There’s a reason why Gmail is no. 1 followed by Outlook, and you will soon find out. Many of its best features are unnoticeable unless you bury yourself into the app, and they can save you thousands of hours in productivity after you discovered them. For example, just by clicking twice you immediately pull up all the emails you’ve received from a specific sender.
1. To adjust the “Undo Send Time Limit”
With Gmail, you can undo an email after you’ve hit the ‘Send’ button. Though the time limit for this function is five seconds, you can change it to 20 or 30 seconds. To make this change follow these steps in your settings;
Step 1: Go to ‘Settings’ on your computer.
Step 2: Click “See all settings”
Step 3: Locate “Undo Send” on the list, and select the timeframe of up to 30 seconds.
2. To confirm an action to either ‘Delete’ or ‘Send’.
While on your mobile, you can accidentally delete the wrong email or reply an email in your inbox before you’re ready. Fortunately, the app can ask for confirmation before these types of action.
Step 1: Go to Settings in your Gmail mobile application.
Step 2: Click ‘General settings’ to find Action Confirmations on the list.
Step 3: Select options whether you wish to confirm before deleting, archiving, or sending emails. Enable whichever ones you want, and from now on Gmail will confirm you’re absolutely sure before sending that email.
3. To find out how many ‘Unread’ messages are in your inbox
This is easy to do.
Step 1: Go to Settings.
Step 2: See all settings.
Step 3: Look for “Advanced” and enable the “Unread message icon.” This will update the icon in your Gmail tab with a number, indicating how many unread messages are in your inbox. If you get a new email, this will update. This is extremely useful to stay up to date on any emails you get, without having to tab back to Gmail so often.
4. To turn on multiple ‘Stars’
In the past, you’ve used Gmail’s stars to mark a particular email that you want to be able to find later but didn’t know that Gmail has more than just one star. To turn on multiple stars, do the following;
Step 1: Go to Settings.
Step 2: See all settings.
Step 3: Stars. Here, you can see a variety of stars and icons that you can add to your rotation. Drag the ones you want from “Not in use” to “In use.” From now on, when you click on the star icon in Gmail, you’ll apply the regular star, but if you continue clicking on it, you will cycle through the other stars you added.
5. To customize Your Keyboard Shortcuts
One of the best tools you can find on Gmail is the shortcuts you can use to save time. If you want your shortcuts to be more convenient for your workflow, then;
Step 1: Go to Settings
Step 2: See all settings
Step 3: Select ‘Advanced’ and enable “Custom keyboard shortcuts. You’ll have to click “Save changes” to apply the change and reload Gmail. Once you do, go back into the Settings page and you’ll see a new sub-tab called “Keyboard shortcuts.”
Once you click ‘Save changes’, you’ll find the existing shortcuts for a long list of actions you can take in Gmail. Most of them already have a keyboard shortcut assigned, but you can change the default one, or add a second, custom shortcut of your own. Just be sure that any new shortcuts you create don’t conflict with the other ones that already exist before you apply them.
