What is Shortwave?
Shortwave is an AI email app that automates inbox management, writing, search, and scheduling for Gmail, Outlook, and other email accounts. It targets professionals and teams who spend significant time on email each day. Users can triage, draft, and organize messages using natural language prompts instead of manual effort.
Features & Benefits
- AI inbox organization – Analyze and organize your inbox in one click. Archive low-priority emails, group action items into todos, star important threads, and clear clutter automatically.
- AI-powered email writing – Draft, reply to, and enhance emails using AI that learns your writing style, tone, and voice from your sent history.
- Predictive autocomplete – Suggest personalized sentence completions while typing, drawing on your email history for relevant phrases, links, and facts.
- Instant AI summaries – Generate a concise summary at the top of every email thread so you can grasp context without reading in full.
- AI filters – Define plain-English rules that automatically label, archive, star, delete, or mark emails as important when they arrive.
- AI-powered search – Find emails using natural language queries or advanced filters. Search across team email history and attachments for specific answers.
- AI scheduling assistant – Check availability, create calendar events, modify existing events, and compose scheduling emails directly from a prompt. Supports voice input.
- Attachment analysis – Read, summarize, and extract information from PDFs, text files, and code files using the AI assistant.
- AI memory – Store custom instructions and preferences so the AI assistant applies them consistently across all interactions.
- AI web browsing – Access current web information relevant to emails without leaving the app.
- Inbox splits – Divide your inbox into focused tabs by sender, label, or custom query to reduce distraction.
- Bundles – Group promotional emails, newsletters, and automated senders for bulk triage in fewer steps.
- Todos – Convert emails into actionable tasks with notes, grouping, and drag-to-reorder prioritization.
- Delivery schedules – Control when emails arrive in your inbox to minimize interruptions during focused work.
- Scheduled send – Write emails now and set a future send time.
- Read statuses & link tracking – See when recipients open your emails and click links for timely, informed follow-up.
- Follow-up reminders – Set automatic reminders on sent emails so unanswered messages don’t slip through.
- Thread sharing – Share live-updating email threads with teammates via a unique URL linkable from other tools.
- Team comments – Discuss emails privately with teammates using inline comments and @-mentions.
- Assignees – Give emails a clear owner and track resolution with team-wide done statuses.
- Shared labels – Build a shared, AI-searchable email archive accessible to the whole team.
- Snippets & shared prompts – Create reusable email templates and one-click AI prompt shortcuts shareable across the team.
- Auto-BCC – Automatically add predefined BCC recipients to outgoing emails to sync with CRMs like HubSpot and Salesforce.
- Email account support – Connect Gmail, Outlook, and POP3 email accounts.
- MCP integrations – Connect the AI assistant to external tools including Notion, HubSpot, GitHub, Asana, and Linear via MCP. Add any MCP-compatible tool as a custom integration.
- Multi-account support – Switch between multiple email accounts on any device.
- Tracking pixel blocking & privacy mode – Block invasive tracking pixels and proxy image loading to prevent sender tracking.
- CASA Tier 2 compliance – Meets enterprise-level security and compliance standards.
Real-World Applications
Sales professionals managing high email volume may use Shortwave to cut time spent on repetitive outreach. AI filters can auto-label inbound leads by urgency, while follow-up reminders ensure no prospect goes unanswered. The AI writing assistant drafts replies in the sender’s own voice, reducing effort behind personalized follow-up and pipeline management.
Customer-facing teams can coordinate responses without leaving their inbox. A support lead might assign incoming requests directly to teammates, track read statuses to confirm delivery, and use shared labels to build a searchable record of resolved issues. Team comments let colleagues discuss context privately on a thread before responding — useful for handling escalations or bringing teammates up to speed on active conversations.
Founders and operators dealing with inbox overload may find bundles and delivery schedules useful for separating urgent messages from noise. AI summaries make it possible to process long threads quickly, and the scheduling assistant handles calendar coordination without switching apps. Users who need project tools connected to their inbox can link Asana tasks, Notion pages, or GitHub issues to relevant threads via MCP integrations.
Power users who send high volumes of outbound email can use auto-BCC to sync messages to HubSpot or Salesforce automatically. Combined with AI-powered search across team email history, this supports pipeline reviews, account handoffs, and tracking past client communication.
