Gmail app is back in Apple’s App store

THE GMAIL APP for Apple's IOS is now available again, Google has announced on a blog post.

At the start of this month, Google launched its Gmail email app for Apple devices but pulled it down shortly afterwards.

Embarrassingly for the company, the software that it launched was rather buggy and had to be taken down after users downloaded it and pointed this out.

Google said in a blog post yesterday, "Two weeks ago, we introduced our Gmail app for IOS. Unfortunately it contained a bug which broke notifications and displayed an error message, so we removed it from the App Store. We've fixed the bug and notifications are now working, and the app is back in the App Store."

Apple rarely lets apps onto its App Store that have not passed its rigorous tests, and Google had taken a very long time to release the app for IOS 5.

Google said it had received a lot of "helpful feedback" during the time the app was public before, such as requests for features like multiple account support and customisations like improved notifications and mobile specific signatures.

Google added, "We're just getting started with the Gmail app for iOS and will be iterating rapidly to bring you more features, including all the ones listed above plus many more. Based on your comments we have already improved our handling of image HTML messages - they are now sized to fit to the screen and you can pinch to zoom in."

Anyone who still has the original Gmail app released on 2 November must uninstall or log out of the old app prior to installing the new app. µ