I use Gmail constantly, but I still stumble across features I never knew existed. Scheduling emails, protecting sensitive information, clearing my inbox temporarily —they're all sitting there in the interface, easy to miss.
Most of these tools are represented by small icons or tucked into dropdown menus. They're simple to use once you know where to look, but Gmail doesn't advertise them. That means you're probably scratching the surface of what it can actually do.
Here are five Gmail features worth knowing about, and exactly how to access them.
1. Protect sensitive info with Confidential Mode
Gmail's Confidential Mode restricts what recipients can do with your email. To use it, compose your message and look for the lock icon with a clock at the bottom of the compose window. Click it to open Confidential Mode settings.
Set an expiration date for when the email becomes inaccessible. Options range from one day to five years. You can also require an SMS passcode for the recipient to open the email, adding an extra security layer. This passcode gets sent to their phone number, which you'll need to enter.
Once you send a confidential email, the recipient receives it with restrictions in place. They can read it, but the forward, copy, print, and download options are disabled. When the expiration date arrives, the email content disappears from their inbox entirely.
2. Schedule emails to send at the perfect time
Drafting emails late at night or early in the morning creates an awkward problem. Send them immediately and you risk waking someone up or signaling that you work at odd hours. Wait to send them manually and you'll probably forget.
Gmail's Schedule Send feature solves this. Compose your email as usual, then instead of clicking Send, click the small arrow next to the Send button. Then simply select Schedule Send from the dropdown menu.
You can edit or cancel scheduled emails any time before they send by opening the Scheduled folder and making changes.
3. Clear your inbox temporarily with Snooze
The Snooze feature removes emails from your inbox temporarily and returns them at a time you choose.
When viewing an email, look for the small clock icon in the toolbar at the top. If you don't see this right away, you may have to click the three dots followed by "Switch to advanced toolbar".
Click the clock icon and Gmail presents several quick options: Later today, Tomorrow, This weekend, Next week. If none of those work, select Pick date & time to choose exactly when you want the email to reappear.
The snoozed email disappears from your inbox immediately and moves to the Snoozed folder. At the scheduled time, Gmail moves it back to the top of your inbox as if it just arrived. You can snooze the same email multiple times if needed.
4. Connect with Google Calendar automatically
Flight confirmations, restaurant reservations, doctor appointments — emails with event details usually require manual calendar entry. Gmail can add these to your calendar automatically instead.
The integration detects dates, times, and locations in your emails and creates calendar entries without you doing anything. If events aren't appearing automatically, you need to enable the feature first.
Open Google Calendar and click the gear icon in the upper-right corner. Select Settings, then choose Events settings from the left sidebar. Then simply check the box next to "Show events automatically created by Gmail in my calendar."
Once enabled, Gmail scans incoming messages and adds event information to your calendar.
5. Speed through your inbox with Auto-advance
The constant back-and-forth of checking email is exhausting. Open a message, read it, archive or delete it, return to your inbox, decide what's next — repeat dozens of times daily.
Auto-advance eliminates this. Instead of returning to your inbox after every action, Gmail automatically loads the next message. You process emails in an uninterrupted flow without getting distracted by other subject lines.
To enable it, open Gmail and click the gear icon. Select See all settings, navigate to the Advanced tab, find Auto-advance and select Enable, then click Save Changes.
Next, go to the General tab, scroll to Auto-advance, choose newer or older conversation, and click Save Changes.
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