5 Cool GMail Tips

As the most popular email service on the planet, Google’s Gmail needs no introduction. The Material Design-inspired interface brings a simple, appealing interface, as well as a plethora of extensions that improve Gmail’s functionality and it packs in a lot of features. In fact, Gmail packs in a lot more than what meets the eye.If you are a Gmail user then use these tricks to make the most out of your experience.

Use Different Coloured Stars

There happen to be more stars than just the usual yellow one. To enable more stars in Gmail, you can head to Gmail Settings, scroll down in the General tab to the Stars section. Here, you can drag and drop different stars to the In Use section to enable them. When you are done, just hit the Save Changes button at the bottom.

Now, you can click on the star icon next to emails multiple times to get the different stars. You can use different colored stars to mark emails as important, urgent or something you are done with. For instance, you can use the red star for urgent emails, yellow star for important emails and green stars for emails you are done with but want them in the Starred section.

Enable Preview Pane

The same preview pane available in Outlook is available in Gmail as well. Preview Pane adds an additional pane to your Inbox so that you can view your emails from your inbox. This is certainly handy when you want to shuffle through multiple emails.
To enable the Preview Pane, hit the cog wheel icon on the top right and pan towards Settings.

Navigate to the Labs tab, scroll down to find or the Preview Pane option. Select Enable and click on Save Changes.

Gmail will then reload and you will find a new icon next to the Settings icon. You can click on its drop-down menu button to choose from Vertical Split or Horizontal Split.
Use the vertical split option so you see all the emails you’d normally see, while also letting you check all your emails.

Create Disposable Email Aliases for Sign Ups

Create disposable email addresses and make sure emails from sign ups land up in spam. For the email id “example@gmail.com“, you can just use “example+website@gmail.com” as your disposable email address.
Gmail does not consider any text after “+” as email addresses, so when you get an email on example+website@gmail.com, it’ll land up in example@gmail.test.

Once you've signed up for a service you don’t want to receive emails from, you can set up a filter that makes sure emails to the dThere are times when we are typing an email and accidentally hit the send button. While that’s fine for informal emails, it’s bad if it happens when you are sending an important formal mail. Thankfully, disposable address automatically gets archived.
All you need to do is hit the drop-down button in the Gmail search bar. In the advanced search page, type in the example+website@gmail.com address in the To section and then, click on the Create filter with this search option.

On the following page, you shall be able to choose the option to Skip the Inbox (Archive it), Delete or Create filter. That is it, now whenever you receive an email on the disposable address, it will be automatically deleted or archived.

Undo Send

Gmail has included a very useful includes a potentially life-saving Undo Send functionality, which as you might have guessed, lets you revoke sent messages.
To enable Undo Send, head to Gmail Settings and in the General tab, find the Undo Send option and enable it. Here, you can also set the time period for cancellation, between 3 and 20 seconds.

After this, you should probably send a test email.
Alongside the sending message alert on top, you will find the Undo button, which you can click on to stop the message.

Email Tracking

You know once you've sent out an important email and but you’re anxious to know whether the email has been read or if it landed in spam? Gmail has certain extensions that allow you track emails.

Install the Mailtrack extension to your Inbox if you just want to keep a check on the emails you’ve sent. The free version tracks unlimited emails. Once installed, it works automatically and you don’t have to do anything. It even includes checkmark icons for read receipts, however, it does not let you disable tracking for specific emails.

You can also check the emails which have any tracking code enabled in them. For this, you can use the Uglymail extension, which shows an eye icon aside emails that have some kind of tracking enabled.

Bonus: Send Encrypted Emails

Should you need to send sensitive information via Gmail, there is a way to ensure end-to-end encryption. SecureGmail extension lets you send encrypted emails from Gmail.
Once you've downloaded it from the Chrome Store, just open up Gmail or refresh it if it’s already open. Then, you will see a lock icon alongside the Compose button. Just click on it to start composing an encrypted email.
When you hit the “Send Encrypted” button, you will be prompted to enter the “Encryption Password” and the password hint, which will be required by the recipient to decrypt the email.

Once done, the email will be sent and the recipient will have to enter the password to open the email.

I hope these tricks should enhance your Gmail experience in a positive way. Let us know of any you use and have found helpful in the section below. Thanks for visiting Base64!