What are the Best Gmail Settings You probably aren’t using?

GMAIL is one of the most powerful and most well-known email services available. However, many of its best Gmail settings are hidden in its dense settings pages. You might be missing many powerful tools that are sitting under the surface. This article shows you some of the best ones to save you time and to help you get back to the work you need to do.

Best Gmail Settings

You can change Undo Send Time Limit

By default, Gmail waits five seconds after you click Send to send the email. This is to give you a moment to realize that you forgot to add an attachment, then to recall the email. However, five seconds doesn’t feel enough time to catch a mistake. This window could be made to last a little longer, navigate to Settings > See all settings > Undo Send. Here, you can raise this timeframe to 30 seconds. It’s still might not be a very long time, but every second helps.

You can Confirm Actions on Mobile

When checking/responding to emails on a mobile, we can tap in the wrong place and accidentally delete the wrong email, or send a reply before we’re ready. Fortunately, the app has the ability to ask for confirmation before certain actions. In the mobile Gmail app, navigate to Settings > General settings > Action Confirmations, then you’ll find settings to confirm before deleting, archiving, or sending emails. Enable the settings you want, afterward, Gmail will confirm if you’re sure about sending/deleting that email.

Unread Message Icon

If you keep your Gmail tab open throughout the day, there’s an easy way to know when you’ve received a new email. Navigate to Settings > See all settings > Advanced and enable “Unread message icon.” This will update the icon in your Gmail tab with a number, the number will indicate how many unread emails are present. If you receive a new email, this will be updated. This is extremely useful to stay up to date on any emails you receive.

You can Enable Multiple Stars

You probably use Gmail’s stars to mark a particular email. Do you know Gmail has more than one star? To turn them on, navigate to Settings > See all settings > Stars. Here, you can spot an assortment of other stars as well as icons that can be added to your rotation. Drag the required ones from “Not in use” to “In use.” Afterward, when you click on the star icon in Gmail, you’ll apply the regular star, however, if you continue clicking on it, you will be able to cycle through the other stars you recently added.

You can Send and Archive with a Single Click

When you send an email, you’re done with that conversation until you hear from the other person. If you want to save an extra click off every email that is sent, there’s an option. Navigate to Settings > See all settings > General, then enable “Send and Archive.” After this is active, your default Send button will now both send the email as well as archive the conversation at the same time.

You can Customize Your Keyboard Shortcuts

Gmail’s shortcuts are one of the best tools you can use, but there is no need to keep them on the defaults. If you want to change your shortcuts to be more convenient for your workflow, navigate to Settings > See all settings > Advanced, then enable “Custom keyboard shortcuts. Click on “Save changes” to apply the change, then reload Gmail. Then, head back into the Settings page, where you’ll spot a new sub-tab called “Keyboard shortcuts.”

Here, you can find the existing shortcuts for a long list of actions you can perform. Most of them already have a keyboard shortcut assigned, however, you have the ability to change the default one, or add a second custom shortcut. Make sure that any new shortcuts you create don’t conflict with the other ones that already exist.

You can Switch to Reply All by Default

You can change the app so that when you reply to an email, it will automatically send the email to everyone on the chain, this is dangerous, so be careful. You will have the option to reply to just one person, however, the Reply All button will be more prominently seen, and in some cases, you might have to click through to an overflow menu to locate the regular Reply button.

This tool can be handy if you routinely email multiple people in chains. This also makes it easier to unintentionally send an email to everyone CC’d, embarrassing yourself while annoying others.

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