for me to un-install. Love the original idea, well-executed, but nobody loves a multi-slide sales pitch in the middle of your workday just trying to check email.

I used to like this extension a lot until this whole V2 thing. I'm sorry but you can't expect people to pay a MONTHLY subscription for couple lines of CSS and a bit of JS which essentially is just a theme.

Will not stop showing "Coming Soon" circle for V2. What was previously a nice clean aesthetic is now showing ads, ironic...

Leaving Simplify as is with information about dropping support and creating paid version 2 would be preferable to this mess.

Wanted something simple and minimalistic and now I only get popups and reminders to pay. Exactly the opposite of what I wanted. I understand that a developer needs to make a profit somehow. But for me, this is not what I installed it for. I simply want less distractions, now with the popups and new options and subscription, it is just simpler to go back to normal Gmail or get another addon.

The new aesthetic absolutely does not work for me. Ironically, for something called Simplify, it's trying to do too much now-- I just wanted something to move the existing Gmail elements around into a more logical configuration, but now it's doing way too much in my opinion.

Devs turned this into a pay to use service.

This is just an awesome extension. I've been using it since moving to Gmail from Inbox (RIP). I almost, forgot that I use it–so seamless experience–until I saw my colleague's Gmail. That made me go here and make sure as many people as possible know that there is a better way!

Makes Gmail usable again. The developer is extremely responsive and open to feedback.

It makes Gmail so much better. Keep up the great work!

Until V2 update news I almost forgot how much I appreciate this add-on. Simple and minimal. V2 improvements look like great additions. I will gladly pay for this to support your work. I was so disappointed when Inbox shut down so I'm glad to see you're carrying the torch to further your original vision. Keep it up!

After the loss of Inbox, Simplify rescued me out of the clutter names gmail. Email is so much more productive with a layer of simplify.

Works well, however with my work email the search doesnt work, i click it and nothing happens, tried disabling and re enabling it and no change, works fine on my personal gmail address

Absolutely love this one. Great example how Gmail diminished its product over time and how extensions fix that!

Nice upgrade to Gmail interface.

You are legit dude! I miss Inbox so much. Thanks for everything.

This is a fantastic extension. I've been running it since shortly after it came out, and now my eyes bleed every time I see gmail without it.

Fantastic!

Absolutely brilliant. Inbox was my favorite Google product and I'm still sad about its demise, so this is great to have been told about. I only wish there were something nice to look at (like Inbox) when having "inbox zero".

Does what it says, and more. Increased readability and productivity by several levels!

Love this extension but recently my search bar is smashed, making it unusable...

Wow- I wish I had found this sooner. Does exactly what I wanted it to do and more which I never knew I wanted! Thank you so much for making this extension! LOVE the ability to hide the unread count in the nav menu. Thank you!

This is great, just what I've been looking for since gmelius stopped simplifying the interface. I just have one small request. Can you PLEASE get rid of the "No new mail!" bar? That would make this about as close to perfect as you can get. Thanks.

Nice and sleek design. ✌️ It's easy to find not-that-obvious features of Gmail (much like when using default layout). I miss some additional colours though - but it's only a matter of taste. ?

Thank you so much!

I like this extension a lot, after the short time I've been using it. One thing is problematic for me, A Hebrew writer an user. I can't use the Ctrl+S (or any other, when the Active lang. uses a different Character set like Hebrew - unless CapsLock is On.

Thank you for releasing this!

Install. Forget. Just works.

Loved Google Inbox so much, to me it was the perfect email client. So happy to have it back in one form or another, my emails have been a mess for the past 4 years. <3 I would happily pay for a Inbox styled app, if it ever was to be developed.

I miss Inbox! But this extension takes a bit of the sting away, at least on the desktop. Now we just need a mobile app. :-)

I love this extension <3 but from a few days ago it stopped working and even when I tried to press windows key + J nothing happened. The suggested advanced settings are disabled too. Is there someone else with the same problem and managed to fix it?

Works really well. Made my very busy work Gmail cleaner and it actually made contents fit the reading pane width. Thank you for this great extension!

Thanks for making the big mess of Gmail a little bit more bearable.

Wow this extension is amazing! It has made my Gmail experience much easier and a pleasure to look at.

Less is more, love it!!

I'm sorry, but I don't get it. This extension barely changes anything! I opened Gmail, and toggled this extension on and off, and it's such a minor change that you literally could barely notice it. The gmail icon disappears, and maybe one other thing. Inbox had a completely different look! I don't know, maybe I'm missing something...

Was great until recently, when it seems to not be working correctly anymore.

Suddenly the format of my gmail has changed back to WIDE instead of the compact look that Simplify gave me in the past. I use it on two different accounts. Seems to be conflicting with an extension called ClickUp. Has this been an issue with anyone else? I love Simplify, but I'm back to hating what my gmail looks like.

One of my essentials. I still massively miss the simplicity and efficiency of Inbox but Simplify is about as close as I can get for now :(

After 2 minutes of using Simplify, I feel more at peace. This is so nice. (Now... if only gmail would bring back Bundles, I'd be at peace.)

One of the best Chrome extensions ever. Love how clean it makes my Gmail experience. Thank you for making this!! ❤️

I still miss Inbox, but honestly this is really close to the experience I loved about it. Keep up the great work and you have made GMail usable again for me!

Thank you <3 The grouping by date is possibly the most important thing that I've missed from Inbox.

Because of this plugin I switched back to Gmail.

There is only one thing from Inbox that was absolutely crucial to me and I was hoping this extension would have it, but it doesn't. And that's the delineation it made between days. You could easily see what messages are from today because they were separated visually from yesterday and previous days. It's SO HARD for me to use Gmail because there is no delineation between days. The messages all run together and it's impossible to tell what is from today (i.e. more urgent) from what was from yesterday and before without looking at the actual dates. The separation between days (and at a minimum at least between today and yesterday) made it so easy to view at a quick glance how much I needed to respond to right now, and how much was probably already taken care of. Oh and I also always really liked the blue highlight color in Inbox. It was nice to have a little color in the Inbox itself (not just some background color from a theme). I'm so sick of seeing just white and grey... especially the grey!

Been having this installed since the demise of inbox. Due to some bug a second again all my extensions weren't loaded and only because of this I came to realize how ugly and anachronistic Gmail's original design really is. I hadn't even noticed because I became so used to SimpliFy. This should be the default.

The extension crashed/didn't load for a moment and I was then reminded of how bad the Gmail interface is without it. My poor eyes are so thankful for the work you do.

Ahhh...very pleased to have found this extension. Unclutters gmail. Breath of fresh air. Thank you!

I can't really review. Added extension. No change. Reboot computer. No change. Check extension options. All good to go. Not sure what's going on, but perhaps I have some incompatible extension running? Or this extension is disabled by its developer? I notice there are no reviews or comments for months.

I just realized the "Normal" font size in outgoing emails is rendered 14px (instead of Gmail's 13px). That makes my own emails so much easier to read without making them clumsy big at Gmail's "Large" 18px setting. I wish we could similarly view incoming emails slightly larger than the usual 10pt/13px. Thanks Michael Leggett. You are adding value to our lives. ;)

You beaut. Thank you.