Shortwave

Email is the single biggest time sink for most knowledge workers. Shortwave is the first email client we've tried that genuinely pays back the time it asks for, built by ex-Google Inbox engineers who know exactly what's broken in Gmail's UI and fixed it without throwing away Gmail's underlying infrastructure.

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What is Shortwave?

Shortwave is an AI-native email client layered on top of Gmail and Google Workspace. It re-implements the best ideas from Google Inbox, bundling, snooze, reminders, and wraps them in a modern AI assistant that can draft, summarise, search, and take action on your entire email history.

Target audience

Founders, operators, sales leaders, and consultants who live in email and need to move faster without losing track of threads, action items, or follow-ups.

Core capabilities

• AI assistant that drafts replies in your voice using full thread context
• Smart bundling automatically groups newsletters, notifications, calendar updates, and deliveries
• Instant semantic search, find emails by meaning, not just keywords
• AI-generated labels, summaries, and action-item extraction
• Integrated calendar with natural-language scheduling
• Snooze, pin, split inbox, and reminders
• Native apps for Mac, iOS, Android, Windows, and the web

Expanded benefits for SMBs

• Time back, immediately. The assistant drafts context-aware replies you can send in one click, most users report 1–2 hours a day recovered.
• Smarter triage. Bundling pushes low-value email out of your focus zone so your inbox actually shows what matters.
• Search that works. Ask "what did we agree with ACME about pricing?" and Shortwave finds the thread even if you can't remember the exact words.
• Team collaboration. Share threads internally, comment inline, and draft jointly without forwarding.
• Keeps Gmail as the backend. No migration risk, your archive, filters, and history stay in Google.

Real use cases

• Founder triage. Start the day with a 60-second AI summary of what needs a reply, what can wait, and what needs escalation.
• Sales follow-ups. Ask the assistant to draft a follow-up using the last three emails plus the deal notes, in the prospect's tone.
• Meeting prep. "Summarise every email thread with this person in the last 30 days" gets you briefed in seconds before a call.

How it might fit into a workflow

Shortwave slots into a knowledge-work stack like this:

Natural-language prompts like "find the Zoom link ACME sent last week" collapse what used to be 30 seconds of manual searching into two seconds of typing.

Pros and considerations

Who should explore this tool

• Gmail power users who keep hitting the limits of the stock Gmail UI
• Founders, sales leaders, and exec assistants who spend 2+ hours a day in email
• Teams on Google Workspace looking for a faster, smarter client without migrating

How Aurora Designs approaches tools like this

We treat email as the first and most-used automation surface in any business. Before suggesting AI email clients, we look at how your team handles inbox triage today, what's eating their time, and whether a client-side tool (like Shortwave) or a server-side automation (like an n8n inbox processor) is the better fit. Often it's both.

Security

Shortwave is SOC 2 Type II certified with encryption in transit and at rest. Google OAuth means Shortwave never sees your password, and you can revoke access from your Google account at any time. AI providers operate under zero-retention agreements and your email is not used to train models.