Let’s face it – if you use your Gmail account for more than occasional contact with friends and relatives, it’s likely getting out of hand. Between business emails, online events, invitations, ads from your favorite retailers, and just plain spam, you’ll have a hard time keeping up.
There are several ways to organize your email, and a powerful option is to apply labels, which is Gmail’s analogue to folders. Labeling emails makes it easier to deal with them. For example, you can tag everyone you need to send a holiday greeting to; anyone who expresses an interest in purchasing your comic book collection; anyone working on your current video project; everyone you know in college – the possibilities are almost endless.
Here are some basics and strategies for using Gmail’s label features. Note that it’s all done on a desktop computer; There are different ways to manage tags on a mobile device, which I will talk about at the end of this article.
Create tags
The first thing you need to do to start using tags is to create some. There are several ways to do this.
First, you can create a label from the left column of Gmail:
- In the left column, scroll down from Inbox until you reach “Manage tags” and “Create new tag”. (You may need to click “More” to see.)
- Click “Create new tag” and enter the name of your new tag. You can place it under an existing tag if you want.
You can also create a new label and immediately apply it to several emails:
- Select the emails you want to tag by checking the boxes to the left of the emails. When you’re ready, right-click.
- Hover over “Tag as”. You can type the name of your new tag in the field in the pop-up window and press Return, or you can enter the name of your new tag and click “Create new” where you can place it under an existing tag. you want.
Color your labels
One of the simplest things you can do with labels in Gmail is to color them. It may seem like a small thing, but if you’re browsing your email, the colored labels let you quickly tell which category an email belongs to.
To assign a color to a Gmail label:
- Hover your cursor over the tag name in the left column.
- Click the three dots to the right of the tag name.
- Hover over “Label color”.
- Select the color you want to assign to this label; You can choose a basic color combination or create custom colors for the background and text.
Click “Remove color” if you want to revert to the default colors (black text on a gray background).
Automatically apply labels to incoming emails
You can automatically apply labels to incoming emails. For example, if I was planning to write a story about different face masks and wanted to tag all emails that might be related to that topic, I could set up a filter that would be automatically tagged. put the “mask” tag on these emails. Like this:
- First, create the tag you want. In this case, I used the instructions above to create the “Masks” tag.
- Go to your Gmail search box. Click on the “Show search options” symbol at the right end of the search box.
- Put your search term in the appropriate field(s). For example, I will search for any email with the word “mask” in it to generate my search. I can also apply it to emails that end up in my Inbox (so I don’t tag any emails that result in Spam) by clicking the field next to “Search” and selecting “Inbox” from the drop-down menu.
- Click the “Create filter” button.
- You will then be taken to a page that lets you choose what you want the filter to do. For example, I can have filtered emails deleted or archived immediately, marked as important (or not important), or forwarded to another address, among other options. In this case, I will check the box next to “Apply label:” and then select the “Masks” label from the drop-down menu. (You can also create a new tag here if you wish.)
- This will only label future emails. To apply the tag to existing emails as well, check the “Filter also matching conversations” option that appears below the checklist. (Note: This last one is a bit of an odd feature, so it may not work in all cases.)
- Click “Create filter”.
Edit your filters
If you want to edit or delete any of your filters, you must do so from the main settings page of Gmail, accessed by clicking the cog wheel in the upper right corner and then clicking “See all settings”. Later:
- Click on the “Filters and Blocked Addresses” tab.
- You will see a list of all your filters. To edit or delete one individually, click the “Edit” or “Delete” links to the right of each tag.
- You can also delete or export by ticking a group of tags and then clicking the “Export” or “Delete” links at the bottom of the list.
Show or hide your tags
When you have too many labels it can be overwhelming, so there are ways you can show or hide certain labels in Gmail.
If you click “Manage tags” in the left column, you will be taken to the “Labels” tab in the Gmail settings page. Scroll down the resulting page to find a list of all your tags.
There are two ways to set whether a tag is visible: “Show in tag list” and “Show in message list”. “Label list” refers to the list of your labels in the left column of Gmail. This is useful because you can click the name of a particular label to search for all emails with that label. Here in settings you can choose to show that tag in the left list, hide it or show it only if you have unread emails with that tag.
“Show in message list” lets you show or hide the label in the main message window – in other words, you won’t see the label next to the first lines of the email. However, the email will still be tagged.
Finally, you can edit or completely remove each tag. (Removing it won’t delete the email, it will only delete the label.)
Manage tags on a mobile device
While Gmail labels are created using a computer and require more complex operations on a computer, you have some options for how labels are used on your mobile device.
To manually add a label to an email:
- Open the email you want to tag on both iPhone and Android phone.
- Tap the three-dot icon in the upper right corner of the screen.
- Select “Change tags”.
- Select (or deselect) the tags you want to apply to this message.
You can add labels to multiple emails at once:
- In your email list, tap the icon to the left of each message you want to tag. The icon will turn into a check mark.
- Tap the three-dot icon in the upper right corner of the screen.
- Select “Change tags”.
- Select the label you want to apply to these messages.
You can also do some basic tag management on a mobile device, but what you can do depends on whether you’re using iOS or Android.
To manage your tags on an iPhone:
- Tap the three-line hamburger icon in the upper left corner.
- Scroll down and select “Settings”.
- Tap the Gmail account you want to tweak.
- Scroll down and select “Tag settings”.
- Select the tag you want to set.
- Tap “Add…” if you want to add this sticker to future messages. You can specify a number of factors, including who it’s from, the subject, who it belongs to, and words to include or exclude.
- Tap “Name” to change the name of the tag or “ to delete the tag.
You can also tap “Delete”.
On an Android device:
- Tap the three-line hamburger icon in the upper left corner.
- Scroll down and select “Settings”.
- Tap the Gmail account you want to tweak.
- Scroll down and select “Manage tags”.
- On an Android device, the only thing you can really set is whether your mobile device syncs tags with your computer. The page after “Manage tags” lists all the categories Google has included (Primary, Social, etc.) followed by all your tags. It also shows if categories/tags are synced.
- If you want to sync your tags, scroll to the tag’s name and tap on it.
- Tap on “Sync messages”. No messages are downloaded, but the application of this tag to the appropriate messages is synchronized. You can choose to apply the stickers to incoming messages or all messages in the last 30 days.
- After marking the tag to sync, you can choose whether you want to receive a notification on the phone whenever a message with that tag is displayed.
Update July 26, 2021, 5pm ET: Updated to replace an old screenshot showing how to apply tags.
