We’ve all been there — looking for a critical piece of information that we know is buried in somewhere in our inbox. The email hasn’t been deleted, but that doesn’t mean we’ll find it on the first try. Your inbox may be packed with emails that have some of the same search terms, complicating matters further. That’s all the more surprising when it happens in Gmail, considering that Search is Google’s most important product.
Google is apparently aware that Gmail needs better search functionality, and it has devised an update to make hunting for important data a lot faster than it was previously.
The new Gmail search is getting so-called search chips, which should make it even easier to sort emails and filter results to find the emails you need. “For example, you can search a colleague’s name and further narrow your results by selecting search chips like attachment type (Text document, Spreadsheet, PDF) or a specific timeframe. You can also filter out certain results, like calendar invites,” Google explained in a blog post.
The new search chips can be seen in the screenshot above. They’ll look like buttons that you can easily click to filter results. More experienced users already know how to use filters when searching through their inbox, but the new tool will make the entire process a lot more user-friendly than before.
To get the filters, you should just load up Gmail as you usually do and wait for your corner of the world to get the update. G Suite users should be the first ones to notice the update, but it’ll eventually reach all Gmail consumer accounts. It’s unclear when the Gmail mobile apps will get the feature, however.
