How to disable loading email images by default in Google Inbox?

Google Inbox seems to load images in emails by default, despite my gmail settings being to never load images unless I specifically request it. It's extremely common for marketing emails to embed trackers in them that I want to avoid. Is there a setting or hack that I can use to stop Google Inbox from auto-loading images?

(I recommend that a "google-inbox" tag be created for the new Google Inbox. I don't have the rep for comments or creating tags.)

Logical Fallacy

Posted 2015-06-22T22:58:59.520

Reputation: 343

For Inbox mobile app, I generally switch off data before opening any email in promos bundle. There might be a chrome extension to help for desktop. We need to find out. – IsmailS – 2015-07-30T11:54:32.543

Google's aware of the concern over marketing emails, and thus enabled caching on all images. That's probably why they always load images in Inbox. That said, dedicated marketers can work around Google's caching. Based on my understanding, Google's caching also wouldn't be effective against trackers in unique emails (e.g. from Yesware).

– duozmo – 2015-11-09T17:01:28.420

Answers

Open Google Chrome. Click on “Customize and control Google Chrome” Button present on the right most corner of the toolbar consisting address bar. Click on Settings Scroll to the bottom and click on “Show advanced settings” Under Privacy, click the button “Content Settings” Under “Images”, click the button "manage exceptions" Type in inbox.google.com and set it to "block". Then click finished.

Viola, no more images in google inbox.

Waid Johnson

Posted 2015-06-22T22:58:59.520

Reputation: 319

+1 for creativity. but it screws up the UI – Vinnie James – 2017-10-05T22:38:38.990

I notice when i copy the link address of the images that load in inbox it is: https://ci4.googleusercontent.com

where ci can have any given amount of numbers after it.

Maybe try the url Asterisk.googleusercontent.com/Asterisk

substitute the word asterisk with the actual symbol... wasn't showing up in the response

– Waid Johnson – 2017-10-07T01:54:45.853

I would highly recommend Power Google Inbox by andryou.com if you use Google Chrome.

It only prevents thumbnails from being shown in the main Inbox view, but you may be able to safely delete from the Inbox view without loading the image.

Note: I haven't verified wheter the images aren't loaded or shown.

user2291948

Posted 2015-06-22T22:58:59.520

Reputation: 11

You can do this with adblockplus using the following custom filter: *googleusercontent.com/proxy*$domain=inbox.google.com

All remote content is cached by google and this filter just blocks all those cached images. Most of the UI is still intact with this filter.

Toon Verstraelen

Posted 2015-06-22T22:58:59.520

Reputation: 111

Interesting. If you wanted to load images for a particular email, would you you have to temporarily disable the filter rule? – Logical Fallacy – 2018-03-30T20:34:27.250

I'd recommend using Gmelius. It has direct support for tracking as well as a bunch of other nice customisations.

Search for "Gmelius for Inbox by Gmail" in extensions.

https://gmelius.com/

Papa

Posted 2015-06-22T22:58:59.520

Reputation: 310

This seems like a decent solution for using the Inbox web app. I guess I'll have to avoid marketing emails when using Inbox on mobile...? Just in case, I'll leave this question open a bit longer; hopefully there's an Inbox setting that I'm missing or an Inbox config file I can dig into. – Logical Fallacy – 2015-06-23T15:59:17.813

I would mention about the inbox app in your question. There are features from gmail that sync with inbox, but this is not one of them and I doubt you will find anyway of doing so until they add it themselves: https://support.google.com/inbox/answer/6098273?hl=en

– Papa – 2015-06-24T01:42:29.433

I tried Gmelius; it turns out that only the premium version will block tracking attempts. Even so, it seems to only do this for certain types of images, and it obviously won't work on mobile. – Logical Fallacy – 2015-07-23T17:54:55.687

Agree. Unless Google introduces any setting for inbox (or honours Gmail setting which OP mentioned) which works both for mobile app and desktop site. – IsmailS – 2015-07-30T11:52:23.877

-1

Gmail provides you an option to choose whether or not you want to load external images. To configure this, click the settings icon in Gmail and select Settings. Next to the label Images, you can choose load external image or ask before doing so:

Don't forget to save changes at the bottom of the page.

Grayson

Posted 2015-06-22T22:58:59.520

Reputation: 23

4That setting is for Gmail not Google Inbox. – Logical Fallacy – 2016-06-19T05:29:03.093

That may be true, but Google Inbox is now shutting down. (Their website says that they've integrated all of their features into Gmail.) I currently use Gmail, and I was too lazy to dig through the settings to find this option, so this answer was helpful to me and will probably continue to be helpful to future visitors.

– Graham – 2019-03-06T22:40:03.450