It wasn’t too long ago that Google Gmail was still considered “beta”. It was in a beta state so long, it was almost funny. I’m not sure how long Google has had Gmail out of beta, but they have really been adding some nice features.
I’ve loved the Labels feature for a while. It’s like folders in Outlook, but better! The ability to apply multiple labels to a single email makes looking for “that one email from a while back” a whole lot easier.
At the same time, the release of the Priority Inbox feature was a flop for me (unless I become more popular or something), while others loved it.
New features are always nice and the new Gmail feature I woke-up to this morning looks very promising.
It’s called: Priority Inbox
This is how it works:
Priority Inbox displays different colored arrows to indicate different types of messages. A yellow arrow means that a message is important and unread. A gray marker means that the message is important and read or archived. A message Gmail has classified as unimportant has no marker.
If you want to know why a message was classified as important, you can hover your mouse over the importance marker for that message in order to see the main reason why the message was marked important.
If you prefer, you can hide these markers. Just go to the Priority Inbox tab of your Gmail settings and select the No markers option in the Importance markers section.
Gmail treats these markers like labels, so you can search for messages that are important by using the search operator ‘is:important’.
I’ve been called a “Google Geek”, before, so perhaps this explains the buzz. To me, this looks like a very promising feature that should only get better with time as I “train” it.
I think my Gmail is getting smarter.
Weird.
[via Gmail Help]
J. Doss says
Is this new? Hasn’t this been out for a few months? Either way, it is a great feature. I kind of have to juggle how I want to view my inbox, (Priority Inbox view or Regular) But it gives me an option to mark important emails as important and learns what that means along the way.
Eric Dye says
For me, it was. I believe they started releasing it a few months ago.
Micah says
Um, not to be a turd, but you’re only just now getting this? I’ve had it since it came out. Thought this was pretty much the case for 90% of gmail users now.
But yeah, it rocks.
One other thing I like is the “multiple inboxes”, which this is essentially a variation of. But with MI, you can set certain stars and such to show up if you have superstars enabled in labs. I have stars for Important, Awaiting and Do Now. Makes organizing email a ton easier.
Eric Dye says
I use the stars in labs, too. Th Priority Inbox just showed up for me this morning. I believe they started kicking this out in January.
Josh Wagner says
I’ve gotten the chance to use this, and it didn’t really catch on with me. Maybe I’m too used to Thunderbird or Mail or just regular Gmail, but I seem to not really need it that much. Now I don’t get a ton of emails a day with only a few goodies. Most of what I receive, I asked for, so it’s “important” to me.
Or maybe, I’m just not training it well. Could be that…
Eric Dye says
I think the volume of email someone receives does play a big part. Plus, if you have a system that’s really working well for you, stick to it!
BenJPickett says
I’ve been trying to “train” mine for a long time now. It only puts messages in the priority inbox if they are from people on my contacts list. It doesn’t appear as if I can tag subjects or domains at all. At least not the last time that I looked at it, it would be nice to see more options added to this.
I think what I would like most of all from Google as far as Gmail goes…. make it pretty, it’s been too long to have stayed that ugly all these years.
Eric Dye says
I’m with you. Sure, the themes are great, but they could use some more. A lot more!