Gmail has become a go-to email platform for millions, and it’s easy to see why. Its intuitive design, coupled with a slew of handy features like powerful search capabilities, customizable labels, and seamless integration with other Google apps, makes it a user-friendly choice that’s also free.
Plus, a plethora of apps and plugins further enhance its functionality, tailoring it to diverse needs.
Yet, even with Gmail’s efficiency, managing email can still consume a significant chunk of your day.
If you find yourself bogged down by emails more than you’d like, it’s time for some strategic changes.
In this article, we’ll dive into 13 practical Gmail tips to streamline your email management and free up your time for greater productivity. Let’s get started on transforming how you use Gmail to make your day more efficient.
13 Gmail Tips And Tricks To Increase Productivity in 2024
Gmail Tip #1: Unsubscribe from lists
I have a confession to make: I am an addicted subscriber. I basically subscribe to anything, sometimes several times. When I see an ebook, a whitepaper, or some content I find interesting, I won’t even think about whether I should give my email address in return; I just type it in and hit subscribe.
You can imagine what my inbox looked like, and yes, it was a total chaos until I started to unsubscribe from lists that didn’t provide value to me. It can sound like overkill to subscribe and then unsubscribe to lists, but be honest; we have all subscribed to a list just to get that one free ebook. Haven’t we?
So, how can you sort through your subscriptions in the fastest way possible? There’s a fantastic tool called UnRoll.me, which scans your inbox for subscriptions. For me, it found 124—I told you I was a subscriber junkie!
Then, it creates a dashboard where you can manage all your lists using functions such as unsubscribe, keep in the inbox, and so on.
Gmail Tip #2: Use Canned Responses To Respond Faster
Canned responses can be very useful when you need to write a lot of emails but don’t want to use an email automation tool. You can create templates in your Gmail account and use them later by typing in a keyword.
Here’s how you can set up the feature on your Gmail account:
1. Open Gmail and sign in.
2. Go to Settings: Click the gear icon > “See all settings.”
3. Enable Templates: Under the “Advanced” tab, find “Templates”. Then, select “Enable” and click “Save Changes”.
4. Compose Email: Click “+ Compose” and draft your email.
5. Save Template: Click the three dots > “Templates” > “Save draft as template” > “Save as new template.”
6. Name Your Template: Give it a name and save it.
7. Use a Template: To use an existing template, click “+ Compose,” then the three dots > “Templates,” and select your template.
8. Edit/Delete Templates: To edit, insert the template, make changes, and save. To delete, choose “Delete template” under the template name.
Gmail Tip #3: Make Use Of Custom Keyboard Shortcuts
Now, this may sound trivial, but many still don’t use this valuable feature of Gmail. The principle is the same as with any other shortcut feature; you can set up custom shortcuts for custom actions to reduce time when sifting your emails.
To use this, follow these steps:
1. Click on the gear icon in the upper right corner of your Gmail account to access Settings, then select “See all settings.”
2. Go to the “Advanced” tab.
3. Scroll to find “Custom keyboard shortcuts” and select “Enable.” Click “Save Changes” at the bottom.
4. After saving, a new “Keyboard Shortcuts” tab will appear in the Settings menu. Click on this tab.
5. Here, you’ll see a list of actions with their default shortcuts. To customize, enter your desired key combinations in the text boxes next to each action.
Now you can reply, delete, archive and much more at the click of a button. It’s definitely a feature worth setting up.
Gmail Tip #4: Undo Sending
magine this: You wrote an email response that you’re quite proud of.
But right after you sent it, you happened to spot two missed prepositions, one typo, and one missing attachment. You could swear this wasn’t the case a second ago when you sent it.
We have all been here.
This is where the unsend feature on Gmail is a boon for all of us. With this feature, you’ll never have to send another follow-up email correcting the mistakes of the previous email. You can simply retract the sent email and make corrections to it.
To set it up:
- Go to settings in Gmail
- On the ‘General’ tab, find the ‘Undo Send’ option
- Check the box to enable it
- Set the time for the cancellation period (between 10-20 seconds is fine)
Gmail Tip #5: Use Gmail Offline
Did you know that you can use Gmail in offline mode? This feature allows you to write, delete, and search your emails without an internet connection.
Any emails you write, delete, or organize while offline will be automatically updated once you reconnect to the internet. This is particularly useful when you need to concentrate on your tasks without interruptions from incoming emails.
Here’s how to enable Offline Mode in Gmail:
1. Go to Gmail settings by clicking the gear icon.
2. Select ‘See all settings’, then go to the ‘Offline’ tab.
3. Check ‘Enable offline mail’, choose your settings, such as how many days of messages you want to sync, and click ‘Save changes’.
Limited Functionality in Offline Mode:
- Sending Emails: Emails composed offline will be stored in your ‘Outbox’ and sent automatically when you go online.
- Searching Emails: You can search your emails up to the last 90 days, depending on your settings.
- Reading and Organizing: You can read and organize your emails as usual, but changes will only sync once you’re back online.
Using Gmail Offline can greatly enhance your productivity by allowing you to manage emails without distractions. Make sure to sync important emails before going offline to maximize this feature’s usefulness.
Gmail Tip #6: Follow up on your emails efficiently
Sending a well-crafted, concise and professional email is just step one of the process. Following up on your conversations is crucial to ensure that you’re communicating effectively with the recipient.
But sometimes you might miss sending out follow-up emails or simply forget about that one email you sent that never got a response.
Thankfully, Gmail offers some in-built features to help you keep track of your emails. Here are two such features and how to enable them:
1. Nudges: Gmail can nudge you to follow up on emails that you might have missed or forgotten to reply to. To activate this, go into your Gmail settings under the ‘General’ tab, scroll and find ‘Nudges’ and enable reminders to reply to or follow up on emails.
2. Email Scheduling: If you need to send a follow-up at a specific future date and time, Gmail allows you to schedule emails. This is particularly helpful if you are sending a reminder to someone working in a different timezone, but you want them to receive your follow-up email during their peak working hours.
This is done by composing your email and then clicking on the dropdown next to the send button to select “Schedule send,” where you can choose the exact time for the email to be sent.
If your goal is to avoid being tracked and forbid others to monitor your email habits, there are options for that too. To maintain your privacy and prevent senders from tracking when and how you interact with their emails, you can use several strategies and tools directly in Gmail:
1. Block Automatic Image Loading:
Most email tracking is achieved through hidden images (often called tracking pixels). You can stop Gmail from automatically displaying these images, which effectively prevents many trackers from knowing if you’ve opened an email. To do this:
- Go to Gmail settings by clicking the gear icon.
- Navigate to “See all settings,” then the “General” tab.
- Scroll to “Images” and select “Ask before displaying external images.”
4. Save your changes.
2. Use Email Extensions:
Extensions like Ugly Email and PixelBlock can help you detect and block email trackers as you use Gmail on your web browser. These tools alert you to tracking attempts and block them, maintaining your privacy while you read your emails.
By implementing these steps, you can significantly reduce the amount of tracking information that email senders can collect about you, enhancing your online privacy and control over your personal data.
Gmail Tip #8: Identify the sender via email address
Finally, this is one of my favorite extensions that you can use to pimp up your Gmail. Let’s say you get an email from a sender, and you have no idea who it is. It would take precious time to research the sender, but not if you have Clearbit Connect in your Gmail.
This plugin will help you gather all the information available from both the sender (mainly from social sites) and the company they work for and show it on the right side of your inbox.
And if that’s not enough, you can search for a specific email from a specific company you want to connect with. Just type in the company name in the search bar and the list of email addresses will appear.
Gmail Tip #9: Create Custom Filters To Increase Productivity
Google comes with a great set of built-in filters, but you can increase your productivity even more by adding your own.
You can add filters to send emails from certain addresses into specific folders, for example, or route specific emails into junk, based on certain keywords. The result will be a cleaner inbox and the ability to easily find emails that have been neatly sorted into custom folders.
This is a great solution for senders that you don’t want to flag as spam, but you don’t want too many emails from them cluttering your inbox.
Gmail Tip #10: Build a Set of IFTTT Recipes For Gmail
IFTTT pairs well with Gmail. Here are just a few examples of recipes you can create with IFTTT and Gmail:
- Sending email attachments directly to DropBox
- Create calendar entries when emails are labeled “To Do”
- Get text alerts when you receive mail from certain senders
- Send starred emails to Evernote
With a little bit of experimenting, you can probably come up with even more recipes on your own. This automation will help you to become more productive and save time.
Gmail Tip #11: Use Shared Email Templates to Save Time
Hiver enables you to create templates so that you no longer have to write repetitive emails.
Additionally, you can also share your email templates with other colleagues who use Hiver.
This way, you don’t waste time composing the same responses over and over again, and you also save time for the entire team.
If you have email subscribers, you can use Shared templates to send out an automated thank you to new subscribers rather than contacting them one by one.
Gmail Tip #12: Manage Complex Conversations With Quoted Text
Let’s say somebody has sent you a long email, covering multiple points.
How do you respond in a way that allows you to keep track of your own thoughts and allows the recipient to understand which points you are addressing easily?
One thing that you can do is use quoted text. This gives you the ability to select and snip out text from an email you have received and paste it elegantly into your response.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Open Gmail, and copy the part of the email you want to reply to.
2. Click Reply.
3. Click Formatting options. Click on ‘Quotes’
4. Next to the gray bar, paste the original message text.
5. Press Enter and enter your response below the original message.
6. Click Send.
This way, both you and the person you are communicating with can keep things straight. Quoting text is also a great way to avoid unintentional misunderstandings, which could lead to sending more emails.
Gmail Tip #13: Use Unread Messages to Treat FOMO
If you are continually checking your inbox, you aren’t likely to miss out on anything important. But unfortunately, doing this can seriously hamper your productivity.
You can make checking up on your inbox faster and easier by enabling the Unread First feature on Gmail. Once you do this, all your unread emails will appear first in your inbox.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Go to your Gmail Settings. Then, click on ‘See All Settings’.
2. Select the Inbox tab.
3. Change Inbox type to Unread first.
4. Click the Save Changes button.
Wouldn’t this be much less stressful than stopping what you are doing constantly to check your inbox?
Conclusion
Remember that these tips are all about making your email routine more efficient and less time-consuming. From using labels and filters to streamline your inbox, to mastering keyboard shortcuts for quicker navigation—Gmail has numerous features to customize your experience.
By adopting these strategies, you’ll not only save valuable time but also turn your inbox into an organized, efficient command center. Make the most of these Gmail hacks to stay focused and productive in both your professional and personal life. Here’s to leveraging your Gmail to its fullest potential in 2024!
