Make the Gmail mailbox a lot clearer. With three small adjustments, the mail overview looks much less cluttered.
Cleaned up inbox
A tidy mailbox provides an overview. For the most part, this is in your own hands. Delete uninteresting emails or keep important messages in folders. But the mail program Gmail also offers a number of settings to keep the inbox tidy.
Turn tabs on or off
By default, messages in Gmail are sorted by tabs, such as Primary, Social, and Advertising. Gmail sorts the messages independently and shows them in the tab where they belong according to the mail service. To view all emails, you must open all tabs. Do you find this inconvenient and would you rather just have all the e-mails in one place? Then disable the tabs:
- Click the gear icon at the top right
. - click on View all settings.
- Under ‘Settings’ click on the tab inbox.
- All options are listed behind ‘Categories’. Clear all check marks except for the check mark Primary, away to receive all mail in an inbox.
- click on Saving Changes.
You return to the mailbox. The tabs are gone. All emails are listed below each other. To re-enable the tabs, repeat these steps. Now only tick all the boxes for the desired tabs. After saving, the tabs are shown again.
Group Mail Conversations
Gmail has a feature that some people praise and others hate: grouping emails together like conversations. The advantage is that all messages are grouped together in a ‘conversation’. They are no longer loose in the inbox. The downside is that it can be difficult to find your way around. This way of showing mails can be turned off and on.
- Click the gear icon at the top right .
- At the bottom of the settings options is ‘Email Conversations’. Put a check in front of this Conversation View to group messages. Remove the check mark to stop showing the e-mails merged.
- click on Reload to switch to the selected view.
Turn reading pane on or off
Gmail has the “Reading Pane” option. The screen is then divided into two halves. In one half you will find an overview of all e-mails. In the other shows a selected mail. But you can also disable the Reading Pane, so that only the overview of the e-mails can be seen. Set yourself whether and how the window is displayed.
- Click the gear icon at the top right .
- Under ‘Reading pane’, check the desired option.
- If prompted, click Reload.