Gmail Shortcuts Cheatsheet

Did you know Gmail has a ton of shortcuts you can use to significantly speed up your workflow?

Note: If these don’t work you’ll need to enable shortcuts first — check the end of this cheatsheet.

• shift + / This opens the keyboard shortcuts menu where you can see all the shortcuts. It makes the ? key, which can help you remember.
• esc to close that menu

Since you know how to reference them now, here’s a quick summary of the good ones to try and remember.

Navigating
k or j Newer/older email
n Next message in the thread
p Previous message in thread
o or Enter Opens an email from the thread
arrow keys Navigate through inbox list of emails

Jumping To Mailboxes
/ Focus the search bar
g then i Go to Inbox
g then a Go to All mail
g then s Go to Starred conversations

Inbox Management
shift + u Mark unread
shift + i Mark read
e Archive mail
# Delete mail

Once you get the hang of using these shortcuts on a daily basis, you can save a lot of time. These are only the few that I use often, but there are a ton more that you can learn and memorize too. You can even add custom shortcuts if you find that something is missing!

How I Use These Shortcuts

I like to batch the time I spend on email which means I only have to end up going through emails twice a day at most, and when I do I can go through it in bulk.

• I’ll start from the bottom with the oldest email.
• I can scroll up/down with arrow keys
• If the message warrants a response r to reply or a to reply all.
• Then tab to focus the ‘send’ button and Enter to send it off.
  No mouse needed.
• To get to the next email I’ll hit k and repeat the process until I’m done.
• I’ll do g then i to get back to my inbox view and double-check that I covered everyone.
• Then repeat the next day

If you are composing a lot of emails there are tons of shortcuts for that too. But I find it easier to use a mouse to hop around the actual text since I’m guaranteed to make a typo are change verbiage.

To Enable Keyboard Shortcuts

Can’t get these to work? You might need to enable shortcuts first.

1. Go to Settings.
2. Scroll down to the “Keyboard shortcuts” section.
3. Select Keyboard shortcuts on.
4. At the bottom of the page, click Save Changes.

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