Seven hidden Gmail tricks everyone should know

Gmail has a clean, simple interface — but there’s more under the hood than meets the eye.

There are tons of hidden hacks and tricks to streamline your Gmail experience — including undoing a heavily worded email.

Over 300 billion Emails were sent every day in 2020 – and lots of them were written, sent and received on Google’s Gmail platform.

Gmail accounts for 1.8 billion of the 5.6 billion active email accounts – and each account can do much more than just send and receive.

Send an email back

Surely everyone has sent a message across cyberspace that they immediately wished they could take back – with Gmail you can.

After you send an email, a small box will appear in the bottom right asking if you want to cancel the email. After submitting, click directly on the word “Undo” as clicking anywhere else will cause the option to disappear.

Under the default settings, the undo icon is displayed on the screen for five seconds – this can be changed in the settings.

Advanced Search

Advanced search is a useful tool for uncovering information buried in your inbox.

Advanced search can be accessed by clicking the three sliders icon in the search box at the top of your inbox.

You can search by sender, recipient, date, words – you can even narrow your search for an email by searching for words that aren’t in it.

Color-coding important messages

Message tagging puts your most important emails in a separate folder.

However, these messages can be further organized with color-coded stars.

Enable more color options by going to Settings, scrolling down the General tab, and dragging more color options to the In Use section.

Compose intelligently

Google’s spelling suggestions are a boon for users who write in classic office language.

By just typing the beginning of a sentence, Gmail will suggest the rest, saving you keystrokes and time.

Smart Compose can be toggled on and off in Settings – Google even accepts feedback on how to improve the quality of Smart Compose’s suggested phrases.

Customized inbox

Gmail’s default layout is rather simple to appeal to the masses.

However, users can prioritize their emails by clicking the quick settings gear icon and choosing a custom inbox based on what they want to see first: unread, starred, or important.

You can apply multiple inbox feature which can route all bot mails to another inbox.

Confidential mode

An email can be made to disappear like a Snapchat.

You can set an expiration date for a private email by clicking the lock icon next to the send button.

Your employer can remove your network’s confidential mode, which prevents employees from sending disappearing messages.

Mute conversation

Muting a thread that’s getting too many replies can bring serious relief to users with office-wide emailing.

It’s a basic feature – but it’s a bit buried.

Check the box to the left of any email you’ve received and an options bar will appear at the top.

Click on the three dots to bring up the dropdown menu and select Mute for sweet, sweet email silence.

Gmail is free, but that doesn’t mean it just has to work.

Get the most out of your account by applying all available features.

This story originally appeared on The sun and is reproduced here with permission