Google updates Gmail app on iPhone: Now sign-in to Maps, YouTube etc through Gmail

Google has released an update for the Gmail app on iPhone which adds some much desired features. The update, which hits the app on iOS 7, will bring pre-fetching of emails, but more importantly acts as a single-point sign-in window to the major Google services available for iOS.

“The app now fully supports background app refresh, which means your Gmail messages will be pre-fetched and synced so they’re right there when you open the app-no more annoying pauses while you wait for your inbox to refresh,” Melissa Dominguez, Software Engineer at Google wrote on the Gmail blog. The pre-fetching feature will only work if background app refresh has been turned on along with notifications for the Gmail app.


While this will undoubtedly please users, those heavily tied-in to Google’s services, but still using the iPhone or iPad will be happy to know that the Gmail app can now sign you into other Google apps as well.  These include Google Maps, Drive, YouTube and Chrome. It’s not yet clear how this works for multiple Google accounts.

Essentially Google has made the app similar to its Android counterpart, as far as it could on iOS.  “Sign in to one, and you’ll be signed in to all (this also works for signing out). So you won’t have to type in that 27-character password or retrieve your 2-step verification code every time you navigate to another Google app. You may need to re-login after you update the app, but then you’ll be all set,” Dominguez writes.