Ten game-changing Gmail hacks you won’t believe you ever lived without
E-mail, wanted and unwanted, can come at any time.
Filling your inbox with unwanted e-commerce sales pitches, special offers, political donation requests, questionable newsletters, and worse, is just one way people make their online lives miserable.
Whether it’s writer’s block with a dreaded cover letter or that one email you fired off and regretted, there’s no reason to let the endless stream of everyday email rule your life, rather than work for you.
Here are some of the best tools you can access right from your Gmail inbox:
Create filters to remove email you don’t want lying around in your inbox or sucking time out of your day
Skip the inbox
We all get emails that we don’t want to read right away…or maybe never. If it’s one you can’t unsubscribe from, like a family member’s weekly political diatribes, try this.
- In the search box at the top, click the three-line icon.
- Enter your search criteria, such as a sender, subject line or even the inclusion of certain words. (To make sure your search is working the way you want, click Search to see what’s listed.)
- At the bottom of the search box, click Create filter.
- Choose what you want the filter to do. Skip the inbox (Archive it) and keep it for you.
- Click Create Filter.
This will only affect new emails arriving in your inbox and will not apply retroactively. However, you can go back and filter out old messages from your inbox.
Or, in other cases, you can skip the inbox altogether by using a burner email.
Use a burner email
Most people don’t realize there’s a common mistake that gets them saddled with more spam and registering for more junk: using your real email address and phone number!
Fortunately, it’s easy and cheap (and sometimes even free) to access so-called “burner” options that you can use to access a site or online deal in a pinch.
Consider all the reasons why you’re giving your email away without a second thought: signing up for a new account, emailing a company with a question, or receiving a discount code – just to name a few.
Every time you enter your email address, you open yourself up to junk mail, malware, and an inbox full of spam messages. This is where a burner email comes in handy.
Burner email addresses are disposable and can be used in place of your primary one. There are several ways to get one.
Temporary mail provides a temporary, anonymous and disposable email address. You don’t need to register for the free version. Please note that the service does not automatically delete your temporary email address (that’s up to you) and you won’t be able to send emails. Emails are kept for about two hours before being automatically deleted.
10 MinutesMail is another popular option that you can also use to send emails. As the name suggests, the email address and address are deleted within 10 minutes. If you receive an important message that you don’t want to lose, you can forward it to another email address. There’s no need to provide any personal information to get started, which is a nice bonus.
But Gmail also lets you create free aliases associated with your primary inbox. They are useful for filtering mail or to see how your e-mail address ended up on a spam list. (More on that below.)
If you have access to Gmail’s Workspace Labs features, let it write you an email. If you don’t see the option, you can sign up to access AI features in Gmail, where there’s a free trial
Write it for me
If you have access to Gmail’s Workspace Labs features, let it write you an email. Start a new draft and at the bottom you will see a plus sign with a pencil next to it. Click on that to get a few options.
- Help Me Write will compose an email based on a prompt you type. You can also use it to make an email more formal, shorter or longer.
Don’t see the option? You can sign up here to access AI features. Note: You must pay for an upgraded Workspace account after the free trial.
Gmail’s Nudges feature pulls out all the old emails you forgot to reply to and lets you know when a recipient hasn’t replied. But you can also enable or disable Nudges per recipient
Like a free personal assistant
Nudges resurface old emails that you may have forgotten to reply to – or tell you when your recipient hasn’t replied. These are enabled by default. If they drive you into the wall, or if you’ve taken them out before, you can find the option here.
- Click Settings > View All Settings.
- Under General, scroll to Nudges. You can enable or disable emails that you need to reply to or follow up on.
Find out who is selling your data
You want a coupon for that online store, but you’re smart enough to think twice. This is where Gmail’s alias feature comes in handy.
Create an alias and you can easily search your email – and see if they share your information.
You can do this quickly by adding a word and a plus sign to your email address when you give it out.
For our coupon example, simply enter your Gmail address as “youremail+skincare@gmail.com”. You can create such aliases at any time and with any combination of words or letters.
Save the embarrassment
You hit send… and then realized you called Todd “Tom” instead. Gmail lets you retrieve an email without your recipient ever knowing, if you’re quick enough.
After you send a message, you will see Message sent in the bottom left and the option to Undo or View message. Click Undo.
You can adjust the time to give yourself more time to undo the send:
- At the top right of the Gmail menu, click the gear icon, followed by “See all settings.”
- Next to Undo Send, select a Send Cancellation Period of 5, 10, 20, or 30 seconds. You might as well choose 30 seconds.
Keep track of your tasks
Gmail makes it easy to set reminders right in the app. This is a good option if you use your inbox as a to-do list and things don’t get through.
- On the right, click Tasks, which looks like a blue circle icon with a check mark. If you don’t see it, click the little arrow in the lower right corner.
- Click “Add a task,” then give it a name, details, and a due date.
- When you’re done, click the X in the top right corner.
You can add an email to an existing task. Right-click the email and select Add to task. This will integrate the message as part of your reminder.
Set up a one-stop shop
Do you have an old Yahoo, Outlook or AOL address? It’s a pain to check multiple inboxes. Importing can be a good way to phase out old email addresses and check fewer accounts.
- Click the Settings gear > See all settings > Accounts and import.
- Scroll down to Import email and contacts and click Import email and contacts. Enter the email address you want to import from in the space provided in the pop-up window.
- Log in to that email address to confirm access.
Note: Only messages are transferred, not folders or labels, so you’ll need to reorganize all imported messages from other accounts as they arrive in Gmail.
Focus on the task at hand
When you start a new email, Gmail places the window in the lower-right corner. If you’re distracted by chat and the rest of your inbox, click the little diagonal arrow in the top-right corner of the window. A larger window will immediately appear in the center of your screen.
Expand your view
It’s annoying to click through pages and pages of emails. This will help.
Click Settings to change the number of visible messages. Under General, look for Maximum page size. You can see as many as 100 conversations at a time.
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