10 Productivity-Boosting Gmail Labs Hacks You Didn't Know Existed
You've got to believe there are some mad scientists working at Google. After all, the company has come up with some of the most innovative solutions we have for things like navigating, communicating, and finding information online. But most of what we see are the finished products of years- or even decades-long experiments, which never see the light of day in their earliest prototype stages.
Enter Gmail Labs. It's the wild west of Gmail, where engineers on Google staff can throw their innovative and boundary-pushing ideas to the public before undergoing the rigorous testing or final polishes that make most of Google's products near-perfect. Put simply, it's a suite of features you can use to make your Gmail experience even better—improving your productivity and streamlining your user interface in the process, beyond the already-numerous Gmail plugins and Gmail extensions available for the platform.
So what kind of Gmail labs features are we talking about here? You can find a full list by accessing your Gmail Settings menu and clicking on the Labs tab—but here are some of my personal favorites:
- Undo send. I'm listing the "undo send" feature first because it's been so useful and so popular that it's been promoted—from a Labs-level experiment to a full-fledged mainstream setting (found under the General tab). With it, you'll be able to put a buffer between your clumsy fingers and your innocent email recipient; when Undo Send is turned on, you'll get a few seconds to cancel the email before it officially goes through. You can set the time here for 5, 10, 20, or 30 seconds.
- Canned responses. If you've ever rolled your eyes while typing out a paragraph you've already sent to 10 different people this week, you need the canned responses feature. When turned on, you'll be able to create and save snippets of written text that you can call up in the future, turning those paragraphs of typing into single clicks.
- Custom keyboard shortcuts. You might not know that Google already supports dozens of keyboard shortcuts, which help you call up functions like Compose New Message with a single keystroke. In Labs, you can become a Gmail experimenter in your own right, and create whatever keyboard shortcuts you want—for a fully customized experience.
- Multiple inboxes. Don't worry—the idea with this one isn't to make your life more complicated with new inboxes. Instead, you'll be setting up custom inbox-style groupings of messages based on things like groups of senders, read vs. unread, and messages that are starred or marked.
- Unread message icon. Have you noticed the Gmail logo that appears in your open tab? With the unread message icon, you'll add a small number to it that indicates the number of unread messages you have waiting for you. It's perfect for multitaskers who like to have dozens of tabs open at once.
- Auto-advance. If you go through emails top to bottom, auto-advance can save you the hassle of closing and reopening, or manually forwarding through emails. After deleting, archiving, or muting a conversation, you'll automatically advance to a new message (either next or previous—it's your choice).
- Preview pane. The preview pane will display the content of an email next to your list of conversations. It helps you read through your messages faster, and is especially important if you're sorting through multiple conversations at the same time.
- Mark as "read" button. You can mark a message as read in Gmail by accessing the "More" button, but this Gmail Labs feature gives you a designated button for the job. It will save you time if you find yourself regularly marking new conversations as read.
- Right-side chat. It's not the most exciting feature on this list, but it's super helpful if you're picky about how your screen is organized. When turned on, this feature moves your Gmail chat box to the right side of your inbox.
- Google Calendar gadget. The Google Calendar gadget is a lifesaver for anyone relying on Google Calendar for their events and personal schedules. Once turned on, you'll be able to convert any email or conversation thread into a calendar event, seamlessly.
Of course, the caveat here is that these features aren't fully tested, nor do they have any guaranteed support. Gmail Labs features you've come to rely on may suddenly disappear, and new features may arise out of nowhere—plus, the ones you're using may stop working due to bugs or glitches that nobody's caught yet.
Email takes a big chunk of our time as professionals, but with so many tools, options, and features available to us, there's no excuse for not optimizing it for your own productivity. Take a few minutes out of your day to experiment with these features, and see if they can't save you hours of work down the line.