The New Gmail: 12 Gmail Hacks Every Writer Can Use

Ever wished you could unsend email? Now Gmail lets you do that…and more!

by Nate Hoffelder.

With Google releasing a new version of Gmail, now is a great time to reconsider how we can use Gmail to get more done. Gmail is possibly the most widely used email service, but are you getting the most out of it?

The following Gmail hacks will help you take control of your inbox and go from being a Gmail user to a Gmail expert. Read on to save time, avoid mistakes, and add a dash of style to your inbox.

1) Change the style with themes

I was a little dismayed when I saw the new Gmail interface. I was shown a theme that had dark text on a light gray background. This made it hard for me to read the emails, but luckily for me there is a fix for this issue.

Google offers a selection of color themes. You can’t bring back the old interface, but you can change the colors of the new interface so it is easier on your eyes.

Look in the upper right corner of the Gmail screen for the Gear menu button. One of the options under that menu is the Themes menu. You can change the background to any one of dozens of images or colors. This feature is particularly useful if you maintain multiple Gmail accounts. You can give each one a different theme and save yourself from sending a personal email from the work account.

2) Schedule an email to be sent later

In this age of notifications setting off phone alarms, we have to be careful about sending emails too late in the day. You don’t want to wake someone up in the middle of the night with an email that could wait until morning. On the other hand, sometimes you also want to make sure you don’t forget to send the email.

With the Chrome extension Boomerang, you can schedule emails to be sent in the future and set up reminders to send an email. The extension adds an extra menu bar to Gmail’s Compose window where you can specify how long to wait before the email is sent.

You can find the extension in the Chrome web store.

3) Unsend emails

And then there are the times you wish you could take back an email you just sent – perhaps you found a typo a second too late, or regret writing the email when upset.

Luckily, there’s a way to avoid this issue. Gmail has a feature called Undo Send.  When enabled, it gives you 5, 10, 20, or 30 seconds to stop Gmail from sending an email.

You can find this option by first clicking the Gear menu button in the upper right corner of the Gmail screen, and then selecting the Settings menu option. There you’ll find a section labeled Undo Send. This feature is automatically enabled in the new Gmail interface, so all you have to do is specify in the Send cancellation period section just how long you want Gmail to wait before it sends an email.

4) Use Gmail offline

The Gmail website is a great way to get work done while you’re online, but did you know that you can also use it offline (just like you do the apps)? Google has released a Chrome extension which lets you keep on writing drafts, deleting emails, and so on, even though you have no connection to the internet.

You can find the Gmail offline extension in the Chrome Web Store.

5) Use Tasks to add emails to your to-do lists

When you get an email that requires action on your part, and you can’t get to it right away, look at the menu bar above your emails. If you’re in the reading view, you’ll see a button marked More.

Click that button and select the Add to Tasks option. This adds the email to a little to-do list.

6) Automatically archive a sent email

Inbox Zero is a popular productivity hack where you strive to keep your inbox empty – or almost empty – at all times. This isn’t always a practical goal – in fact, the best I can get is Inbox Thirty – but in principle aspiring to Inbox Zero is a great way to reduce the clutter in your inbox so that you can focus on the important emails.

One way you can work towards Inbox Zero is to enable Gmail’s Send and archive feature.

You can enable this feature by first clicking the Gear menu button in the upper right corner of the Gmail screen, and then selecting the Settings menu option. There you’ll find a section labeled Send. and Archive. Click the radio button next to Show “Send & Archive” button in reply.

7) Pause your inbox

Studies show that limiting yourself to checking email only a few times a day can reduce stress and boost productivity. If you need to temporarily remove distractions so you can focus on the task at hand, you can use Boomerang to pause your inbox. This won’t block emails from arriving but it will stop emails from appearing in your inbox until you’re ready for them.

You can find the Boomerang extension in the Chrome Web Store.

8) Use smarter searches

Everyone knows that you can use the Gmail search bar to look for emails to and from specific names (To: and From:) or under specific labels (label:) but did you know you can also exclude labels, senders, and recipients?

It’s true!

If you want to exclude a sender from a search in Gmail simple add a dash “-” before the From tag. For example, “-from:authorearnings@gmail.com ” will exclude any search results. The same trick works for the To tag and the label tag.

9)  Hide the email tags when not in use

Instead of folders, Gmail lets you create labels to organize your inbox. Experienced users know to set up a label for every topic, client, or ongoing project, but that can cause problems. If you use Google for more than a few years then you will end up with a long column of labels cluttering up the left menu panel.

The clutter can render the label area almost unusable, but luckily there is a fix for this problem.

Gmail will let you show or hide each label, and even better, you can choose to only show labels that have unread messages.

You can manage the show/hide options by first clicking the Gear menu button in the upper right corner of the Gmail screen, and then selecting the Settings menu option. Select the Labels tab in the Settings menu. Scroll down and you’ll find a section labeled Labels. This is where you can select which labels are shown in left menu panel.

I have almost all the labels set to show if unread. I find that to be the best trade off between minimizing clutter and maximizing usability.

10) Stop senders from tracking you

It’s a fact of life that mailing lists and many other senders of emails will track whether recipients open the emails they get. (This is even an automated feature in Mailchimp and other email marketing  services.)

I don’t know about you, but I would rather not let senders know when I open an email – it might inspire one of them to pester me about not responding. That’s why I use a couple Chrome extensions to block senders from tracking my activity.

• Ugly Email
• Pixel Block

The two plugins basically do the same thing, and I use them both for the sake of redundancy.

11) Save space by deleting only the largest emails

Here’s a trick I picked up from a music producer that got a log of emails with MP3 attachments.

Google gives each user a generous 15GB of free storage, but that has to be shared among all of a user’s  Google services. This means that if you use Gmail long enough and are in the habit of saving everything (even the emails with large attachments) then chances are you will find yourself having to free up space so you can upload more files to Google Drive.

One way to address this problem by deleting old emails, but there is a better solution.

FindBigMail is a web app that will scan your gmail account and identify the email conversations that take up the most space. It will tell you the twenty largest emails and which email are over 10MB or 5MB in size, and send you a simple report. And even better, it will add labels to your Gmail account that will identify the large emails in question.

When I tried it this app told me that I had 71 messages over 10MB in size, and another 61 between 5MB and 10MB in size. I am not short on space, and so I won’t be deleting any emails today, but when space becomes an issue I will be ready.

12) Mute Conversations

Have you ever found yourself subscribed to a mailing list, and been inundated by emails on a topic that has no relevance to you or your work? (I have this problem a lot with discussions in certain FB groups.)

If you don’t want to unsubscribe from the list, and you don’t want to have to keep deleting the unwanted emails, you can easily stop the friendly spam with the Gmail mute function.

Simply select the conversation, open the More  menu, and select the mute option.  This will automatically archive all new emails in the conversation. They won’t be deleted, and you can find them under the All Mail option in the left menu panel.

The muted conversation will stay muted until you find it again and un-mute it; it will also un-mute itself if your address appears in the To or CC box in the message header.

by Nate Hoffelder (@thDigitalReader), August 12, 2018

What about you, scriveners? Have you ever wanted to unsend an email? Mute a conversation? Do any of these other cool things? What’s the worst email you wish you hadn’t hit “send” for? Any questions for Nate? 

On Monday, August 13th, Anne will be visiting the HometownAuthors blog, talking about the importance of the author blog. 

Nate Hoffelder has been building and running WordPress sites since 2010. He blogs about indie publishing, and helps authors connect with readers by customizing websites to suit each author’s voice. In his spare time, he fosters dogs for A Forever Home, a local rescue group. You can find him over at The Digital Reader, or on Facebook, where he runs a tech support group for authors, The Help Desk.

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