If you want an empty inbox or close to it, I will be giving you several tips on how to use Gmail, one of the most popular free email services, to optimize your email experience. Although many of us get more emails than we can easily manage, some of these emails are incredibly important and time sensitive while other emails aren’t much better than spam. How can we avoid getting bogged down in junk mail while still ensuring that we don’t miss our most important emails, or is it the empty inbox dream that in reality you feel can never be reach?
Native Mobile App- Inbox by Gmail
Google has just released a new service called Inbox by Gmail. It’s currently invite only, but you can send an email to inbox@google.com to request an invite.
Having only used the service for a day, my thoughts are preliminary, but I can say that I think this service has promise. Inbox does not have to replace Gmail. You can use both, and Inbox is set up so that what you do in Inbox will—in theory—work seamlessly with your current setup.
The user interface is beautiful and I can see how some of the features will be incredibly useful. For example, you can bundle emails together in your inbox so that all the emails you get from that listserv aren’t cluttering your email inbox. The pin feature is a great improvement on the starring you could already do with Gmail. With Inbox, you can click a button at the top of your inbox and only see pinned items to quickly see the most important things you need to deal with. The snooze feature is very similar to a function previously offered by Boomerang—more on Boomerang later—and lets you hide an email from inbox until a time when the email is more relevant. Other features with potential are reminders: you can tie reminders to specific emails to help you to remember what you’re wanting to do with it and create general reminders to do things like remind you to contact someone. I’m less certain about the sweep feature that auto-archives everything in your inbox that isn’t pinned, but this could be great for some people’s workflow. The assist feature sounds great, but I haven’t noticed Inbox doing much in this regard for me yet.
This is all in early stages. Currently, you can only use Inbox in Chrome (at inbox.google.com) and on Android and Apple phones and tablets. It may not be for everyone, but I suggest you request an invite and give it a try.
Timed Filters for Regular Mortals
If code makes you squeamish and you don’t have an invite to Inbox yet, there are other ways to optimize your Gmail experience. If you haven’t already done so, I suggest that you explore Gmail Labs tab under settings. There are some interesting things you can do with these features. But what might be the most useful feature you can enable under Gmail’s settings is to turn on the “Send and Archive” button. If you turn this on, there will be a send and archive option next to the send option at the bottom of your emails. This allows you to archive you won’t need in your inbox after you’ve replied to them as you send them.
Outside of Gmail’s internal settings, there are third-party apps that allow you to do things you can’t do with Gmail alone—though this is changing to some extent with Inbox. Boomerang is an effective and easy to use tool for maximizing Gmail. Boomerang let’s you schedule an email to be sent later—so that people think you sent it at 7am instead of 3am. You can also have Boomerang temporarily remove an email from your inbox and schedule its return to your inbox at a more relevant time. This second feature is now provided by Inbox’s snooze function, but I haven’t run across a schedule to send later option in Inbox. Boomerang is free for a limited number of uses per month, but if you want unlimited use you’ll have to pay them.
Timed Filters for Advance Users
Most people who use Gmail know about filters, but are less aware about the possibilities for timed filters.
Timed filters make it easier to deal with recurring emails such as daily calendar emails from Google Calendar and semi-spam such as Newegg’s deal email barrage you want to see and then want gone, as well as emails you want to see and then want archived for later such as notifications from blogs you follow.
Lifehacker provides a great article on a Google Apps Script you can use to automatically clean up Gmail with timed filters, but you can also visit JohnEDay’s article in which the Lifehacker’s advice is based upon for the basics on how to utilize scripts.
I found Lifehacker’s advice very useful for things I want to see but don’t want to keep—e.g., Google Calendar emails and semi-spam—but less useful for things I want to arrive in my inbox but then archive to look at later—such as email notifications from blogs I follow. Lifehacker’s post provides another script for archiving, but I didn’t like it as posted—it automatically archives all opened emails after two days—because sometimes I have an important pending email I want to keep in my inbox and don’t want to have to mark as unread for it to stay.
Thankfully, you can modify the auto-archive script to only archive particular emails after two days—or whatever amount of time you want. In case you don’t know how to edit script, I’m posting the script as I revised it for filtering blog notifications. This script archives, rather than deletes, these emails so that I can get back to them later if and when I have more time:
function archiveBlogs() {
// Archive blog notification emails after two days
var threads = GmailApp.search(‘label:Blogs older_than:2d’);
for (var i = 0; i < threads.length; i++) {
threads[i].moveToArchive();
}
}
If you use this code, the email notifications will arrive in your inbox where they’ll stay for 2 days—you can change the length of time—after which they’ll be moved out of your inbox. They will still be available under the “Blogs” label in case you want to go back to them later.
For this and the code from Lifehacker to work, you’ll first need to create Gmail labels—e.g., “Blogs”—and set up filters that will label emails appropriately. If you don’t have labels with the names in the script before you run it, you’ll get an error message.
Third Party Mobile Apps
Email can be overwhelming, but you can move toward making your email work for you rather than you working for it. Inbox shows great promise, but I would need to use longer in order to recommend it with certainty. If you can figure out how to use them, timed filters can transform your experience with clutter emails you may want to see vanish. Also, using Gmail labs located in your email settings can also help enhance your Gmail experience. If you are looking for an excellent third-party mobile app alternative, Mailbox is a useful mobile app download that will help keep your Gmail inbox organized.
Finally, third-party apps let you do things you wouldn’t normally be able to do with Gmail. However, with the new release of Inbox by Gmail, third-party app features may be redundant.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzNTjpUMOp4[/youtube]
