For many email users, Gmail seemed like a gift from the heavens when it first debuted in April 2004. Compared to other popular email services at the time it was unique, simple and free, and it offered far more storage than any rival service. Fast-forward to 2014 and Gmail is still one of the top email services in the world, but it has also gotten far more complex. Gmail was all about making people’s lives easier in 2004 but now, 10 years later, it’s a feature-packed service with so many great value-adds that it’s easy to miss things in all of that clutter.
Thankfully, there are plenty of great guides out there to help you optimize and organize Gmail so you can ensure that you’re getting the most out of Google’s great free email service.
One such guide was published this week by CNET, and it includes seven terrific tips and tricks that will help you dramatically improve your Gmail experience.
First and foremost, Gmail’s new tabs feature can really help users who receive a lot of mail to better organize their inboxes. For example, adding Google’s “promotions” tab will break off most of those annoying promo and newsletter emails so that you can run through them quickly and easily.
Next up, adding a “mark as read” button to the Gmail interface makes it easier to skip over emails you aren’t concerned with. After that, making use of the “send and archive” function will help reduce clutter.
For the rest of CNET’s great tips and tricks, head over to their post, which is linked below in our source section.
The one thing we’ll add for users who really want to change the way they deal with email is to check out Dropbox’s Mailbox app on iOS or Android. Clearing out your inbox and dumping everything into Gmail’s archive will change your life. Seriously.
For more help getting the most out of Gmail, check out these 5 great tricks every Gmail user needs to know.
