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7 Best Hidden Features in Gmail!

How I define hidden features in Gmail

Sometimes it's the little changes that can have a major impact on the tools that we use. So in today's video, I wanna share with you seven hidden features right here within Gmail so that you can get more out of your inbox.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And when I say hidden features, no, these aren't things that you need to use a cheat code to get to.

In fact, most of these features are found in the settings, but it's my experience that the majority of Gmail users do not know that these settings even exist. So I wanna make sure you know where to find them, what they do so that you can get the most out of your Gmail experience.

Reading Pane View

And we're gonna start with the reading pane. You're probably used to this view right here within Gmail where I need to click on an email.

Okay, now I've read the email. I can delete it, archive it, add a label and then I'm gonna go back to my inbox.

Then I'm gonna open up another email and I'm gonna read it and do something with it and then I'm gonna go back to my inbox. Well, there's a more efficient way if you like.

If we click on the gear settings here and scroll all the way down, you can see that there's a section here called reading pane. The great thing about the reading pane is that we can choose if we want to preview or see those emails on the right-hand side of the screen.

I can still see all of my inbox here or whatever folder I'm looking at here on the left-hand side, but I don't have to go in and out. I can view my emails here on the left-hand side and I can read and deal and reply to those emails here on the right-hand side.

Now if you don't like the preview or the reading pane on the right-hand side, you can also choose below the inbox here. You can see your emails up top and you can read and deal with your emails down below.

If you wanna view more or change that split, you can just drag this little area here in the middle to change where that split occurs. Now you can both see your incoming inbox or your incoming email and you can reply and respond to it down below.

So if you want something more than just the standard no split view, make sure you take a look at the reading pane.

Auto-Advance Emails

Now the second one on our list has to do with saving even more time. In this case, we want to auto advance through our messages so we don't have to keep coming back to our inbox.

Once again, we're gonna click on the gear icon, but this time we're gonna say see all settings. At the very right-hand side or near the end of the right-hand side, we wanna click on this advanced tab.

At the top of the list, we have something called auto advance. What this is going to do is that after we delete, archive or mute a conversation, instead of going back to the inbox, we can enable this feature and it's going to take us to the very next message.

So let's take a look at what happens in a normal Gmail setting. Let's say I open up this email and I don't need this anymore so I'm going to delete it.

I'm brought back to the inbox. That's pretty standard behavior.

But if we go back to our settings here, I'm gonna click on that advanced tap and I'm gonna enable the auto advance feature and don't forget to hit save changes. Now it's going to refresh my Gmail screen here for just a moment.

Let me open up another email here and let's say, okay, I've read what I need to do here. I'm gonna delete this one as well.

I'm now immediately taken to the next message in my list and in this case, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna archive this. Maybe there's something in this message that I want to read later.

I'm brought to the very next message in my inbox so no longer am I wasting time going back and forth and back and forth. I can more efficiently get through my email by turning that auto advance feature on.

Undo Send Time Period

Now the third hidden feature I wanna talk to you about has to do when we make a mistake such as replying to an email when we're a little mm, hot and bothered or perhaps just a little angry and then we say, ah, you know what? I should take that back.

So we're talking about undo send. Now let's go ahead and create a new message just by default here.

I'm gonna send it to a test account here. I'm not even gonna fill anything in at this case.

I'm gonna hit send just to show you here on the bottom left-hand corner, we always have this little dialog that says okay message sent, undo or view message. Now the undo was there for a few seconds, but now it's gone.

I actually can't undo this message. In fact, even if I go and hit view message here, I don't have the option to undo this message anymore.

That's because by default, the undo send feature is set for a mere five seconds so if you don't make that decision very, very quickly, you will not be able to take that message back. If we go back into see all settings and about the fourth one down here on the general tab, we have this undo send setting.

Now here's the cancellation period. By default, it is five seconds, but we can extend it all the way out to 30 seconds, meaning that after we hit the send button, Gmail will not actually send that message until 30 seconds later.

I'm just gonna go down to the bottom of the screen here, the bottom of the page, and hit save changes so I can apply that to my email account. So now let's go ahead and send another message here.

I'm just gonna open this up. Let's choose the same test account in this case.

I'm gonna hit send and you will see at the bottom of the screen that undo link, this undo option's gonna hang around an awful lot longer. So I can wait here and say you know what? Didn't really mean to use that type of verbiage.

I didn't really mean to say the things that I did. You know what? Let's undo that. Let's take that one back.

So now we're brought back to the exact same email here and if I had put in a subject or some messaging here, I could now edit it. Maybe take out some of the words or some of the tone that I was speaking of in this particular case.

So if you want just a, a little more of a backup, if you want to make sure that you've got just a little more time to think about that email that you sent, you may want to extend this undo send for an extended period of time.

Nudges for Forgotten Emails

Now let's stay on the general tab here for hidden feature number four and that has to do with nudges. Now nudges can be really, really helpful to making sure that you don't forget about emails that have either been sent to you with a question or if you've sent someone else a question, for example, and you haven't heard from them yet.

Now in this case, I have both of them turned on, but let's be clear as to what each of them actually does. So the first one is suggest emails to reply to and it says emails you might have forgotten to respond to will appear at the top of your inbox.

So for example, if someone has sent you an email and it contains a question, but you've never replied to that email, Gmail can bring that particular message back, maybe after two or three days and say hey, should you reply to this message? Do you want to reply to this message? It will appear at the top of your inbox.

This can be a great way to make sure that you don't forget anything in your inbox. The second one has more to do when you are waiting for a reply, suggest emails to follow up on.

So these are sent emails you might need to follow up on and they will also appear in your inbox. So for example, if I send you an email and I ask you a question, but I haven't heard back from you in maybe 48 or 72 hours, Gmail may bring that message back to say, hey, you know what, you haven't heard back from this person.

They haven't answered you or replied to you. Should you send a follow-up email?

Now if you have not used nudges before, I might suggest that you check both of these boxes and leave them on for a two or three week period and decide if you're benefiting from these features. If you do find that they're annoying, maybe you're very good on the follow-up and maybe you have purposely ignored many of your emails that you haven't responded to, you can always come back in here and uncheck these boxes, but it's worth taking a look at, especially if you haven't tried nudges in the past.

Gmail Offline Mode

Now the next hidden feature on our list has to do when you don't have access to the internet or maybe you know that you're not gonna have internet access for a period of time. And that has to do with Gmail offline mode.

Once again, if we go into our settings, on the right-hand side of our tab near the very end, we have an offline tab and here we only have one option and that is to enable offline email mode. What this is gonna do is actually store and save a certain amount of your inbox to your computer so that you have access to those messages.

You can even set up and write the replies. They just won't be sent until you're back online.

A couple of things that you wanna take a look at here. First off, it's going to tell you how much storage it is going to take.

So in this case, if I do turn it on, I know it's gonna use just 17 megabytes. I mean, come on. That's almost nothing to store the amount of email that I want on my computer here.

The next option we have to consider is how many emails we want to store on our local computer. We have three different options here in terms of time, the last seven days, the last 30 days or the last 90 days.

How far back do you want to go if you are in offline mode? You may need to experiment with this. And you know, sometimes maybe just the past week is good enough, but you can choose from those three different durations.

Next we can choose if we want to download those attachments or not. Last but not least, you need to choose after logging out of your Google account, do you want to keep the offline data on your computer or do you want to remove it from your computer.

Where do you actually go to view your offline mail? Well once you have set this up and hit save changes, all you need to do is go to your browser and type in mail.google.com and then you will be brought directly to your inbox.

It'll be an offline inbox, but you'll still be able to access all of those emails and start to reply even though you're offline.

Multiple Email Signatures

Now adding or editing an email signature may not sound like a hidden feature, but I find that there are many Gmail users who don't realize that they can add multiple email signatures and see the benefit of doing so. So once again, if we go into all of our settings and on the general tab, we wanna scroll down to near the very bottom of this screen and we'll come to the signature area.

Now here you can see I've got my default signature here and you can edit it any way that you like, but you can have as many different signatures as you want. So for example here, I've got a second signature which I like to respond to for a different purpose, right?

Maybe I have a different tagline, maybe I want to include different links or different promotional links within this, depending on whom I'm sending it to. The other benefit of having multiple signatures is that you can use them for different purposes such as for new emails versus reply or forward emails only.

So for example, I'm gonna create a new one here and I'm just gonna call this one a reply email and I'm gonna say create. Then here I'm just gonna say something like, you know, Scott F, maybe something really, really basic like that.

That's all I want it to say when I'm replying or forwarding to an email, just like that. So now down below when I come to my signature defaults, I can say okay, for new emails, yeah, I want you to use my signature, but when it comes to reply or forwarding, I want you to use my reply email, just like that.

So now I can come down here and hit save changes and that behavior will be there. However, it gets better.

So for example, I'm gonna open up and start a brand new email and at the bottom of the screen, you can see that we have this little pen icon which is actually an insert signature function. So by default, here is the correct signature that I want for most of my emails.

But if I come down here and select insert signature, I have access to all of my signatures. So maybe I want that second one, Scott Friesen number two, and maybe I wanna add some further details here as well.

You can have as many signatures as you want. You can even choose to turn off the signature altogether, depending on that message, but the flexibility of having and managing those multiple signatures can be great even if you're only using a single email address.

More Menu Space

Last but not least, my final hidden feature has to do with getting more out of your menu here on the left-hand side. Often we have a large number of labels here and even if I click the more option here, I still need to scroll to see all of my options.

And let's be honest. This isn't even that many labels altogether.

In many cases, it's this chat and rooms and meeting options or these areas that take up an awful lot of real estate. Well what if I don't make use of chat or meet? Even if I minimize this, it might still get in the way, depending on how many labels I have here.

Well if we go back into our settings and say see all settings, all we need to do is click on the chat and meet option and we can turn both chat and we can turn meet off. We can turn chat to off and we can say hide the meet section in the main menu.

I'm gonna select save changes. I'm gonna be brought back to my main screen.

And now they are gone. Now I've got full access to everything here on the left-hand side.

Now I would love to hear from you next. Which of these seven hidden features were your favorites or did I miss something from my list?

Be sure to let me know in the comments down below. Thank you for watching today's video.

I hope you like and subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple

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