When it comes to email services, Gmail is hands down the most popular one out there. Everyone has at least one Gmail account. You see, a Gmail account is created as and when you create a Google account.
A lot of people after creating their Gmail account do not bother to organize their Gmail account. The result? A huge cluttered mess of emails and everything bundled together making it sometimes difficult for the person to even browse through their emails.
As they say, it’s better late than never. Here is our guide on how you can easily declutter your Gmail inbox and how to organize emails in Gmail which will eventually help you in improving productivity.
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Best Tips to Declutter and Organize Gmail Inbox
We will now be showing you how you can easily declutter your Gmail; inbox. Do note that we will be using the web version of Gmail to declutter and enhance your Gmail experience. So log into your Gmail account on your web browser and follow the different decluttering methods.
1. Choose The Right Type Of Inbox View
The first step to decluttering your Gmail is by choosing the inbox you want to view. Thankfully, Gmail has a number of options that you can choose from. Here are the steps that let you change the inbox view in Gmail.
- Sign into your Gmail account on your PC and click on the Settings gear icon at the top right corner.
- The Settings menu should show up on the right. Scroll to the bottom till you see the Inbox type header.
- Here, you will be able to choose between Default, Important First, unread First, Starred First, Priority First, or Multiple Inboxes.
- You can easily choose the one that works best for you.
- If you want, you can also customize the Priority and Multiple Inbox views.
2. Enable Multiple Categories For Your Inbox
Since this is an email service, you will always be getting a ton of emails from not only people but also from multiple services and many of them will not be relevant to you. Nowadays, there seem to always be a ton of auto-generated remains. These emails usually contain your receipts from any purchases or even emails from Google and its other products and services.
To make your Primary inbox clutter-free, you can automatically move all of these emails to other categories. Here is how you can do that.
- Click on the Settings gear icon on your right.
- From the drop-down menu, click on Show All Settings.
- Make sure to click on the Inbox tab at the top of the Settings page.
- Next to Categories, select the other options namely Promotions, Social, Updates, and Forums.
- Make sure to click on the Save Changes button at the bottom of the screen.
- Now, go back to your Gmail home screen. You should now see four new tabs.
- All emails that are either social media updates or Updates will now be displayed under these categories and not be under the Primary tab.
3. Delete Email From Representative Senders
If you are someone that uses YouTube and has subscribed to numerous channels and also have clicked the bell icon to get notified, there is a high chance that you will be getting email updates to video uploads from YouTube. If you have a similar issue where a particular sender keeps sending you emails like this, you can easily clear away all emails from this one sender by following these steps.
- On the inbox screen of your Gmail, look for the sender that keeps sending you emails or rather spam emails.
- Right-click on the email and choose Find all emails from this sender.
- Now, Gmail will display all the emails that have been sent by this particular sender.
- Simply click on the check box at the top left of the Gmail screen.
- You should now see some more icons to the right of the checkbox.
- Click on the Delete icon. This will now let you delete all emails from this particular sender in one click.
4. Make Identifying Labels Easier
Now you can easily create labels in Gmail. But, it can be a headache to identify them. So in order to reduce the number of clicks to see what the label is, you can easily add a color to the label. This helps to identify the label with ease. Here are the steps.
- On the main screen of Gmail, look to the left pane. You should see a header called labels. Under labels, you will see the labels that have been created either automatically or by you.
- Click on the three dots next to the label.
- From the context menu that appears, choose Label color.
- You can either choose from the preset color options or simply choose your own custom color.
- If you do not like the color, you can choose the Remove Color option under Label Color.
5. Clear out The Spam Folder
Spam emails have begun to rise more than ever. Thankfully, Gmail is able to identify spam mail and neatly moves all such spam mail to a dedicated spam folder. Over the course of time, the spam folder starts filling up. This can be a headache. Why, well that is because Gmail uses Google Drive storage space to store its emails. So, in order to prevent yourself from running out of storage space, it is best to clear out the spam folder. Here are the steps.
- Click on the Spam folder from the left side pane.
- Here you will see all the spam emails that have been sorted out by Gmail.
- At the top, you will see a banner with the text saying Delete all spam messages now.
- Click on the text. Gmail will now remove and clear all the spam mail from your Gmail account.
6. Take The Trash Out
Once you have read an email or have no interest in any particular email, everyone tends to delete the email. Sure, you can delete the email and go about with your life. But, did you know that all the email is still present? In fact, all deleted emails are still sitting in the Trash folder of Gmail. Here’s how you can empty the trash in Gmail.
- On the main page of Gmail, click on the Trash folder from the pane on the left side of the screen.
- Click on the check box on the top left.
- Once you have selected all the emails from the trash folder. Click on the Delete icon and then choose Delete all emails now.
- Gmail will now empty all of the emails from the Trash folder right away.
7. Get Some Extensions
Just like how Google Chrome has a wide range of browser extensions that helps you to improve your browsing experience, there are a good number of extensions available for you to install and use with Gmail. The Chrome Web Store has a good number of Gmail extensions. Do note that these extensions will usually work well with your Gmail account and more specifically on your Google Chrome web browser. If you use a web browser like Firefox, you can check add-ons that will be available for you to use on your Firefox web browser.
8. Report Spam Emails
Anyone who has your email address is able to simply use your email address to get spam delivered to your inbox. It can be done by your friends as a prank or it could be that you are being spammed by someone with junk mail. You can easily report such emails in Gmail for spam. Here is how you can do that.
- From the Gmail home screen, click on the email that you wish to report as spam.
- Once the email has been opened, click on the three dots at the right corner of the message.
- From the context menu that pops up click on the report spam option. If its not there, look for spam icon, and click on it.
- This lets Gmail know that any more emails coming from the particular email address will now be treated as spam.
- On the other hand, you can also choose to block the sender of such an email.
- Blocking the email address ensures that you no longer get any emails sent to your inbox from the same email address.
9. Change Your Inbox Density
As soon as you open Gmail, you are greeted with your emails right away. That is the best way this service works. But, did you know that you can change how Gmail displays your emails? By default, you can see all the details of the email plus the file name of attachments that have been sent or received. If you do not like this view, I would recommend using the Comfortable Inbox density option.
- Launch Gmail on your web browser and click on the Settings gear icon.
- From the drop-down menu, under Density, choose the Comfortable option.
- It will now be much easier to look at your emails without having to strain your eyes.
Closing Thoughts
This concludes the guide on how you can make your Gmail clutter-free. Being able to make your Gmail browsing simple and free from nonsense is always good. Nobody is interested in all the spam and junk emails that keep flooding the inbox. If you have any other suggestions with regard to freeing your Gmail from clutter, feel free to leave them in the comments section below.
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