When Gmail launched its beta version on April 1, 2004, most people thought it must have been an April Fool’s joke. After all, Gmail was offering a storage limit of 1 GB, which at the time was considerably higher than its competitors' offerings of just 10 to 100 MB. This prompted rivals like Yahoo and Hotmail to increase their storage limits.

Apart from starting the email storage wars, Gmail has revolutionized the way we use email with Google Workspace, its suite of deeply integrated applications that includes Calendar, Drive, and Meet. It's no wonder that Gmail is the most popular email platform, with over 1.8 billion active users worldwide.

Despite being such a popular application, the full potential of Gmail is rarely utilized by most users. Gmail has a ton of features that can help you stay organized and become more productive, but many users are not aware of them or do not recognize their full potential.

In this blog post, I will share 8 Gmail features, tips, and tricks that you can quickly apply to your workflow to become more organized and improve your productivity.

Here are my top tips and tricks for getting more done with Gmail:

1. Organize Your Emails With “Labels”

2. Automate Sorting With “Filters”

3. Use the "Mark As Unread" Feature

4. Stay Focused With The “Snooze” Feature

5. Email Faster With Keyboard Shortcuts

6. Avoid Mistakes With “Undo Send”

7. Keep Your Colleagues In The Loop With Vacation responder

8. Communicate Better With The “Schedule Send” Feature

In Gmail, “Labels” offers a convenient way to categorize and organize your emails. You can think of them as post-it notes you can stick on an email. The best part about labels is that you can have multiple labels on an email, giving you the flexibility to view your emails in different ways. For example, you can label an email as "Work" and "Sales," enabling you to quickly view all of your "Work" emails or just "Sales" emails without having to run customized searches every time.

With labels, organizing your email is a breeze. Once set up, labels are applied automatically to incoming emails. You can even select custom colors for your labels, making it easy to spot important emails in your inbox. 

You can even create a hierarchy of labels by nesting labels under one another. This allows you to group similar labels under one main label. For example, you can have a “Sales” label and nested under it, create separate labels called "Leads," "Internal," and "Client."

You can use the "Multiple Inboxes" feature in Settings to view emails with specific labels in separate sections of your inbox. This helps you keep your inbox organized and makes it easier to find specific messages.

A word of caution: Many users, especially those used to Microsoft Outlook, think of Labels as folders. However, they are quite different. Keep in mind that Labels do not create copies of your emails. So, if you delete an email under one label, it will be deleted from every label it is attached to.

You can find the steps for creating labels here: Create labels to organize Gmail

In Gmail, “Filters” is a powerful tool that enables you to automatically perform actions on incoming emails based on criteria such as sender, subject, email content, attachment, etc. In the previous section we mentioned how labels are applied automatically and it is Gmail’s Filter feature that makes it possible.

However, filters are not limited to just applying labels and can also automatically delete, archive, or forward emails based on criteria you define. Filters allow you to apply multiple actions to an incoming email as well as to existing emails in your inbox that match the defined criteria.

Filters can be created using the following criteria: 

• From

• To (in case you are using aliases or shared inboxes)

• Subject

• Has the words

• Doesn't have

• Size

• Date within

• Attachment - whether or not it has attachments

Using filters you can efficiently organize your inbox by automatically categorizing and labeling emails. Filters can also help declutter your inbox by automatically deleting or archiving unimportant messages and blocking unwanted emails, such as spam. This helps save time, allowing you to focus on the most important tasks.

With filters, you can also set up rules to forward specific emails to other email addresses. This ensures that important emails get to the right people at the right time, leading to improved communication. But the forwarding isn’t limited to other emails. You can set up filters to forward emails to other applications such as Slack and Trello.

As an example, I have a Gmail filter that forwards email alerts about broken marketing automation to my Slack direct message. This ensures that these important notifications are not lost in the clutter and I am able to address them quickly.

You can find the steps for creating Filters here: Create rules to filter your emails

Imagine that you open an email and find that it is important but not a priority, so you decide to get back to it later. But when you have the time and look for the specific email, you can’t find it among the hundreds or thousands of emails in your inbox. Well, Gmail has a nifty feature to help you out in such cases.

If you don’t have time to work on an email right away but want to keep it on top of your inbox, you can mark it as unread. In the email, click on the “More option” (three vertical dots) then click on “Mark unread”. This will make the email appear as though you haven't read it yet.

Marking important emails as unread ensures that you don’t miss things you plan to revisit later. It also helps keep track of important emails, prioritize your work, stay organized, and manage your time more effectively.

On the flip side, Gmail also has the “Mark as read” feature . This is handy if you don’t like leaving unread emails in your inbox. You can select emails in bulk and click the “More option” (three vertical dots) on the top of your inbox and select “Mark as read”. This way you don’t have to open every email to mark it as read.

You can find the steps for marking emails as read or unread here: Mark messages as read or unread

The "Snooze" feature in Gmail allows you to temporarily remove an email from your inbox and have it reappear at a scheduled time in the future. This is similar to the “Mark as unread” feature, but it goes one step further by hiding the email from your inbox entirely. This feature can be especially useful when you want to delay responding to or acting on an email until you have more time, but don't want the email to continue to be a distraction in your inbox.

To snooze an email, simply hover your cursor over the email to reveal the additional options on the right-hand side (refer to the image below). Clicking on the clock icon brings up the “Snooze until” options where you can select from pre-defined times or specify pick your own.

Gmail offers a variety of keyboard shortcuts that can help improve your emailing efficiency. Keyboard shortcuts enable you to perform tasks such as composing, replying, deleting, and jumping between labels quickly, without having to take your hands off the keyboard. This not only makes emailing more efficient but also reduces the strain on your mouse hand.

For example, you can press "C" on your keyboard to compose a new email or "G" then "I" to go to your inbox. In addition to the standard keyboard shortcuts, Gmail also allows you to customize and change the default keyboard shortcuts to suit your needs.

To start using keyboard shortcuts in Gmail, you need to turn the feature on. To do this, click on Settings (the gear icon on the top left of the window), then click “See all settings”. In the “General” tab, scroll down to find “Keyboard shortcuts” and click on the radio button next to “Keyboard shortcuts on.”

You can find out how to turn on the feature on other devices and the default keyboard shortcuts here: Keyboard shortcuts for Gmail

The "Undo Send" feature in Gmail enables you to cancel the sending of an email after you have clicked send. This feature comes in very handy when you realize you might have made a mistake or would like to add something to the email after you’ve clicked send. However, you can undo send only within a limited time. The default send cancellation period is 5 seconds and the maximum period is 30 seconds.

To set your preferred send cancellation period, go to “Settings” then scroll down to find “Undo Send” and select the time from the drop-down list.

The "Vacation responder" feature in Gmail enables you to send an automated reply to incoming messages. This feature is very handy when you're unable to respond to emails for an extended period of time and would like to let your contacts know about your unavailability. If anyone sends you several messages, the automated reply will be sent at most once every four days to prevent overwhelming your contacts.

An important privacy feature of the Gmail Vacation Responder is the flexibility it provides in terms of who receives the response. You have the option to send the response to everyone, only your contacts, or only those within your organization. This is particularly useful for avoiding confirming your email address to unwanted spam or cold emails that may find their way into your inbox.

It's also worth noting that emails sent to your spam folder, as well as emails sent to mailing lists you're subscribed to, won't receive your vacation response. This ensures that your response is only sent to those who need to know you're away, and not to unnecessary recipients.

“Schedule send” is a relatively new feature of Gmail that allows you to schedule your email to be sent at a specific date and time. This feature is particularly useful for remote workers who work in a time zone different from that of their team.

Say you are working remotely from Lisbon and your team is in San Francisco. You draft an email in the morning while sipping your coffee. If you send the email right away, it will be delivered to your team in the middle of the night. But using the “schedule send” feature, you can schedule the email to be sent at 9 am Pacific Time, which is a more convenient time for your team.

Another use of this feature is for sending time-sensitive emails, such as event reminders. You can schedule emails to be delivered a day or a few hours before the event, ensuring that the notification is delivered exactly when it is needed.

For people who like to dedicate blocks of time for specific tasks, the “schedule send” feature is a godsend. It allows you to draft all of your emails at a time that is convenient for you and then schedule them to be sent at different times throughout the day. This helps you stay organized by better managing your email workload, enabling you to dedicate large blocks of time for specific tasks and get into deep work without having to worry about emails.

Conclusion

Gmail is a feature-rich platform that allows you to do a lot more than just email. The tips and tricks shared in this blog post will help you take advantage of the powerful functionalities of Gmail. Tapping into its wide range of features can help you stay organized, improve productivity, and streamline your workflow. So the next time you use Gmail, take a moment to look around and explore these features that enable you to work smarter, not harder.

Which of these features are you already using and which ones are your favorite Gmail features, share with us in the comments below.

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