Gmail allows you to disable threaded conversations

By on Sep 29, 2010 at 12:09 PM
General September 29, 2010

To us, one of the differentiating features of Gmail is the service’s ability to automatically and accurately organize email conversations into threads. Now, Google has announced that they are *gasp* affording you the ability to turn this feature off. As Google explains:

The way Gmail organizes mail into conversations is like cilantro. You either love it — and, like me, enjoy the nice citrusy, herbal finish it gives to everything from salsa to curry — or you hate it. And those of you who hate it hate it enough to launch sites like nocilantro.com and ihatecilantro.com (“an anti cilantro community”), where you can hate it together.

But my fondness for cilantro pales in comparison to my love for Gmail’s conversation view, or message threading. I haven’t had to wade through multiple messages to follow a conversation in years. A centithread hasn’t filled up the entire first page of my inbox in almost as long as I can remember. Having all the replies to an email (and replies to those replies) grouped with the original message simply makes communicating so much easier.

It turns out not everyone feels the same way. And just as an outspoken minority has banded together in unison to declare their distaste of one of nature’s most delicious herbs, some of you have been very vocal about your dislike of conversation threading. So just like you can order your baja fish tacos without cilantro, you can now get Gmail served up sans conversation view. Go to the main Settings page, look for the “Conversation View” section, select the option to turn it off, and save changes. If you change your mind, you can always go back.

This feature will be rolling out over the next few days so if you don’t see it immediately, check back in a bit. And once you try it out, let us know what you think.

We’re curious, any Gmail users out there dislike threaded conversations?

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  • Sane Person

    Didn’t think so. Finally I can start using Gmail because they have gotten some sense knocked into them. What took them so long to understand “Don’t Be Evil” is supposed to mean something?

  • Mike S.

    I’ll keep the threads, thanks.

  • Fairy

    This is great news! I had to use gmail because I have android phone. Because of threads, I was missing emails, it was tough to find what is new in a thread. Also, I like to sort emails by time, so that I know who send what WHEN. And this feature was impossible was threads.

  • http://www.blogworldexpo.com Rick Calvert

    I freaking hate conversation view. Thank god they came to their senses!

  • AM

    And this is exactly why I love Google!! OPTIONS!

  • Brian

    90% of the time conversation view is ideal. Every now and then I only want one email in a chain of many to sit in my inbox. Options are good.

  • Lisa M

    It would be better if it did both. Keep the conversation together and leave a copy of the message on the date it was sent. I get so much email that when a message moves as part of a conversation — it can get lost. But, I love the feature too.

  • Terry

    I want the ability to sort my e-mails by sender, date or any other option.

  • lib4

    Its great to ahve the option
    Like Terry i want to be able to sort by sender that way i can delete whole blocks of emails from commericial accounts.

  • Jbon

    Cilantro Rules!

  • Havnfun

    Delighted one can now turn of conversation view. I disliked it with passion, and I subscribe to Google Apps. I think that in paying for a service, I should have been able to turn this feature off from day one!!!

  • Tad

    What’s all this about “deleting” emails? Do you really mean “Archive”, or are you actually deleting, and if so, why?

    It seems apparent to me that the anti-conversation-view group divides into two camps:1) Anal-Retentive/OCD types and B)those who never bothered to grok the Gmail “way”. At first, the concepts of archiving and labels/filters (which btw are for all intents and purposes identical to folders) seemed weird and alien to me, but once I took the time to understand them I saw their brilliance.

    Gmail (especially their spam filter) is orders of magnitude better than any other email client I’ve ever used, and I can’t believe I ever lived without it.

    The only problem I have with Conversation View is when it doesn’t work properly – which seems to usually be the fault of the emailer.

    So yeah, it’s great to have configurability (another reason I love Gmail/Google), but I haven’t really seen many good arguments against… they mostly tend to amount to “I don’t like it, it’s icky”. :)

  • Mike Korner

    Thanks for the alert to this change.

    I don’t like either view.

    The issue for me is that threading doesn’t work a lot of the time. By doesn’t work, I don’t mean philosophically; I mean “bug”.
    1) Collapsed isn’t always collapsed.
    2) Sometimes the latest thread is in the middle.

    Give me a threaded view where the latest item in the thread is ALWAYS in the same place (top or bottom, speaking of religious debates), and I will use it. What I want it consistency.

    But then again, I like cilantro :)

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