Thursday, February 5, 2009

Official Gmail Blog: New in Labs: Multiple Inboxes

Posted by Octavian "Vivi" Costache, Software Engineer

I'm seriously into filters and labels. All the email I get related to Flash goes under my "flash" label, everything about paragliding goes under "flying," and they all skip my inbox because that's how I like to stay organized. But when new email arrives I have to switch to the "flash" label first, then click on "paragliding," etc. I wanted a way to see it all at once.

So when I heard about Gmail Labs, I started implementing a Labs feature in my 20% time that would help me (and you!) spend less time monitoring important messages that may end up getting filtered away. Starting today, you can try Multiple Inboxes, a Labs experiment which makes it possible to have more than one 'inbox' in your default Gmail view.

An image is worth a thousand words, so here's what my inbox looks like:



In addition to a quick view of my important labels, I also like to keep all my starred and draft messages in separate panels.

After you turn on Multiple Inboxes from the Labs tab under Settings, you can configure what you want to see, as well as set the number of messages displayed and the positioning of your panels from the Multiple Inboxes section under Settings.

However you choose to use it, let us know how we can improve the Multiple Inboxes experiment -- all feedback is welcome.

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