How to Use Tabs in Gmail

What's This?

By Amy-Mae Elliott2013-07-23 14:00:51 UTC

Gmail's inbox has changed again. To help you negotiate the changes, we've taken a closer look at the service's new customizable tabs.

Designed to make your inbox more approachable, tabs organize your incoming mail into categories, giving you an at-a-glance look at what's new.

See also: 10 Dead Simple Gmail Tips, Tricks & Shortcuts

See below for our in-depth explanation of the new default tabs, how to personalize the tabs to suit you, and, if you really dislike the new look, how to disable them completely.

Have a read and in the comments below, let us know how you'll use Gmail tabs.

New Gmail Tabs - An Overview

"We get a lot of different types of email: messages from friends, social notifications, deals and offers, confirmations and receipts, and more," Google Product Manager Itamar Gilad wrote in a blog post as the new Gmail inbox was revealed.

"All of these emails can compete for our attention and make it harder to focus on the things we need to get done," he added. "Sometimes it feels like our inboxes are controlling us, rather than the other way around."

To remedy inbox fatigue, Gmail divided our inboxes into logical "tabs" that separate our incoming mail into categories. Click each tab heading for a quick look at what's new.

The New Tabs

There are five new tabs, described here in Google's words:

Primary: Messages from friends and family, as well as any other messages that don't appear in other tabs.

Promotions: Your deals, offers and other promotional emails.

Social Messages: From social networks, media-sharing sites, online dating services, gaming platforms and other social websites.

Updates: Notifications such as confirmations, receipts, bills and statements.

Forums: Messages from online groups, discussion boards and mailing lists.

Customization Options

When the new inbox rolls out to you, it implements default tabs — ours contained "Primary," "Social" and "Promotions."

You can edit the tabs to show categories you'd like. To do this, click on the "+" sign to the right of your new tabs to bring up a pop-up menu.

From here, check or uncheck boxes next to the tabs you want in your inbox. Click "Save" to set up any changes you've made.

Moving Emails to Different Tabs

Once you've grabbed the tabs you want, you can "teach" Gmail to automatically send emails from certain senders into particular tabs.

To do this, right-click on an email that has been filed under the incorrect tab heading. Hover over the "Move to tab" option that appears in the pop-up box, and select the correct tab.

Alternatively, you can drag and drop messages to another tab.

Gmail will then ask you if you want it to "Do this for future messages from [email@example.com]?" Click "yes" and suture mails from that address will auto-filter into your preferred tab.

Disabling Tabs

If you dislike the new tabs functionality and want to return to the traditional inbox layout, click the "+" icon to the right of the tab heading, uncheck every tab box (apart from "Primary" which is a default) and your inbox will revert to the old design.

To reinstate tabs at any time, click the cog settings button and choose "Configure inbox" to bring them back.

Image: Flickr Alex Gorzen, Screengrabs: Google

Topics: apps, Apps and Software, Dev & Design, email, gmail, How To, Tech, tips and tricks