Gmail has all good things available with it, which makes it one of the best email providers in an online communication network. It has an appealing interface and several amazing and useful features that give it an edge over other webmail services along with desktop email clients. Surprisingly, it also offers an endless stream of useful tricks and extensions to improve user experience that might go unnoticed by most users. The Gmail enigma has been sorted out with these top 15 Gmail tips for users.
1. Make Gmail your Email Hub:
Using this function, you can send emails from various addresses or accounts using your main Gmail account. By setting up your main Gmail account you can perform a bunch of tasks seamlessly like sending, receiving and sorting out your emails. To do this, you can go to Settings > Accounts and Import or Accounts tab > “Send mail as” section > “Add another email address” option and follow the instructions. If you have multiple email accounts, you can check them in Gmail. To do this, go to Settings > Accounts > “Check mail from other accounts” section > “Add a mail account” option and follow the instructions.
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2. Clean and Speed up Gmail:
To clean and declutter your Gmail account you can follow these steps.
- To mute group emails click on the Mute option from “More” dropdown in a message field. It will silence notification specifically for those emails while allowing fresh emails in the thread.
- To hide unused labels via Manage labels go to sidebar or Settings > labels.
- To display more contacts and messaged per page via the Maximum page size option, go to Settings > General.
- Switch to basic HTML version to load Gmail faster.
3. Enable the best Gmail Labs features:
Gmail’s labs section in Settings include an array of some amazing features to use. Here are some of these features which we recommend to you.
- “Custom keyboard shortcuts” to customize shortcut mappings. It adds a new Settings tab from which you can remap keys to various actions.
- “Google Voice Player in mail” lets you play voicemails left on your Google Voice account right from the email notification.
- “Mark as Read Button” to mark emails as read with a single click of a button.
- “Canned Responses” to avoid typing same text snippets in emails over and over.
4. Use Custom Keyboard Shortcuts:
You can enable “Custom keyboard shortcuts” by heading to Settings > Labs. It will reduce manual efforts and save time. Once you enable the “Custom keyboard shortcuts” in Labs you will find a new tab called Keyboard Shortcuts in Settings. Switch to that to remap Gmail shortcuts for different actions. Some of these useful keyboard shortcuts are:
- “e” to archive a message, “#” to delete it.
- “r” to reply a message, “a” to reply all.
- “f” to forward a message.
5. Enable handwriting input support:
This feature allows you to customize the language and keyboard layouts for typing emails. To enable input tool, go to Settings > general > Language and check mark the “Enable input tools” checkbox. If this checkbox doesn’t show up, click on the “Show all language options” link in the Language section.
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6. Manage your Account:
You can tweak some basic settings in your My Account section to protect your account from prying eyes. To access this, click on your profile picture in your Gmail account and select “My Account” from the dropdown that appears. Here you will find three sub-sections called Sign-in & Security, Personal info & privacy, and Account Preferences. Sift through all three options and check each last setting to tweak them as per your needs and privacy requirements.
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7. Backup your account information:
This simple trick will help you regain access to your account in case you lost its credentials sometime. Take the time to note down the following details: month and year of creating Google account, answer to your security question, phone numbers associated with account, recovery email address, names of four Gmail labels, email IDs of five people whom you email frequently etc.
8. Multiple Inboxes:
You may have multiple Gmail accounts for different needs. You can use Multiple Inboxes option to organize several accounts in one view. Find this feature under Settings > Labs > Multiple Inboxes. It will help you add extra lists of emails in your Gmail account inbox to see more important emails at once. This new list of threads can be starred messages, labels, drafts or any search you want, configurable under Settings.
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9. Essential Gmail browser extensions:
Add these three extensions to improve the performance of your Gmail account.
- Gmail Offline: This official chrome app from Gmail helps you process your emails even when you don’t have Internet access.
- Boomerang: It allows you to schedule emails and follow up. It works well with Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
- Checker Plus for Gmail: Use this Chrome extension which works as an amazing notifier for Gmail. It lets you read emails and delete them without opening your Gmail account in your browser.
See Also: 5 Quick Steps to Run a Security Check Up on Google Account
10. Enable Undo Send option to stop email delivery:
It happens sometimes after sending an email you feel you didn’t mean to send it due to various reasons. In this case, you can use Undo Send option to stop email delivery. Enable this feature under Settings > General > Undo Send > Enable Undo Send and set cancellation period from 5, 10, 20 and 30 seconds.
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11. Try “Inbox by Gmail” app:
This app helps users to get quick access to their Gmail account details without much hustle. It provides a simple, more streamlined look to your Gmail account. You can check all your messages without opening them directly. You can even set reminders, snooze, flag and prioritize messages as per your needs.
12. Don’t just label Spam, block the user:
If you are receiving a lot of spam emails or some user is kept you bugging than you not only Report Spam that user but you can permanently block that user. To do this, open the email sent by that user now click on the drop-down button next to Reply option and select “Block User”.
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13. Drag Messages:
If you want to move any email from Inbox to a specific folder (or Label) simply drag it to that folder rather than shifting it following a long process of selecting the email and right-click and then selecting the folder.
14. Move messages to different accounts:
This feature is for iOS users only. The iOS built-in app allows you to move a message received on a one Gmail account to another Gmail account or in fact, to nay email account you have set up on the system that uses iMAP. To do this, click Edit, check the box next to the message (s) and then Move. Now select the account and folder within that account to move to.
15. Preview Pane:
This feature allows you to read the email right next to your list of conversations, making email reading faster and adding more context. Enable this feature under Settings > Labs > Preview Pane.
We are sure these useful tricks can help you understand and optimize your Gmail experience. This privy information certainly can add some sense to your Gmail usage. Above that following these simple steps, you can save some of your time and efforts too.