I used to use email apps like Spark Mail. It’s an awesome desktop application but over time, the memory usage of desktop email clients tends to grow significantly. Gmail living in the browser tends to be more lightweight.
These settings that I’m sharing have helped Gmail mimic the behaviors of some of my favorite email clients so I hope it helps you too!
1. Enable Reading Pane to preview emails without having to click into them:
Find this setting under “Settings > Inbox”
2. Change the time it takes to mark a conversation as read to 1s
When you have Reading Pane turned on, the default time to mark it as read in preview mode is 3s. I prefer changing that to 1s because I sometimes just skip them once I think I don’t need to deep dive into the content. That usually takes less than 3s, so having to wait for 3s just for an email to be marked as read is not great.
Find this setting under “Settings > General”
3. Turn on Keyboard Shortcuts.
Being able to smash “e” to archive emails is much better than having to click the archive icon using the mouse. Of course, if you wanna be a Gmail guru, feel free to learn even more shortcuts.
Find this setting under “Settings > General”
4. Turn on “Auto-advance”
So every time you archive an email with the “e” button, you get brought to the next email instead of having to click another mouse button or press another key.
Find this setting under “Settings > Advanced”
Anyone else with their own Gmail life hacks?
Very interested to learn more!
