​Everything Shortwave shipped in 2024

2024 was a busy year for Shortwave. Over the last 12 months, we ran multiple launch weeks, introduced entire suites of new features, and made hundreds of critical quality-of-life improvements. Now we’re taking a moment to reflect on every major Shortwave update from 2024 and offer a peek at what to expect in 2025.

This year, we doubled down on building the smartest AI-native email experience. After kicking off 2024 with an AI Launch Week—5 new AI features in 5 days—our team hasn’t slowed down since. 96 features, 5,281 PRs, and 713 improvements later, Shortwave continues to lead the way with the smartest personalized AI email assistant, a full calendar integration, powerful new settings, real-time team collaboration, and hundreds of other improvements.

Everything we launched this year:

The ultimate AI email assistant

This year we rolled out a brand new AI Assistant. Now, the Assistant can make plans and take follow-up steps to answer your request, including running multiple AI-powered searches and calendar lookups. We also majorly upgraded our AI search infrastructure and dramatically increased the amount of email context that the AI can process at once. The result is far more than just an email writing helper — it's a smart AI analyst who can answer critical business questions, draft contextual replies, and perform complex, multi-step procedures.

Smarter AI search & analysis

• Upgraded search infrastructure for smarter answers to critical questions and support for complex, multi-step procedures
• AI-enhanced multi-select to analyze multiple threads and bundles
• Clickable AI Assistant search result headers to view all relevant results
• AI analysis for text attachments and “Summarize with AI” attachment shortcut
• Instant summaries automatically summarize every email thread
• Automatic AI-powered summaries for forwarded threads
• AI-powered about: search term for natural language search

Personalized AI email writing

• AI Autocomplete intelligently finishes your sentences
• Instant AI replies write personalized contextual responses in one click
• “Improve draft” button to have the AI Assistant finish and polish your writing
• Personal AI Snippets for dynamic email templates
• AI Assistant can now manage draft subjects and participants

AI Assistant usability improvements

• Increased AI performance and context window for faster, more accurate answers and drafts
• Preferred language support for AI Assistant responses, instant summaries, and instant AI reply suggestions
• Support for the AI Assistant on iOS and Android
• Resizable AI Assistant menu on web / desktop for a wider input and view

Real-time team collaboration

This year Shortwave introduced a suite of new features designed to help your team collaborate around the emails you send to the outside world. These new features mark a major expansion of what Shortwave can do to support businesses with real-time, AI-powered email organization.

Collaborative email

• Team comments let you discuss emails internally, right from your inbox
• Thread sharing lets teammates see a live view of the thread with the full conversation history, including all attachments, images, and future messages
• Assignees give emails a clear owner and track progress with team-wide delegation and done statuses
• Automatic BCC support for CRMs like Salesforce, and HubSpot
• New search operators for:
  • is:assigned
  • is:shared
  • has:comment
  • has:mention

Team-wide settings

• Shared AI Snippets for team templates
• Shared labels for an accessible email archive and
• Shared AI Automations to streamline team workflows
• Team AI Assistant settings for team description and custom team writing prompt
• New settings pages for Teams using Shortwave
• “Team” shortcut in the left sidebar lets you:
  • Manage your team settings
  • View all email threads assigned to you
  • View all threads shared with you
  • View your threads that have team comments
  • View all threads where you have been @mentioned (in a comment, or an email body)

Integrated calendar & scheduling

Not only does Shortwave seamlessly integrate with your calendars, but it also helps you schedule and create new events using the AI Assistant. This means you can easily view your upcoming day, RSVP to invites, and create new meetings directly from your inbox, without having to switch back and forth between different apps.

Calendar management

• Dedicated calendar view for upcoming events and details
• Support for multiple connected calendars
• Calendar settings with new meeting link support for Google Meet & Zoom

AI scheduling

• AI scheduling and event creation based on your availability
• AI-assistant Google Calendar event creation with video calling, AI-powered descriptions, and participant management
• Scheduling conflict detection inside the AI Assistant
• Date-highlighting in emails for one-click scheduling

Inbox organization & customization

Our powerful new customization features let you tailor Shortwave to your specific workflow and organize your inbox action items. Whether it's creating dedicated Inbox Splits for client requests, organizing todos for an upcoming project, or starring threads for quick follow-up, you can personalize and prioritize your inbox exactly how you need it.

Inbox Splits

• Splits divide your inbox into custom tabs to focus your time and attention
• Gmail “Importance” support to mark threads as Important
• Important & Other split option for high and low priority tabs
• Custom query splits for more powerful inbox customization
• “Hide split when empty” setting to reduce visual distractions
• Redesigned split creation flow for easier split additions and edits

Todos & Stars

• Stars keep threads visible in the new “Starred” section at the top of the inbox
• Historical import of threads’ starred status from Gmail
• Highly configurable star settings for inbox display and actions
• Todos transform your inbox into a dynamic task list with custom groups and task names
• Rich text descriptions for additional todo notes
• Drag & drop prioritization for starred threads and todos

Email essentials

Even as we blazed ahead with cutting-edge AI enhancements, we still prioritized building a best-in-class email app. We doubled down on core features like trash, spam, and all mail views. We also prioritized high-value additions like read statuses, link tracking, and automatic follow-up reminders, ensuring you have the context you need to send more effective emails.

Email activity

• Read statuses show when the emails you send are opened so you can get the context you need to write effective follow-ups
• Link tracking shows who clicked on a specific link along with the relevant email thread
• Recent opens are shown in a live activity feed of email engagement

Reminders

• Custom follow-up reminder for sent emails to return to your inbox if there’s no reply
• Automatic follow-up reminder setting to set the same reminder period on all outgoing mail

New thread views

• Dedicated Trash page for viewing and removing threads in the trash
• Dedicated Spam page for viewing and marking threads as not spam
• Dedicated All mail page for viewing a list of every email received, sorted newest to oldest
• Backlinks included for threads that were forwarded or referenced in another email

What’s in store for 2025

As we plan for the new year, we're continuing our commitment to build the world’s smartest AI-native email app for businesses. Expect to see more advanced and intuitive AI organization features, expanded inbox support, and powerful integrations to streamline your team’s work all in one place.

Before we turn the page on this incredible year, we want to extend a heartfelt thank you to each and every person who has supported Shortwave this far. Your feedback and feature requests have been the compass guiding our journey.

If it's been a while since you last checked out Shortwave, or if you've been waiting for that one missing feature, now's the time to sign in again (or sign up with a free trial). We've improved by leaps and bounds since our initial AI launch, and we're excited for you to experience how you can supercharge your team's productivity with even more advanced AI & real-time collaboration.

Here's to making your email enjoyable and your days more productive.

See you in 2025 🥂