The first is that despite having a pretty decent internet connection, if I close a GMail tab within, say, 20 seconds of some operation (delete, archive, etc.), closing the tab shows the '"changes won't be saved" modal.
This in itself is frustrating and somewhat baffling to me. surely it doesn't take that long to do a request to the GMail server-side?
But then it gets worse. What makes this problem worse is that once the popup appeared, even though Chrome is still the focused app, I can't interact with it unless I do some tab-switching foo. This is on MacOS and Chrome.
Am I just unique in the particular workflow I've settled on, or is this an inexplicable annoyance to anyone else? Or is there a valid reason to explain why this happens?
My recommendation is to try making sure background sync is enabled in your browser settings. However, it wouldn't surprise me one bit for it to be on their end.
The best solution though is to work on eliminating Gmail altogether by supporting and donating to open source solutions that provide Gmail-like functionality without a web browser requirement, preferably IMAP and virtual mailboxes with labels.