40 Gmail Tips and Tricks You Probably Haven’t Tried Yet

Like most working people, a large part of your day is probably taken up with managing your emails. But whether you’re filtering through your inbox, composing an important message, or organizing your mail into folders, your time could be better spent doing more important tasks.

40 Gmail Tips and Tricks for 2024

To help you maximize your email productivity, we’ve put together a list of 30 Gmail tips and tricks that will help you get the most out of your account, and save you valuable time in the process.

1. Gmail search

Gmail has over 20 search operators you can use to find messages or create filters. You can even combine search operators to create a super-specific search inquiry.

The most basic search inquiries include:

• Locating an email from a specific sender by typing in “from:”
• Locating an email to a specific recipient by typing in “to:”
• Finding an email that was received after a specific date, by typing in “after:” followed by the date

To narrow down your search, you can combine search inquiries. For example, to find an email that was received from a specific recipient within the last two months that included an attachment, click the drop-down arrow to the right of the search box:

Then use the advanced search criteria to narrow down your search:

You can also set up filters so that the search criteria is saved for future searches.

2. Conversation view

If you like to keep all emails in a thread together, you can turn on “Conversation View.”

To do this, go to Settings > Conversation View > select Conversation view on:

3. Undo send

Since 2015, Gmail has allowed users to recall a message sent in error up to 30 seconds after they click Send.

When you send a message in Gmail, you’ll see a pop-up message appear.

Simply click Undo, and you’ll retrieve your email. Make sure not to click view message, click away from the message, or wait longer than the allocated time.

To change the time frame in which you can recall your messages, go to Settings, scroll to Undo Send, and choose your cancellation period using the drop-down list.

4. Schedule send

Like to work late in the evening? Have clients in different time zones? On holiday?

This is where Right Inbox’s email scheduling feature comes to the rescue. Schedule your emails to be delivered at just the right time for recipients.

Instantly align with schedules of remote contacts with time zone support.

5.  Confidential mode

Gmail lets you compose an email which will automatically be deleted later on. These might be emails that you don’t want the recipient to save, copy, download, or forward.

Once you’ve composed your email, click the clock icon at the bottom right-hand corner of the message, and then set an expiry date.

You can also choose to set a passcode that the recipient will receive via SMS (if you click the SMS passcode box) or email (if you click the No SMS passcode box).

6. Smart compose

Smart compose lets users enable predictive words and phrases to appear when they start typing an email. It also learns how you usually write an email so that you always sound like you.

Go to Settings and scroll to Smart compose. Enable by clicking on Writing suggestions on.

7. Send money

Gmail now lets users send money via email. But be aware: to use this feature, both you and the recipient have to be set up with Google Pay.

To send money, compose your email, and click the $ button.

Now enter the amount of money you wish to send, and a note if you like. Click Attach Money.

8. Canned responses

Canned responses allow users to set up their own email templates in their inbox.

To set this up, go to Settings > Advanced Settings  > Canned responses. Click Enable.

9. Check spelling

To check your spelling, navigate to the 3 dots at the bottom right of your email composer and click Check spelling.

10. Preview messages

Gmail’s preview pane is a useful way of looking at the first snippet of your emails before you open them.

11. Mute conversations

If you’re involved in an email thread that’s getting noisy, you can choose to mute the conversation.

Go into the conversation and click on the 3 dots at the top. In the drop-down, click Mute.

12. Sync with your calendar

Your Google calendar is automatically synced with your Gmail account and will appear in the right-hand side of your screen when you click the calendar icon. Did you know you can merge multiple Google calendars?

13. Remove unwanted tabs

Gmail automatically comes with Primary, Social, and Promotions tabs already displayed, but you can choose to remove or add different tabs.

Go to Settings > Inbox > Categories to make changes.

14. Use color-coded stars

You can use Gmail’s colored stars to organize the emails within your inbox. In Settings, scroll to Stars, and drag the color stars from Not in use to In use so that you can start applying them to emails as you send and receive them.

15. Add emails to your tasks

If you have a task list in Gmail, you can add emails to it so that you can respond at a later date. You’ll also be reminded of them on a regular basis.

To set this up, select an email or emails from your inbox, go to More, and select Add to Tasks.

To check in with your task list, click the Tasks icon on the right-hand side on your inbox.

16.  Use send and archive

To reply to an email and archive it at the same time, you need to enable Send and Archive.

Go to Settings > Send and Archive > Show “Send & Archive” button in reply.

17. Give someone access to your email account

Sometimes you need to give another person access to your email account. To do so, go to Settings > Accounts and Import > Grant access to your account.

Click Leave conversation as unread when opened by others to ensure that you can easily identify which messages you haven’t read yet.

18.  Use multiple Gmail accounts at the same time

If you have more than one Gmail account, you can log into multiple accounts at the same time.

To do this, log into your first email account, and click on your profile icon in the top right-hand corner.

Type in your second email address and password. You’ll now see the second email account appear in a new tab. Continue this process until you’ve entered all the other Gmail addresses you own.

19.Use Google Hangouts within Gmail

Google Hangouts let you and your Gmail contacts chat from within Gmail.

To use it, click the Hangouts icon in the bottom left of your inbox, and choose the contact you want to connect with. A dialog box will appear on the bottom right-hand side of your inbox.

20. Make a phone call from Gmail

To do this, you’ll need to register your mobile number with Gmail. To register, enter your number. You’ll then receive a verification code via SMS. You’ll also need a microphone and speakers.

Once you’re registered to make calls, go to the telephone icon in the bottom left-hand corner of your inbox.

Choose the contact you wish to call and click on it. You’ll appear to the contact as “No caller ID.”

21. Sort Your Emails Before You Even Open Them

While most of us are familiar with hovering over emails to archive them, delete them, mark them as unread, not many know there is a right-click menu.

Right-click on the email for even more options.

22. Get Rid of Horizontal Scrollbars

It can be pretty annoying when someone sends an email that has a horizontal scroll bar. This happens when an image is too wide or hidden within the email.

Don’t be that person. Head over to your settings to make sure your logo doesn’t do this.

23. Use Advanced Filters

Some users don’t use filters to maximize productivity. There are many ways you can tame your inbox with advanced filters. Read our guide here.

24. Use Shortcuts

Shortcuts are essential to being more productive with your inbox. Check out some of these shortcuts that you can learn quickly and start using today.

25. Access Gmail via Outlook or Yahoo Mail

Yes, this is possible. If you don’t want to use the Gmail interface for any reason, you can see your Gmail messages in Yahoo and Outlook.

For Yahoo Mail, click the Settings icon. Then choose More Settings followed by Mailboxes. Choose Mailbox, and then add Gmail.

If you are an Outlook.com user, you need to go to the Gear icon. Then choose View all followed by Mail, and then finally Sync Email.

26. Keep Tabs on Which Apps Have Access to Your Account

It’s always important to see what apps you still have connected to your Gmail. Periodically go back and check them.

Simply head over to myaccount.google.com. Then click Security. Find “Apps with account access,” and you’ll be able to clean up any apps that you no longer use and keep your account safe.

27. Keep Your Inbox Less Cluttered by Using Block Instead of Spam

Do you ever get bored of marking emails from the same sender as Spam? If so, click on the main menu and then just block the sender. All future emails from them will get sent straight to spam.

28. Send from another account

One really cool feature of Gmail is sending an email from another account from within your same inbox. It doesn’t even need to be a Gmail email either.

To get it set up, go over to Settings and then Accounts and Import. You’ll see a section called Send mail as where you’ll click on Add another email address.

From here, you can add the other email account you want to be able to send from.

29. Labels

It’s important to stay organized if you have a busy inbox. Gmail helps you out with this by allowing you to create labels (aka folders) for different categories of emails. You can add multiple labels to an email and it will appear in both folders.

To create a label, scroll down on the left hand sidebar and select Create new label.

You can even nest multiple labels within each other by creating sub labels.

30. Snooze notifications

Sometimes you’re in a deep flow state, or simply don’t want to be disturbed by notifications for other reasons. Luckily, you can snooze your notifications in Gmail for whatever time frame suits you.

To snooze an email, hover over it until you see a clock icon pop up.

Click on that icon and you can select how long you want to snooze the email for. You can find snoozed emails in the Snoozed folder on the left hand sidebar.

31. Archive

These days, it’s easy to have a full, cluttered inbox. If you want to clean things up, you can use the Archive feature to hide emails away for later without actually deleting them. Just click the Archive button (that looks like a down arrow).

You can find archived emails later on the left hand toolbar.

32. Use offline

Gmail has a handy feature that lets you read and reply to your Gmail emails even when offline. However, you’ll need to turn it on with a few steps.

First, go to Settings then click All settings, followed by Offline. Once in the Offline tab, select Enable offline mail. You can select various options of how you want your offline access to be set up before saving the changes.

33. Unsubscribe

There is no mass unsubscribe button within Gmail. However, you don’t have to download any third party services in order to find emails from marketers or other lists you might want to unsubscribe from.

Instead, you can simply type unsubscribe into the search bar in your inbox. Most emails you’re subscribed to will have an unsubscribe link somewhere in each email, so it’s a great way to quickly pull up all your subscriptions in one place.

34. Attachments

You can easily add attachments to Gmail. However, it’s helpful to know that if you forgot to add your attachment and mentioned “attachment” somewhere in your email, Gmail will give you a popup reminder before you send it out.

35. Create an alias

You can create different email addresses easily to have multiple aliases by adding a + and other word after your email.

This is useful for keeping track of which sender new emails come from. For instance, you can sign up for financial news with the alias “MyEmailAddress+Finances@Gmail.com.”

36. Right click for a context menu

Right click on any email to see a handy list of quick actions, saving a bunch of time.

37. Night mode

Want to change up the look of your Gmail? Does it feel a little boring? No worries, you can adjust the appearance of your Gmail for a more interesting or aesthetic experience.

Gmail comes with a pre-built library of themes, so no additional downloads needed.

To choose your new theme, go to Settings, then All settings.

Navigate to the Themes tab.

Click on Set theme and you’ll see a window where you can select from a variety of color and even photo themes.

Advanced Gmail Tips

38. Recurring Emails in Gmail

While Gmail offers a fair amount of functionality, it doesn’t yet allow you to send recurring emails. But when you use a tool like Right Inbox, it’s all taken care of. A recurring email tool is something that most email users wouldn’t ever think about. But for people who are sending the same emails day after day, it can be a huge time-saver.

Schedule emails to be sent out automatically at a time and frequency of your choosing. Set frequency, specific days, time of day, start date, end date and even time zone. Use for monthly invoices, weekly meeting agendas, quarterly expense reports etc.

Addition Reading: How to Send Recurring Emails in Gmail

39. Managing Multiple Signatures

Create fitting signatures for every email context you find yourself in. Get more email replies and leads with the perfect sign-off for every context.

You can use different signatures for your emails. For example, you can set a signature default for new emails you compose or reply to. You can also choose a different signature with each email you send. Write your email, then insert the perfect Gmail signature with one click.

40. Email Templates in Gmail

Turn your most effective emails in templates you can insert and optimize with one click. Optimize and personalize your Gmail email template to fit every contact’s unique context.

If you find yourself regularly sending the same types of emails, like expense reminders, or having to send the same reply to multiple emails, you’ll also save time by pulling up a template rather than drafting each one from scratch. Using email templates also brings consistency to your email communication.