Image via CrunchBase

Google’s excellent webmail app Gmail appears set to relaunch with a new interface, according to a video caught on the company’s YouTube channel by long-time watchdog Alex Chitu this morning. The new version of Gmail looks a lot like the recent refresh of Google Docs, but adds big avatar photos of your contacts to your inbox display and surfaces advanced search functionality through a simple interface, among other changes. The new email reply interface looks like comment posting on Facebook.

The YouTube video has now been closed to the public, but Chitu grabbed screenshots that we’ve reposted below. It’s a fairly substantial change to an app that millions of people live in all day long. Google’s Andrea Freund said in response to our inquiry, “Oops, you weren’t supposed to see that. Stay tuned, we’ll be sharing more info on Gmail’s new look soon.”