Some days the kanban board is exactly the right tool. You want to see the whole project at a glance, drag work between columns, and watch the shape of the sprint. Other days you just want to clear your queue. You have fourteen tickets with your name on them, spread across five projects, and dragging cards around six different boards is the long way round.
That second day is what Inbox mode is for. It takes every ticket you care about and lays it out the way you already read email: folders on the left, a scannable list in the middle, and the full ticket open on the right. No board, no columns - just your work, top to bottom, ready to process.
The three-pane layout
Open Inbox from the sidebar and you land in a layout every email client taught you years ago.
- Folders on the left. Each project is a folder, plus an "All projects" folder that pulls everything together. The little count next to each one tells you how much is waiting.
- The list in the middle. Every ticket is a row showing its reference, title, status, priority, and tags - just like a message preview. New or updated tickets show an unread purple dot and a bold title, so the work that needs you stands out instantly.
- The reading pane on the right. Click any row and the whole ticket opens beside the list. No page reload, no losing your place in the queue.
It is deliberately familiar. There is nothing to learn - if you can process an inbox, you can process this.
One inbox for every project
The feature most people fall for is the "All projects" folder. If you are a member of six projects, your work is normally spread across six boards. Inbox mode collapses that into a single list.
By default the inbox opens filtered to Assigned to me, so the first thing you see is your own queue across everything. Flip that off to browse a whole project, hide finished work with Hide done, or narrow the list to specific statuses. Because every project can run its own workflow, the status filter is smart enough to handle different columns per project in the same combined view.
And your view sticks. Every filter choice is saved to your account, not just your browser, so the inbox looks the same whether you open it on your laptop in the morning or your phone on the train home.
A reading pane that is a real ticket
This is the part that makes Inbox mode more than a list. The reading pane is not a preview - it is the full ticket, with everything you can do on the board.
Reply with the full Markdown editor and @mention teammates. Change status, type, priority, deadline, and estimation inline. Tick off checklist items, manage tags, assignees, and blockers. Start and stop a timer or log a manual entry. Upload an attachment to the ticket or to your reply. It is all organised into clean tabs - Details, Files, Time registration, Activity, and AI - so the pane stays tidy no matter how much is going on.
The activity log and Git history are right there too, so you can read the full story of a ticket without opening it on the board. And if a project has AI enabled, ticket translation is one tab away.
Permissions, respected everywhere
Because the "All projects" view mixes tickets from projects where you might be an owner in one and a viewer in another, Inbox mode honours your permission level per project. You only ever see the actions you are actually allowed to take on each ticket - edit where you can edit, comment where you can only view. The combined inbox never accidentally hands you a button you should not have.
Read, act, move on
Inbox mode is built for one thing: clearing your queue fast. Spot the unread dot, open the ticket, reply or move it, and jump to the next one - all without a single page reload. The board is still there when you want the big picture. But when you just want to get through your work, the inbox is the shortest path.
Try it
Inbox mode is live for everyone, on every plan. Open Inbox from your sidebar and your whole queue is waiting. New to Todo4you? Sign up at todo4you.com and give it a run. As always, info@todo4you.com lands in my inbox - tell me what you think.