We’ve come a long way, when it comes to the evolution of personal computers, but if you’ve started using a PC before the iPhone came out, then you’ve probably been trained to navigate laptops and desktops with the help of mouse (or trackpad) and take advantage by all the features associated with their buttons. “Right-clicking” is a gesture that many people are more than familiar with, and many apps take advantage of the extra menu that can be associated with the secondary mouse click. Gmail, sadly, wasn’t one of them until Monday, when Google announced some important updates for the right-click menu of the popular email app.
As it is right now, right-clicking on an email can only get you three additional options, including Archive, Mark as unread, and Delete. While useful, that’s nearly not enough, as that menu alone could feature additional options that could boost your productivity. Google seems to have realized as much, and it’s now expanding the right-click menu to include several other items.
According to a Google announcement, the right-click menu will have two distinct appearances, one with conversation mode on (image above), and the other one with conversation mode off (image below).
The menu items are slightly different, as you can see in these screenshots, but the right-click menu will now let you reply to and forward emails without clicking on the message; sort emails; snooze and mute emails; find emails from the same sender or with similar topic; as well as open multiple emails in multiple new windows at the same time. Many of these features are already available in Gmail, but they’ll be even easier to access from the right-click menu.
If you can’t see the changes in your Gmail inbox, that’s because Google has just started the rollout, so it’ll reach your Gmail inbox soon. The new right-click menu will be turned on by default for all accounts.
