Read provides an extension for Google Chrome, which also works on other Chromium-based browsers like Microsoft Edge. Installing the Chrome extension is as easy as going to the listing in the Chrome web store and clicking "Add to Chrome".
- Features in the browser extension
- Read for Gmail
- Read for Google Calendar
- Read for Google Meet
- The extension popover
- Related articles
Features in the browser extension
The extension integrates Read into Google Calendar, Meet, and Gmail, and offers a variety of features to improve the Read experience for Google users. Some of the most popular and powerful features are:
- From your inbox, you can view email thread summaries, and also see contextual information from your related Readout topic reports
- (Coming Soon) Read will highlight emails that likely need your reply, and can also generate a draft reply with contextual information pulled in from your meetings
- You can get notified when your Read Assistant is currently in a meeting, and open the live meeting dashboard with one click
- If you join a Google Meet that doesn't currently have Read in it, you'll see a pop up asking if you want to add Read to the call manually
- You can toggle the Read Assistant on or off for your upcoming meetings straight from Google Calendar, and take advantage of Read's "smart scheduling" capabilities
This article will walk through these and other features of the extension in more detail.
Read for Gmail
Gmail functionality is the most recent addition to the Chrome extension. As long as you have connected your Gmail to Read, you can access several powerful features straight from your Gmail inbox.
Summarize your email threads
One of these features is the email thread summary. Read will analyze your emails and automatically generate summaries for the threads that most warrant it. Read will not attempt to generate summaries for emails that we believe are spam (e.g. unsolicited outreach from someone you've never exchanged emails with before) or emails that come from automated systems as opposed to from real people.
Emails with a summary will be marked in your inbox with this icon:
Hovering over this icon will show a single sentence "key takeaway", but if you click into the email you'll see a more detailed summary, which you can also copy or forward:
Readouts provide full context
When you connect multiple different apps (like your meetings and emails) to Read, you'll start receiving Readouts, which are topic-based reports that allow you to easily keep track of and take action on the major projects and conversations that are happening across all of your apps.
With the Chrome extension, you can see the related conversations from your meetings, chat, and other emails, summarized directly in your email threads:
With Readouts in your email, you'll always know the full story behind any thread, allowing you to put information into context and write your best reply.
Generate smart draft responses
Read doesn't only summarize your information, it also helps you be more productive when replying to emails. For one, when Read sees an email that it thinks you should reply to, it'll highlight the sender and mark it with this icon in your inbox:
Open up the thread, and you'll see that Read has generated a suggested draft response:
Read's drafts are smarter because they don't just take your emails into account, they also pull knowledge from your meeting reports. So suppose you have an email that's asking you a question about something that was just discussed in one of your meetings - Read will include that information when proposing a response.
Read for Google Calendar
The Read browser extension includes several features that are integrated natively into your Google Calendar, letting you add or remove Read on upcoming meetings, mark them as flexible, and choose from a list of recommended times:
You'll see the "Invite Read" and "Flexible Meeting" toggles both when creating a new event and when viewing the details of an event scheduled in the future.
The recommended times take into account actual historical data from your Read account (as well as any other Read users that are invited), to identify times when you typically have high engagement and punctuality. It will also prefer to recommend slots that don't impede focus time; meaning it will encourage scheduling meetings immediately before or after other meetings on your calendar to maximize your periods without meetings.
These calendar overlay features can also be disabled in the extension settings:
Read for Google Meet
When you join a Google Meet, if Read is not already on the call, you'll see a pop up notification letting you add it:
If you choose to add Read, you can also pick a name for your report at that time.
This notification can be disabled from the extension settings:
If you dismiss the alert or have it disabled, you can still access this feature by clicking the Read icon along the bottom of the Meet screen.
The extension popover
When you click on the Read icon from your extensions menu, you'll get instant access to several of Read's core features right from the window that pops up:
From here, you can:
- See any in-progress meetings, with buttons to easily join the call (if it was on your calendar) or open the live meeting dashboard
- Quickly copy your Smart Scheduler Link for letting others easily schedule meetings on your calendar
- Have easy access to your recent meeting reports and a link to the Read dashboard
- View Read's recommendations for your meetings to make them more effective
- Adjust settings for the extension, like whether to enable or disable various features
We recommend pinning the extension in Chrome so that the Read button is always visible and easily accessible at the top of your browser window.