How to Use New Gmail Add-Ons (Like Dropbox)

Tired of spending time inserting images, pasting data, or attaching important documents into email? Google is looking to speed up the process for you with a series of new Gmail Integrations.

These new features are meant to help make things quicker and easier for people who spend a lot of their day searching for Dropbox files (or similar services) or copying and pasting links, which can admittedly get a little old if you’re doing it often enough. With Compose Actions, you can take care of most of these actions with special Chrome Extensions right from your Gmail message draft, with little fuss.

There’s a wide variety of new Compose Actions found in Gmail Add-ons, which come in the form of Chrome Extensions you can download straight from your browser. Right now, four integrations are up for grabs for all Gmail users, including Box, Dropbox, Atlassian, and Egnyte.

Here’s an example of how you can speed things up with the Dropbox for Gmail extension and Compose Action. It’s actually very easy to do.

First, you’ll need to install the Dropbox for Gmail Chrome Extension from the G Suite Marketplace (don’t worry, you don’t need a G Suite account for this—it also works in regular Gmail).

From there, click on “Add to Chrome.” If you already have the extension installed for some reason and didn’t realize it, you’ll see “Remove from Chrome” instead. In that case, just do nothing at that screen and head to Gmail. For everyone else, click the “Add” button and the blue text will turn into “Checking…” while a dialogue box pops up notifying you of the extension’s permissions. Click the “Add extension” button at the bottom right of the box and you’ll be good to go. The installation doesn’t take very long, so you’ll be good to go in seconds.

Next, head to Gmail and open up a new message. This is probably the first time you’ll have used this extension, so you’ll see a screen notifying you of the Dropbox extension.

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