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Gmail Ninja
Gmail is perhaps the webs favorite email service with over 500 million users. And I started using
Gmail ever since they launched the service, back in 2004 and became very much obsessed with
it.
So today, Im sharing over 71 Gmail tips and tricks (including some less known features, secrets,
and settings) to enhance your Google Mail experience. Im sure it might take a while for you to
read through and get to the end. But once you do, there will be no looking back. You will change
the way you used Gmail. All for the better. Guaranteed!
To make this list more readable, I have organized all the tips and tricks into the following
categories:
Attaching Files
You can either click the Show or Hide option next to each label or can go to Settings > Labels
to review all your labels, categories, and circles and hide them one by one. And, you can go to
Settings > Chat and choose the radio button Chat off to turn off chat in Gmail.
If you do not like the idea of Inbox Tabs then you can disable it completely by going to Settings
> Inbox and deselecting all of the available categories.
4. Multiple Inboxes
If you are using a lot of labels and filters then you will love the Multiple Inboxes labs
feature. As the name suggests, it creates extra inboxes within the default inbox so that you can see
more messages at once.
Go to Settings > Labs and enable Multiple Inboxes. When you relaunch Gmail you will see a
new tab in Settings called Multiple Inboxes and there you can define up to 5 custom inboxes.
For instance, you can keep a list of all Starred messages or Important messages or both as a
new inbox.
5. Preview Pane
If you love Outlook then you will love the Preview Pane labs feature. When you enable it, you
can read all your messages in a new preview pane so that you dont have to open each message to
read its content.
Its more effective when you have a large screen as otherwise it will reduce the available reading
space.
Go to Settings > Labs and enable Preview Pane. You will see a new button in Gmail to change
the layout of your inbox. It allows you to split the inbox horizontally or vertically.
Want to identify messages that are sent only to you? Its possible with Personal level indicators.
Go to Settings > General and you can check Show indicators by scrolling down to Personal
level indicators section.
Gmail will then display an arrow for all messages sent to your email address (except newsletters).
And it will show a double arrow if you are the only recipient of the message.
7. Mark As Read Button
If you are tired of clicking the Mark as read/unread action from the More menu then you will
love this. Go to Settings > Labs and enable Mark as Read Button.
You will see a new Mark as read button in your inbox and now you can mark your messages as
read in one-click.
You can drag and drop messages or labels in Gmail. For instance, if you drag a message from your
inbox and drop to Starred, Gmail applies a star to that message and is then archived to All Mail.
Or, you can drag the label Example and drop onto a message so that its applied to that message.
9. Quick Links
Quick Links adds a new widget in your inbox that gives one-click access to any Gmail URL. Go
to Settings > Labs and enable Quick Links.
It adds a new box to the left sidebar and you can add any bookmarkable URL in Gmail as a
Quick Link. For instance, you can add a specific message, or an advanced search result, or a
label.
Do you forget to select the Reply to all option when there are multiple recipients for a message?
If so, you can go to Settings > General and scroll down to Default reply behavior section to
enable Reply all so that the Reply to all option is automatically selected when you try to reply
to a message with multiple recipients (of course, you can select Reply manually if you dont
want to reply all).
Auto-advance is a labs feature that automatically shows the next conversation (instead of going
back to inbox) when you archive, delete, or mute a conversation.
Go to Settings > Labs and enable Auto-advance. You can then define the action by going to
Settings > General where you will see a new option called Auto-advance.
If you are getting a lot of emails a day then you might want to view more conversations per page.
You can go to Settings > General and change the number of conversations and contacts shown per
page. You can view up to 100 conversations and 250 contacts per page.
Like the traditional way of viewing messages individually (instead of grouping)? If so, you can go
to Settings > General and scroll down to Conversation View section to turn if off.
Want to clear all messages under a label/page? Just select the checkbox at the top and it will select
all the messages on that page. And you can even select the entire conversations on that page by
clicking on the special link above the message list.
You can go the Oldest messages in one-click by clicking the pagination menu. But its not
perfect as it works only on default and user created label pages like Inbox, All Mail, Starred,
etc. and on your custom label pages and not on search result pages.
Or, you can copy-paste HTML content directly in the Gmail Signature area so that its appended at
the end of all outgoing messages.
If you have a ton of messages in your Gmail then your email clients can take a lot of time to sync.
The good thing is if you are using IMAP to access Gmail from your email clients then you can
limit the number of messages in an IMAP folder.
You can go to Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP and scroll down to IMAP Access section to
set the folder size limits. For instance, you can set the maximum number of messages to 1,000 or
even 10,000.
Wait, you can also disable syncing of specific labels completely by going to Settings > Labels and
unchecking Show in IMAP option for the target label(s).
If your Gmail inbox tab is always open then you might like Desktop Notifications. You can go
to Settings > General and scroll down to Desktop Notifications section to turn it on.
When you enable it, you will receive a notification when there is a new message but note that
Gmail must open in your browser for the desktop notifications to appear.
If your internet connectivity is poor or when Gmail is down you should be able to access the
Gmail HTML version. You can go to https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/ to access the HTML
version of Gmail.
Decoding Your Gmail Address
Do you know your single Gmail email address means unlimited possibilities? Yes, it can do a lot
more things than what you have imagined.
Until 2010, Googles email service was known as Google Mail (and not Gmail) in the U.K. And
the associated email domain was @googlemail.com (and not @gmail.com). So, when you register
your example@gmail.com it becomes unavailable in @googlemail.com as well.
And the result? We get two email domains. For instance, if my email address is
maheshone@gmail.com then all mails sent to maheshone@googlemail.com also goes to the same
inbox.
Since Gmail doesnt recognize dots as characters within usernames, you can add or remove the
dots from a Gmail address without changing the actual destination address; they will all go to your
inbox, and only yours.
In other words:
maheshone@gmail.com = m.a.h.e.s.h.o.n.e@gmail.com
maheshone@gmail.com = mahesh.one@gmail.com
maheshone@gmail.com = m.aheshone@gmail.com
As you can see all the above addresses belong to the same person. You can even login to your
account using any of those addresses.
maheshone@gmail.com = maheshone@googlemail.com
maheshone@gmail.com = mahesh.one@googlemail.com
Your single Gmail address = infinite email addresses. Yes, thats right!
Append a plus (+) sign and any combination of words or numbers after your email address. For
example, I can use the address maheshone+twitter@gmail.com to sign up for Twitter or use
maheshone+facebook@gmail.com to sign up for Facebook.
In other words, you have unlimited email addresses and it works like magic when you use it with
filters. The only problem is some websites refuse to accept email addresses with a + sign in it
as they dont recognize it. Google should have replaced it with an underscore.
You can find out who is spamming you if you make use of plus addressing. So, next time when
you sign up for a newsletter use your example+newslettername@gmail.com address. And you can
easily filter out such emails by creating a filter.
Gmails Advanced Search is priceless as you can use it to find a specific message. It doesnt
matter if you have few thousand messages or even a million messages in your inbox. The search
just works every time!
Gmails approach to email folders was entirely different. Instead of folders they introduced
Labels and Archive but the problem is a good percentage of users do not use it, even today.
The best way to explain Archive and Label is to know the fact that Gmail has only one folder,
and its called All Mail, everything else are Labels.
All your incoming and outgoing messages resides in All Mail and with Labels you are only
tagging those messages. You can create regular labels as well as nested labels (also known as sub-
labels) to organize your inbox.
Tip: You can even change the color of your labels by clicking on the option next to each
custom labels name (not applicable for system labels like All Mail, Starred, Trash, etc.) on the left
sidebar.
With Priority Inbox, Gmail introduced a label called Important to automatically identify
important messages.
If you are like me then you probably dont want Gmail to decide whether a message is important
or not. So, you can go to Settings > Inbox and scroll down to Importance markers section to turn
off markers.
Now the problem is this only hide the importance markers from the inbox but it continues to
place messages in the Important folder/label.
So, if you want to disable it completely then you can create a simpler filter like this:
30. Stars & Super Stars Colored Stars & More Symbols
Gmail Stars can be considered as bookmarks or favorites and its different from importance
markers. Stars are manually set by us while importance markers are algorithmic and its set by
Gmail itself.
If you love Starring messages then you can supercharge it with more star designs. Go to
Settings > General and scroll down to Stars section to get more stars.
Its a good way to prioritize all your starred messages. For instance, you can use the default yellow
star for low priority messages and can use a red star for high priority messages.
31. Filters
Gmail filters are so powerful that you can use it to automatically organize your inbox.
Matches: from:(maheshone@gmail.com)
Do this: Mark as read
The best thing is Filters combined with Labels and Stars can do magic as it makes organizing
messages much, much, much effective.
You can call me old school, but I still email files to myself as attachments and its my way of
archiving a version of a document and making it searchable (Thanks to Gmail search).
I know cloud storage services like OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. could be a better
choice. But its not a good option for me as all the files in my cloud storage services are perfectly
organized and I do not want to fill my folders with backup copies.
Read: Gmail vs. Cloud: Heres Why I Still Use Gmail As A Cloud Storage
33. Mute
Are you a part of a long conversation thats irrelevant? If so, you can mute that conversation so
that all future messages will skip the inbox and be archived automatically.
You can click the Mute button from the More menu. You can see a list of all muted
conversations by entering the following search query is:muted into the search box.
Attaching Files
Here are few things you didnt know about attachments in Gmail.
You already know that the Gmail attachment size limit is just 25 MB. No, not anymore! Google
Drive is now tightly integrated with Gmail and you can now send files up to 5 TB in size
(depending upon the file type).
Its now possible to attach files from your Google Drive to Gmail. Just click the Google Drive
icon on the compose window and insert files using Google Drive. And the best thing about this
integration is that you can insert the attachment as a Google Drive link or as an attachment itself.
And if the message has multiple attachments then you can download all of them to your Google
Drive in one-click. Just click the Save all to Drive button.
It was not possible to search inside attachments as Gmail never indexed the content of
attachments. But now when you enter a search query, Gmail searches inside the attachments as
well.
If you want to search only messages with attachments then you can use the following syntax:
And, if you further want to restrict your searches to specific file types then use the following
syntax:
It was not possible to sort messages in Gmail by size at first but now you can sort emails by size
and can even filter the search results by adding more search parameters like:
It can be really handy if you want to delete few messages to free up some space. For instance, you
can search for size:20m or larger:20m to find messages larger than 20 MB.
You probably know that you can drag and drop images to a new compose window. But the
problem is when you drag and drop images, Gmail embeds the images into the message body
instead of attaching them as files.
If you want to drop images as attachments then simply drop the images under the Drop files
here area.
Read: OneDrive vs. Dropbox vs. Google Drive vs. Amazon Cloud Drive vs. iCloud
Gmail is an experiment in a new kind of webmail, built on the idea that you should never have to
delete mail and you should always be able to find the message you want.
Thats so true because I never had to delete a single message. Ever. Instead of deleting messages
you can simply Archive them. When you click the Archive button it doesnt delete the
message from your inbox. Instead, it removes the message from the inbox and keep it inside All
Mail.
Its this feature that helps us to keep our inbox clean. For instance, everyday my goal is to have
an empty inbox. If there are messages in my inbox then it means I have work to do and if its
empty then it means Im done with email.
If you find yourself archiving a message immediately after replying to it then the Send and
Archive button is only for you. Go to Settings > General and scroll down to Send and Archive
section to activate it.
Do you want to stop messages from being sent for few seconds after hitting the Send button?
Yes, its possible too!
Go to Settings > Labs and enable Undo Send. It gives you up to 30 seconds to undo the last sent
mail. You can adjust the cancellation period from Settings > General.
Canned Responses is perhaps one of the most underrated Gmail labs feature. It lets you save
email templates so that you dont have to compose the same message over and over.
Go to Settings > Labs and enable Canned Responses. Now you can save a message as a
template (and can even overwrite it) and can insert it into a new compose window in one-click.
The good thing is you can automatically send canned responses by creating filters. Yes, it
works too!
Your auto response email is sent only once unless the same person contact you again after four
days. Also, if you edited your auto response message then Gmail will send the new edited
response when the same person emails you again.
Do you want to quote only the selected text (instead of the whole content) when you reply to a
message? Yes, its possible with the Quote selected text labs feature. Go to Settings > Labs and
enable Quote Selected Text.
So, next time when you want to quote a specific text you can highlight it using your mouse and
click the Reply button. If you do not want to highlight a specific text, simply click the Reply
button without selecting a text portion.
Keyboard shortcuts can save you a lot of time by keeping your hands off the mouse as much as
possible. You can go to Settings > General and turn on/off the Keyboard Shortcuts.
Also, if you are not comfortable with the default keyboard shortcuts then you can customize it by
activating the Custom Keyboard Shortcuts labs feature.
The best thing is you can even create a filter to forward only emails that matches a specific
criteria.
Go to Settings > Accounts and Import and scroll down to Check mail from other accounts (using
POP3) section to add up to 5 POP3 accounts.
50. Gmail SMTP Lets You Send Emails From Your Other Accounts
When Gmail introduced Mail Fetcher to fetch messages from other POP3 accounts it also
became possible to send messages from those accounts.
The problem was it used to show an annoying On behalf of message to the recipient which
was a privacy concern and it lacked professionalism.
For example, if the email was sent from example@hotmail.com then it will show to the recipient
as From example@gmail.com on behalf of example@hotmail.com.
Later in 2009, Gmail allowed users to send mails through the SMTP server of your newly added
POP3 account. And now its the standard way of adding a new email account to your Gmail.
Go to Settings > Accounts and Import and scroll down to Send mail as section and click Add
another email address you own (see above screenshot).
Read: How To Use Gmail SMTP Server Settings For Sending Mail
One of the most admired internet productivity tool is Google Apps but Google discontinued
its free edition so that you have to purchase Google Apps for Business (costs $50 per user per
year) to manage your business email accounts. It also means that even if you need just one
mailbox you still have to pay $50 a year.
The good thing is you can use your personal Gmail account as your email server thats to
create a custom outgoing email address like you@example.com. Follow tip #49 and #50 to
configure all your business email accounts or go here for a step-by-step tutorial.
Read: Google Apps Alternative: How To Use Gmail As Your Email Hub
Do you have multiple Gmail accounts? If so, you do not have to logout from the current session to
login to another account. Just click your profile picture at the top right corner and click the Add
account button to login to another Gmail account (without logging out from the existing account).
The Gmail inbox URLs for your accounts will look like:
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/#inbox
53. Import Mail And Contacts
Want to import all your messages and contacts from your other email accounts like Yahoo Mail,
Outlook.com, AOL, or any other POP3 account to Gmail? Yes, you can transfer your old emails
and contacts to Gmail with its Import feature.
Go to Settings > Accounts and Import and click the Import mail and contacts option to get
started.
With Gmail, you can review your recent account activity at the click of a button and see who else
is using your Gmail account. Just click Details at the bottom right corner of your inbox and it
will show information (like access type, IP address, date and time) about the recent account
activity and any concurrent activity.
The Recent activity page also lets you Sign out all other web sessions (see above screenshot).
It means that if you havent logged out from a public computer then you can do it remotely.
So, its a good idea to share the account with a trusted friend or you might want to delete your
account completely. You can use Googles Inactive Account Manager to decide what happens
to your data when you stop using your Google account.
You can delegate access to your Gmail to another Google account holder so that he/she will be
able to sign in to your account to read, delete and send mail on your behalf. They will not be able
to change your account settings or your password.
Go to Settings > Accounts and Import and scroll down to Grant access to your account to add
another account.
You can download your entire inbox as a single file or can selectively download messages by
choosing specific labels.
Two step verification adds an extra layer of security to your Gmail account by requiring you to
have access to your phone as well as your username and password when you sign in.
It means that if someone steals or guesses your password, the potential hijacker wont be able to
sign in your account as they dont have access to your phone.
If your Gmail account is hacked (or if you are unable to recover it using the password reset form)
then the only way to regain access to your account is by verifying your identity.
That is, Google will ask you few questions about your Gmail account to make sure that you are the
true owner. So, its important to know those details and note down in your personal diary.
Ideally you should know the following details about your Gmail account:
Date you started using Google products like Gmail, Google Talk, Calendar, Android.
Phone numbers that you may have associated with your Google account.
Google Tasks was one of my favorite task managers but it appears like Google discontinued its
development. The good thing about Google Tasks is that its integrated to Gmail.
So, you can save a Gmail message as a task to Google Tasks. Just click the Add to Tasks option
from the More menu and Gmail will automatically save the current message as a task on Google
Tasks.
You can view all your tasks in a new browser window at https://mail.google.com/tasks/ig or can
open the Google Tasks widget anytime when you are using Gmail by clicking on the Tasks menu.
Inbox by Gmail is an invite-only app from the Gmail team that organizes your messages
automatically and highlights them without even opening the email.
The best part? It also lets you add reminders and snooze emails with a better searching tool
all in an intuitive design.
Gmail Offline is an official add-on for Google Chrome to support offline access. It lets you access
your messages, reply to a message, search inbox, or archive a message without an internet
connection.
66. Hangout Phone Calls
Gmail added a phone call tab in Hangouts that lets you call any phone number right Gmail. The
best thing about Hangouts is that almost all calls to the U.S. and Canada are free from all
countries where Hangouts calling is available.
Google Wallet is a mobile payment system by Google that lets you store debit cards, credit cards,
loyalty cards, and gift cards on your mobile phone. Google Wallet is now integrated with Gmail
so that you can send money to your friends or family as an attachment. Its available only in the
U.S. and U.K.
Read: Over 25 Email Apps (Free & Premium) For Your Mobile
68. Boomerang
Boomerang for Gmail allows you to schedule messages on any date or time you want. Whether
you are online or not, this third-party add-on will send the message on the date that you have
mentioned. It can even remind you if you dont get a reply to a specific message and can set
reminders to follow-up an incoming message.
69. Rapportive
With Rapportive, you can view every detail about your contacts in your Gmail inbox. You can
also see the location of the person who emailed you. Also try, Sidekick, FullContact.
70. Unroll.Me
Unroll.Me shows a list of all your newsletter mails and lets you unsubscribe with one-click.
71. Taskforce
Taskforce is a productivity tool that integrates with Gmail to convert your emails into tasks and
also lets you create reminders.
If your Gmail account is out of space then you can use Find Big Mail to find messages with large
attachments and free up some space. Its free for all @gmail.com accounts and the pricing starts at
$9/month for a Google Apps account.
73. IFTTT
IFTTT connects all your web 2.0 apps (including social networks and productivity apps) and put
the internet to work for you. For instance, you can connect Gmail to apps like Evernote, iCloud,
Dropbox, etc. and define rules like:
create a reminder in iCloud when you star a Gmail message.
Dont Miss: Over 51 Evernote Tips & Tricks To Make You An Evernote Ninja
Conclusion
Gmail is the core product of Google and it recently surpassed 500 million users. They are
continuously improving it and is adding more and more features to it.
In fact, Google wants Gmail to manage all your email accounts, and thats why Gmail Android
app can now manage your Outlook.com and Yahoo Mail accounts.
So, I will make sure that all the latest features and updates are reflected here to make this blog post
as fresh as possible.
Now, what is your favorite Gmail feature or hack? Just in case if I missed it here then let me know
as a comment below, and I will be happy to list it.