The email that is really a task, handled in one click
Some emails are just to-dos in disguise. The UnaTask button in Gmail turns one into a task in a click, the subject as the title, a link back to the thread, and a due date read out of the text. No Gmail API, no Google sign in.
The UnaTask team, Building UnaTask. Jul 8, 2026. 4 min read.
Here is an email that is not really an email. Can you send the deck by Thursday. It is a task wearing an email costume, and because it arrived in your inbox it will now live there, sliding slowly down the screen as newer mail lands on top of it, until Thursday afternoon when it resurfaces with a jolt.
This is the quiet tax of a busy inbox. It becomes a second to do list, one that never talks to your real one. Things fall into the gap between the two, and you end up scrolling your own mail like an archaeologist, hunting for the thing you know someone asked you to do.
And the inbox rewards the wrong habit. Archiving feels like progress, so you read the request, think you will deal with it later, and clear it away. The request goes into the archive, and so does the date. A week later someone asks how it is going, and it never started. Nobody dropped the ball on purpose. It was just never written down anywhere a person actually looks.
So we put a small button where the email already is. Open Gmail with the UnaTask extension and every message grows a Create a task action.
One click, and the email is a task
Click it and the email becomes a real task. The subject is the title, the sender and the message come along in the description, and a link back to the original thread rides with it, so replying is always one click away. If the email names a time, by Thursday, end of the month, the task gets that deadline, picked straight out of the text. It lands in your Inbox by default, or in a project you choose right from the button.
Click the same email again tomorrow and it just opens the task you already made, no duplicate, and captured messages wear a small badge so you can see what is already handled. Need to pass it on? Assign it to a teammate from the same button, or ask to be notified as it moves.
It reads the page, not your mailbox
Connecting takes one tap, with no password or token to copy anywhere. And the button reads the email straight off the page in front of you. There is no Gmail API, no Google permissions to grant, and no mailbox access handed over. It sees the email you are looking at, and nothing else.
Your inbox is not your task list. It is just where tasks arrive.
The inbox goes quiet
Run that Thursday email again. It arrives, you click once, and it is a task with Thursday already on it and a link back to the thread. It stops being a reminder you have to keep re-reading and becomes a thing on your actual list, in the actual order it is due. Archive the email without a second thought: this time clearing the inbox erases nothing. The inbox goes back to being mail, and the work goes where the work lives.
Where this lives in UnaTask: Gmail to task. Turn a Gmail message into a task in one click, without leaving your inbox.