gmail is the factory default email app on most of our mobile devices, which translates to being the most used email manager on Android with more than 10,000 million downloads, and luckily we are also facing one of the best applications to manage our emails.
So that you can master the email client of Google we bring you one selection with 21 functions and tricks for Gmail with options and features that every user should know.
Conversations list density
In 2019, the Gmail application released a new interface, changing the density of the list of conversations, a design that we can customize from Settings > General Settings > Conversation List Density. It allows us to select between these three options:
- Default: Show attachments directly in the inbox. We will see fewer emails on the screen.
- Comfortable: The classic view of the previous version of Gmail. Does not display attachments in the input view.
- Compact: A new view that compacts the list to show more emails on the screen. It does not show the photos of the contacts.
Input tray type
Since Settings and clicking on your Google account, we can change the Input tray type, that is, the order in which we want the emails to be seen. So we can tell the application to show us important messages first, unread messages, highlighted messages, or priority messages.
Inbox categories
for years gmail organizes our emails for us through its categories that we can activate or deactivate from the option Inbox categories. There we can activate or deactivate the following tabs:
- Social: Social media messages and online dating.
- Promotions: Advertising messages.
- Notifications: Notices of confirmations, invoice receipts, and website notifications.
- Forums: Group messages and distribution lists.
Search Filters
To locate an email Gmail for Android offers us some search filters so that we can filter by label, by sender, recipient, by type of attachments, by date or unread message also by text field.
schedule delivery
Gmail allows us to write a message and send it later. For this, we only have to use the option schedule delivery that we find in the options menu that appears while we are writing an email. We select a date and confirm so that the message is delivered on the indicated day and time.
Postpone a message
We can also postpone a received message so that as a reminder we get the notification of a new message received again. To do this we just have to select or open the mail and in the options menu select the option Postpone.
Cancel sending a message
If when we have sent an email we realize that we have made a mistake in the message or in the recipient we have a few seconds to cancel the sending of the message. For a few seconds, we will see at the bottom of the application the option ‘Undo’.
confidential mode
Gmail also allows you to send temporary messages that self-destruct. When we are writing a message we just have to go to the menu and select the option confidential mode. Here we can configure when we want the message to expire (self-destruct) and if we want the recipients to need to receive a password by SMS to be able to open the mail. Confidential messages will not have the option to forward, copy, print, or download.
Auto-reply
If we are going to go on vacation and we are going to be out of the office for many days, we can schedule an auto-reply from our account settings. There we can configure the days that we will be out, the subject, and the email message, in addition to selecting that this automatic response is only sent to our contacts.
Block and mark as spam
If we receive a spam message, Gmail offers us two options. In the message options menu, we can mark it as spam to stop receiving more of this type of email in the inbox, but in the sender’s options, we can block the user to stop receiving more messages.
Default notification action
By default, Gmail notifications show us the option to archive a message, but from the General adjustments, we can change that behavior so that it allows us to remove directly an email from your notification.
Confirmation of actions
If you don’t want to send, archive, or delete messages by mistake you can activate the action confirmations from the General Gmail Settings. So when you have to send, archive or delete you will have to confirm before.
Swipe Actions
When we are in the inbox and we slide an email to the sides, by default it always shows us the ‘Archive’ option, a behavior that we can customize from the General adjustments. In the option Swipe Actions we can configure what action we want to be performed when swiping right and left.
Add a signature
From the settings of our account we can activate the ‘Signature for mobile’ so that whenever we reply to an email from our mobile, a personalized message is added, which can be a greeting and our name so that we don’t always have to write it every time we go to reply to a message.
Delete Chat and Meet
google-chat Y Google Meet is integrated into Gmail, which means that we can see the tabs of chats, spaces, and video calls. If some of these tabs appear, or we want to activate them, we have to go to our account settings and activate or deactivate the options chat Y Show the Meeting tab to make video calls.
Add other accounts
Gmail not only works for Gmail accounts, but it also works with any type of email account like Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo, or Exchange. To add more email accounts to Gmail for Android we just have to click on the photo of our account and then on add another account.
Quickly switch between accounts
If we have configured several email accounts in Gmail for Android we can quickly exchange between accounts sliding your finger on the image of our avatar up or down.
open web links
Default Gmail for Android opens the web links directly in the application, and this presents inconveniences when opening a link from Gmail itself and then asks us for a code that has been sent to us again by email. For this Gmail allows us to Open Chrome the website that we are seeing from Gmail or from the General adjustments and disable the option to open web links in Gmail.
unsubscribe
If we receive a subscription that we want to stop receiving, it is possible that from the mail options menu the option unsubscribe which saves us from having to search through the small print of the email for the option to unsubscribe.
Save attachments to Drive or Photos
If we receive a document or image by Gmail that we want to keep in our Google account we can save the attachment directly to Google Drive or Google Photos. In the preview of the attached file, the shortcuts to save them in Drive or Photos appear.
automatic download
Finally, Gmail comes with an automatic download activated, which will download all Wi-Fi attachments. If we want to save storage we can deactivate this behavior by unchecking the option from our account settings ‘Download attachments’.
