Every characteristic-rich app has its share of easily overlooked settings. Simply Gmail—human being, oh man. Gmail has a virtual labyrinth of underappreciated options.

Consider this: Some of Gmail'south settings are available only on the Gmail website. Others are only in the mobile apps—or sometimes only in the mobile app on 1 specific platform. And other Gmail settings, paradoxically, can't fifty-fifty be constitute inside Gmail at all (yes, really!).

It practically requires a recurring spelunking trek to make certain you're taking reward of everything Gmail has to offer, specially since the list of possibilities evolves and so frequently. But non to worry—I'one thousand here to help.

I've dug upward and broken down a dozen of Gmail'due south most helpful yet least visible settings. Consider this your map to some of the service'south best buried treasures—no messy metaphorical cavern-crawling required.

ane. Requite yourself more than room to write

First things first: Gmail'south default compose window for new emails is a small-scale box in the lower-right corner of the screen. That tin can be nice if you want to continue an eye on your inbox, I suppose. Merely it tin as well be quite distracting when y'all actually want to focus on what you're writing.

If you lot discover yourself preferring a more full-screen writing experience more often than not, beginning a new bulletin in the Gmail website so click the 3-dot carte du jour icon in the message's lower-right corner. See the option there called "Default to full screen?" Click it. Then shut out of that message entirely, start another new message, and . . .

Gmail's compose window, in its petty-known full-screen course.

Ta-da! Your Gmail compose window will now always open up forepart and centre and as large as your current browser window allows. And if yous always want to shrink it back down into that smaller setup, you can just click the icon with two arrows pointing inward in the window's upper-correct corner.

2. Move from message to message without stopping

Are you the type of person who powers through your inbox message by message until yous attain the end? If so, take a peek at Gmail'due south tucked-away auto-advance setting. Once yous enable it, y'all'll automatically exist taken to the next email in your list (or the previous e-mail, if you prefer) as soon as you archive or delete a conversation—instead of beingness taken back out to your inbox, as would typically occur.

In Gmail's desktop version, you'll first need to activate the pick by going to the Advanced tab of the Gmail website's master settings surface area (which you tin can get to past clicking the gear-shaped icon in the site's upper-right corner and selecting "See all settings" in the panel that comes up). Find the "Auto-advance" line, click on "Enable" side by side to it, and click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the screen. Once the website reloads, you'll need to go back into Gmail's settings and look for the newly present "Motorcar-advance" expanse within the General tab to configure exactly how the pick works.

On Android, in that location'southward a split, independent option within the "General settings" section of the Gmail app's settings. No such selection seems to be present on iOS, unfortunately.

iii. Read more, click less

Speaking of reading, one of the simplest and nigh helpful Gmail settings you lot tin can modify is the selection for "Maximum page size," located in the General tab of the Gmail website's settings.

By default, Gmail shows you just fifty e-mail conversations on each page and requires you to click to a subsequent page in order to see more than messages. Maybe such a setup made sense in before days of the cyberspace, when bandwidth was at a premium. But nowadays, all that extra clicking is little more than than an inconvenience.

So save yourself some clicks and as well some sanity by irresolute that setting from 50 to 100. Just be sure to click the Relieve Changes push button at the bottom of the screen when you're done to utilise the change.

4. Put your emails back in proper order

If you lot're using Gmail's tabbed inbox interface—the one where your letters are sorted into categories such as Social, Promotions, and Updates—you might've noticed a foreign addiction Gmail has on the telephone front. For some reason, in the mobile apps only, Gmail rearranges the messages in your Promotions tab to put the emails it sees as being "highest value" at the top.

Practically speaking, that ways the messages in that category are often shown out of chronological order, with no obvious rhyme or reason behind the sequencing. And you ofttimes end upwardly seeing days-quondam letters at the peak, with more than recent emails buried beneath them.

You can turn that beliefs off and restore society to your inbox past toggling a deeply buried setting in the Gmail mobile apps. On Android, open up the app's settings, tap your account name, then tap "Inbox categories" and look for the "Enable Bundling of Acme Electronic mail" option at the very bottom of the screen that comes up. On iOS, the aforementioned selection is one step higher, on the settings screen that comes up immediately after y'all tap your account's proper name.

Flip that switch into the off position. Trust me: You'll be glad you did.

5. Gear up your own default snooze times

Snoozing is one of my favorite Gmail features, merely it'southward also one of the nigh confusing when it comes to settings. The reason: You can actually customize the default times for email snoozing in Gmail—the specific morning, afternoon, and evening times that popular up by default in the various i-click snoozing options—but the setting to brand that adjustment isn't really located within Gmail.

Instead, it's in Google Keep. Get figure, eh? Crazy as it sounds, try this: Pull up the Keep website, click the gear-shaped icon in the upper-right corner, and so select "Settings"—or open the equivalent section in the Keep mobile app—and expect for the "Reminder Defaults" section in the panel that pops up.

You'd never know it, but those innocuous-looking Proceed snooze settings also necktie into Gmail.

Set the values for Morn, Afternoon, and Evening to whatever times make sense for you, then click "Save" on the website or but back out of the menu on mobile.

Once that's done, go dorsum to Gmail and snooze a message—and sure plenty, you'll come across your new custom times come up within the default suggested options.

Why does this work that way, you might be wondering? Why aren't the settings separated out and available within Gmail, too? At that place's really only one reply: Sometimes, Google's simply gotta Google.

6. Enable a step-saving ii-in-one button

I don't know about you, merely about every time I finish responding to something in my inbox, I archive the bulletin to get it out of my hair. Well, Gmail has a spectacular step-saver that lets yous perform both those deportment—sending and archiving—in one fell swoop on your computer. All you accept to do is enable it.

Simply look through the General section of the Gmail website's settings until you see the "Send and Archive" option. Change its setting to "Show 'Transport & Archive' button in reply"—something that isn't enabled by default—and one time you save out, you'll encounter a spiffy new blue push button next to the regular Send button that'll allow you ship and archive in a unmarried step anytime you lot're replying to a message.

And a bonus tip: Once that button is visible, y'all can also hit Ctrl (or Cmd) and Enter together to trigger the same activeness without any mousework required.

seven. Let Gmail get personal

Nosotros all become a mix of personal messages and bulk postal service these days, and while both can exist perfectly legitimate and valuable, the messages actually written to you, specifically, are probable the ones that require the most immediate attention.

Gmail can help sort the personal stuff from the bulk: Just find the "Personal level indicators" option within the General tab of the desktop site'south settings. Change its setting to "Testify indicators," and you'll showtime seeing unmarried arrows side by side to messages sent specifically to your accost (equally opposed to those sent to a list) and double arrows side by side to messages sent only to you, with no other recipients involved.

8. Sweep away some of your label clutter

It doesn't take much for Gmail'due south labels to go out of hand—and odds are, no matter how many labels you've created over the years, in that location's only a handful that y'all interact with on a regular ground.

You can brand your life meaningfully easier by hiding away the labels you lot don't use often and leaving yourself only with the ones you genuinely need to come across. Start your cleanup by clicking on the Labels tab in the Gmail website'south settings. There, you lot'll see a listing of all your available labels, along with the ability to set any label every bit hidden in both the characterization list—the sprawling list of labels that shows up at the acme of the Gmail sidebar—and the message listing, which is the list of label options that appears whenever yous use the control for adding a label onto an individual message.

You can keep infrequently accessed labels out of sight to give yourself a less cluttered and more than efficient workspace.

Hide away anything you don't often admission in either of those places, and you'll finish wasting fourth dimension looking through superfluous stuff.

ix. Increase your second-guessing buffer

Gmail has a tremendously useful feature called Undo Send that lets y'all pull dorsum a message after you lot've sent information technology, in case you suddenly realize you said something incorrect or included a wildly inappropriate attachment by mistake. By default, though, Undo Send gives yous a beggarly five seconds to brand that call—which isn't much at all, especially when potentially mortifying errors are involved.

Take 2 seconds now to detect the "Undo Send" option in that same General section of Gmail's desktop settings, and you can boost your buffer from five seconds to a full 30. There's little real downside, outside of your letters sitting for an additional 25 seconds before they're actually delivered. And at that place'due south a world of face up-saving gain.

10. Give yourself an undo equivalent on mobile

That handy Undo Ship pick isn't bachelor in the Gmail mobile apps, for some reason, but you can create a roughly like prophylactic internet for yourself by enabling the service's confirmation settings there—at to the lowest degree, if yous're using Android. (Deplorable, iPhone pals!)

In the Gmail Android app, tap the iii-line carte icon in the upper-left corner of the chief inbox screen, then select "Settings" followed by "General settings" and scroll all the way down to the bottom of the screen that comes up. At that place, you lot'll detect three off-by-default options: "Confirm before deleting," "Ostend earlier archiving," and "Ostend earlier sending."

Check the box next to the last one—and either of the other two, if yous're so inclined—and from then on out, you'll e'er get a pop-up confirmation to requite yourself a 2nd chance before whatsoever such action is completed.

Avoid sending, deleting, or archiving letters by mistake on your phone with the Android Gmail app's handy confirmation options.

11. Customize Gmail's time-saving swipe shortcuts

While we're on the subject of Gmail'southward mobile apps, think about what actions you have most ofttimes on your messages—whether it'southward archiving, deleting, marking every bit read or unread, or snoozing—then set your app's swipe shortcuts to reflect those priorities.

For instance, peradventure you lot'd like to swipe left on whatsoever message in your inbox to snooze the email and swipe right to archive information technology. Or maybe you'd adopt to swipe left to toggle a message between read and unread, and swipe right to delete it. Whatever the case, those gestures can represent the commands that'd be most convenient for you, if y'all take the fourth dimension to gear up them up accordingly.

In the Gmail Android app, look for the "Swipe actions" option within the "General settings" department of the app'due south settings. On iOS, yous'll find the aforementioned ready of choices right within the app'south master settings carte. Either way, you'll be one tap away from picking whatever activity you lot want for both the left and the right swipe.

12. Make Gmail less nudgy

Last but not least, one Gmail feature you might be better off eliminating is the service's habit of nudging you lot to reply or follow up on emails that've been lingering in your inbox for a while. Maybe that habit's helpful for yous—and if so, hey, more power to yous—merely if you lot're organized enough on your own to know what you do and don't need to respond to, information technology can be more irritating than advantageous.

Luckily for those who don't want it, information technology'south easy as can exist to plough off. You'll detect two associated options in the General tab of the Gmail website's settings—one for nudges related to "emails you might take forgotten to respond to" and one for nudges about "emails y'all might demand to follow up on." Disable both, cackle quietly for good mensurate, and gear up for a delightfully nudge-complimentary electronic messaging life.

For fifty-fifty more than next-level Google cognition, bank check out my Android Intelligence newsletter .