Gmail Hacks To Boost Your Productivity, Part III

In our Google Hacks eBook, we’ve delivered 20 great hacks for Gmail users looking to step up their inbox game. Below are four more of these hacks.

Get Comfy/Cozy with your inbox

Once you’ve got your Gmail inbox organized into your preferred sections, you can adjust the density—the vertical line spacing—of the message list. The default position is called Comfortable, while Cozy and Compact progressively decrease the amount vertical space each line in the list occupies. Increase the density, and your email list takes up a much smaller amount of screen real estate—freeing your view up for other windows and tasks.

Expand the conversation (and master more messages)

Under the General tab of your Gmail settings, you can set the number of messages (or Contacts) shown per page, up to a maximum of 100 messages. Combined with a Compact density, you can work through a much greater number of messages at a time, even on smaller screens.

Get x-ray email vision

Microsoft Outlook veterans are familiar with the Preview Pane, wherein you can view the first few lines of an email message without opening it. Gmail has its own Preview Pane option, which you can display below or to the right of your inbox. Previewing a message for a few seconds marks it as read, allowing you to quickly triage which emails are worthy of deeper dives, and which can be dealt with after a casual glance.

Unshackle yourself from Outlook

Speaking of Outlook (or Mac Mail or Thunderbird), one of the many tasks that desktop mail clients perform is to “intercept” any hyperlinks that allow you to send emails and pop open the desktop app to compose the message. The Send from Gmail Chrome browser extension can do the same thing for Gmail, opening a web page for the Gmail compose window whenever you click a linked email address. Even better, the extension’s icon lives in the upper right of your browser window and any time you click it, the Gmail compose window will open with the web address of the page you’re on already formatted and ready for sharing by email. If you need to send links by mail on a regular basis (hi, mom), there’s no faster way to get it done.