11 Lesser-Known Gmail Features To Elevate Your Email Efficiency

Managing your Gmail inbox can get out of hand quickly. Especially if you have multiple accounts, like separate work and personal accounts. With emails flowing in from everywhere, it’s like drinking from a firehose.

Thankfully, Gmail offers many advanced settings to manage emails easily. However, not all the options are available upfront or enabled by default. Some are hidden inside a tiny drow-down menu or in over a dozen tabs in Gmail settings.

Going beyond the regular, today I will list some of the obscure features of Gmail that will surely up your email efficiency.

Schedule Emails To Send Later

If you think you’ll forget to send an important email later or have time to write one right now but won’t have it later, then you’ll surely find the email schedule feature useful. You can schedule emails in Gmail to be sent at a later date and time.

Just compose an email and instead of hitting the Send button, click on the tiny upside-down arrow next to it and select Schedule send.

It will show some preset dates and times and an option to pick a custom date and time. Choose the time that fits you, and the email will be scheduled. You can see all your scheduled emails in a separate label named Scheduled.

Translate Emails

No need to copy/paste anything in Google Translate when it’s built into Gmail. Yes, you can translate emails inside Gmail with just two clicks in any language you want. While an email is opened, click on the three dots menu at the right and select Translate message.

A new bar will open up at the top of the message, where you can select both languages. By default, it will try to translate the email to the default language of your Gmail account.

Enable Auto-Advance

When you get rid of an email by deleting or archiving it, Gmail will take you back to the inbox to open another email. However, if Auto-advance is enabled, it will instead take you directly to the next email in the list. This can save you countless clicks wasted on opening new emails (1 click per email, to be exact, actually).

Click on the Gear button at the top-right side in Gmail and select See all settings.

Now move to the Advanced tab and enable the Auto-advance option. Gmail will refresh, and the option will be enabled.

Use Confidential Mode For Security

If you need to share some sensitive information that you don’t want to risk getting in the hands of anyone other than the intended recipient, then Confidential Mode has a bunch of options to securely do it. While composing an email, click the Padlock icon at the bottom to open Confidential Mode.

Here you can set an expiry date for the email from 1 day to 5 years, after which the email will become unavailable. You can also choose to set up a passcode that will be sent to the phone of the recipient, basically adding a secondary confirmation. The recipient will also not be able to download, forward, copy or print that email.

However, do keep in mind that the recipient can still take a screenshot/photo of the email to preserve its content.

Let Someone Else Manage Your Account

If you want someone else to manage your emails, then there is no need to share your Gmail credentials with them. You can assign a delegate to manage your Gmail account. They will be able to send/receive/delete emails and even change Gmail settings.

To do so, go to Gmail Settings from the Gear icon and move to the Accounts and Import tab. Here click on the Add another account button next to the Grant access to your account option.

A new window will open, here, provide the email of the delegate and confirm the prompt to send a confirmation email to them.

Now the delegate will have to open their account to accept the request to be able to start managing. Your account will show under their Google account menu, marked as Delegated.

You can revoke these rights again by going to the same Grant access to your account option and hitting the Delete button next to it.

View Emails Offline

You can configure Gmail to store recent emails on your PC to access them even when you are offline. Not only that, you can compose and send/reply to new messages, and they will be sent as soon as you get an internet connection.

Go to Gmail Settings and move to the Offline tab. Here check the checkbox next to the Enable offline email option. Afterward, configure it as you like and click the Save Changes button. You can store up to 90 days of emails.

Google also recommends bookmarking the Gmail page for easier access when offline.

Use The Right-Click Menu

Something I discovered recently. Unlike most other web-based apps that open the browser’s default menu upon right-clicking, Gmail instead opens its own menu with a bunch of options. This only happens when you right-click on a closed email, it doesn’t work inside the email body.

Right-click on any email, and it will open a long menu with a bunch of options already available in the top bar and some others. Some of the interesting options include Forward as an attachment, Move to tab, Reply all, and a search option to find related emails.

I personally find this menu useful for quickly configuring emails without needing to select or open an email first.

Increase Undo Send Duration

Since it’s enabled by default, you probably already know that you can undo sent emails using the undo notification that pops up when you send an email. However, you can also increase its duration to get more time to think about your sent email and make changes.

Open up Gmail Settings, and under the General tab, click on the drop-down menu next to the Undo Send option. Here you can increase the duration up to 30 seconds. Do keep in mind that this will also delay the time your recipient will receive the email. It could be bad in situations where you need the email delivered ASAP.

See Emails From All Accounts in One Place

If you have multiple email accounts, you don’t have to switch between them to keep up with emails. In the main account, you can gain access to the other accounts to receive emails.

In the Gmail Settings, move to the Accounts and Import tab and click on Add a mail account next to the Check mail from other accounts option.

Here provide the email of the account you want to import emails from. On the next page, you can choose either POP3 or Gmailify. If the account you are importing emails from is a Gmail account, then choose POP3. Otherwise, select Gmailify to provide the account same security and features as Gmail.

Afterward, provide the account’s password and click the Add account button to add it.

You can repeat the process to add multiple email accounts, and all their emails will show in your inbox. However, it will only import inbox emails, not labels.

Send Emails as a Different Account

Similar to receiving all the emails in a single account you can email as different accounts from a single Gmail account. To do so, Go to the Accounts and Import tab in Gmail Settings and click on Add another email address next to the Send mail as an option.

Here add the email of the other account, and you’ll be asked to complete a verification. Once you’ll confirm, a verification email will be sent to the other account, where you can click on a link to allow the original account to send emails using it.

Now when you compose a new email, you can click on the drop-down menu next to your email address to change it. For replies, you can either use the default account or the one to which the email was originally sent.

Snooze Emails To Check Later

If you don’t want to read through an email right away or want to check an email again at a later time, then you’ll surely appreciate the Snooze feature of Gmail. With Snooze, you can snooze emails to be shown later again. When the time comes, the email will show as a new email in the inbox.

While an email is open or multiple are selected, click on the clock icon at the top. This will open a menu listing preset dates and times from one day to over a week. You can also set a precise date and time using the Pick date & time option.

Bonus 🎁

It’s more of a trick rather than a configurable feature, but it’s very useful if you subscribe to newsletters often. You can add a Plus (+) sign and any other words at the end of your email address before the @ sign, and Gmail will treat it as a separate address but still send emails to the same inbox.

For example, if your email is johnsmith@gmail.com, you can subscribe to the Geekflare newsletter using johnsmith+geekflare@gmail.com. This way, you can easily sort out emails received to this specific address by putting it in the search bar.

Final words

I am sure you’ll find all of these features useful, especially if you have multiple accounts. I personally have two accounts, and I manage both of them from a single account thanks to these Gmail built-in features. You can also take advantage of third-party apps and extensions to get better email efficiency.