Top Tweaks to make your Gmail more user friendly

Gmail comes with host of additional features which have to be enabled manually. This increases the user experience to a  great deal. Try it out and see the difference.

Have you tried inserting an image (not as attachments) in between your text while composing an email. By default Gmail does not have that option. Luckily we have a lab tool which allows us to do that.

To enable this, go to your Gmail Settings -> Labs and search for “Inserting Images“.  Enable it and save the settings.

If you are tired of selecting the more button and then click on Mark as Read button to make a message unread, now you can have that option a button click away right on the button bar.

To enable this, go to your Gmail Settings -> Labs and search for “Mark as Read“.  Enable it and save the settings.

The title itself says it all. Do you miss those quick view window or frame which is available on all those other emails like yahoo and hotmail where you can quickly view the content of the message either on the side or the bottom? This way you can view the content of the email without having to go back and forth between the message and inbox.

Gmail now has a lab feature where you can sneak peek into the message by right clicking on the message in the inbox. It displays a tiny pop up screen displaying the latest message in that thread.

To enable this, go to your Gmail Settings -> Labs  and search for “Sneak Peek“. Enable it and save the settings.

Have you tried to open Gmail on a slow connection and wait for few seconds to only find out that you have no new emails? It used to happen all the time for me. You can now enable inbox preview option which shows up as soon as you hit the login button. This is just a read-only snapshot of your inbox which is shown till your Gmail screen is completely loaded. You will also find the sign out link if you wish to log out without having to wait till the screen is loaded completely. You can be in & out within few seconds.

To enable this, go to your Gmail Settings -> Labs  and search for “Inbox Preview“. Enable it and save the settings. Next time you log in, you will see this preview screen.

Label is one of the cool ideas which Gmail incorporated early into the email. Unlike folders where an email can belong to only one folder at a time, an email can be associated with multiple labels.

For example: Lets assume you receive an email from your friend John and the content of email had to do something with Movies. You can assign a label called as “Close Friends” and also “Movies” to this single email. Next time when you like see all emails from your friends, just select the Close Friends Label and you will see this email. Also you will see the same email when you choose the Movies label.

Though label is a cool feature, it can become difficult to manage especially when you have a huge list of labels. It is now possible to have a folder like view for your labels as well.

To enable this feature, you need to go to the Gmail Settings –>Labs tab, search for “Nested Labels,” enable it and click “Save“. Then all you need to do is create Label with “/” to have that label placed under the parent label.

Example as shown in the picture:

First create a label called “Finance”

Next create a label called “Finance/Banks”

Create a label called “Finance/Insurance”

You can create any number of child labels. You could also have one sub label under a child label.

For example : If you had multiple banks, then you could create labels like “Finance/Banks/US Bank”, ”Finance/Banks/Federal Bank”.

[Note: With new Gmail look, this option comes by default. While creating a label, it gives you an option to select the parent label]

!!!!!! Watch out this space for more features