One line of Flow
Sometimes the smallest things end up shaping the rhythm of how we work. Like hitting "delete" on an email and being thrown back into the inbox. Not onto the next message, just back to the list. One more click. One more pause. One more tiny break in flow.
ProtonMail still doesn’t auto-open the next message when you archive or trash one. The feature request has been open since 2016. Gmail has had it for years. It’s not complicated, and yet nothing for nearly a decade now. A few days ago I got tired of waiting and patched it myself.1 A bit of console poking, a short user script, a few iterations helped along by AI. Not deep work, just a quick fix that made everything feel smoother again.
It reminded me how much we should care about small frictions. They’re not dramatic, but they pull on you over time. This one tweak actually helps me get through my mails faster. It supports the idea of Inbox Zero, where the interface nudges you into doing the next thing instead of just looking at a pile of things left undone. Less noise, more momentum.
That’s what good UX should do, right? Not just display information, but direct flows. Not command, but suggest. A shift in focus that helps you move.
Sometimes, that’s all it takes.