Improve your productivity and control Gmail at your fingertips by learning essential keyboard shortcuts.
If you use Gmail on a daily basis, there are certainly things you wish you could do more quickly. As with all of the tools offered by Google, Gmail has dozens of keyboard shortcuts.
When the most useful are mastered, you will save precious seconds by launching certain tasks with sometimes just the press of a single key. Even better, some shortcuts will allow you to take advantage of features inaccessible from the native menus.
However, before you can use them, the keyboard shortcuts must be activated from the settings of the mailbox. To do this, click on the cogwheel icon from the inbox and go to Settings.
Scroll through the options offered in the General tab until you reach those concerning Keyboard shortcuts, then click on Activate keyboard shortcuts.
Then scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Save changes.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of the most useful shortcuts for Gmail (if you are using macOS, replace Ctrl by cmd ⌘)
From the main box:
- Write a new message: C
- Write a new message in a new tab: D
- Designate a message as follow-up: S
- Go to the next / previous message from an open message: N for the next one, P for the previous one.
- To open a received message: O
- To select a message in order to erase it, for example: X (and the up and down arrows on the keyboard to move up and down)
- Open G + I Inbox
- Open the outbox: G + T
- Open drafts: L + D
- Open tracked messages: G + S
From an open message:
- Make the text bold, italic or underlined: Ctrl + B / Ctrl + I / Ctrl + U
- Align text left / center / right: Ctrl + Shift + L / Ctrl + Shift + E / Ctrl + Shift + R
- Delete the open message: # (macOS) or AltGr + 3 (PC)
- Report a message as spam:!
- Reply to a message: R
- Reply to a message in a new window: Shift + R
- Reply to all: A
- Reply to all in a new window: Shift + A
- Forward a message: F
- Forward a message to a new window Shift + F