Best way to use gmail on mac
Tweak your labels: In the past, if you applied multiple Gmail labels to a message in your inbox, then searched for that message in Mail, you’d be flooded with duplicate messages-one for each label, another for its appearance in the inbox, and another for its All Mail entry. If you truly want to delete a message, you can drag and drop it to the /Trash folder.
#BEST WAY TO USE GMAIL ON MAC ARCHIVE#
Once you tweak settings in Mail in a later step, using the Delete key on a message will tell Gmail to archive it in All Mail. Then, just below that option, change the setting When a message is marked as deleted and expunged to Archive the message. In Gmail’s settings, under the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab, change the setting When I mark a message in IMAP as deleted to Auto-Expunge off. Since you can’t fix Mail’s archive behavior with Gmail accounts, and you can’t tell Gmail to archive in a different folder, I propose a compromise. But if you do-say, while on vacation away from your devices or using a different work computer-some of Gmail’s built-in archive and search features won’t know to look in the Archive folder that Mail created.
If you rarely sign into Gmail on the Web, you don’t need to worry about this. This does not follow Gmail’s behavior on the Web of moving messages to All Mail, which means that messages archived through Mail won’t be stored in the place Gmail understands. Press the button, and it will create a new top-level folder called Archive where you can now store messages that you don’t need in your Inbox, but that you want to be able to search later. Unfortunately, after two years and a number of bug reports filed with Apple, that button still doesn’t work properly with Gmail. You can also use View > Customize Toolbar to add an Archive button to the toolbars of Mail’s main window and individual message viewer windows. After all, you never know if that rainy day will come next month or four years from now, and there’s no harm in keeping tiny emails around in this age of ever-expanding storage space.Īs of OS X 10.7 and 10.8, you might notice a new Message > Archive option in Mail’s menu. (Yep, this deja vu is brought to you by iOS.)ĭeal with archiving issues: One of Gmail’s perks is a ridiculous amount of storage space, so Google has set it up to highly encourage archiving your email instead of having to make the decision to delete just some of it. So I recommend instead opening System Preferences and selecting Mail, Contacts, & Calendars. You can still do that if you want, but OS X now understands more about your Google Account-that it includes not only Gmail but also other services. Step 3: Add your Google account to OS Xīefore OS X Lion, when you wanted to add your Gmail account, you’d do so in the Mail app by selecting Mail > Preferences > Accounts. But I think the compromise is worthwhile. It’s a compromise, to be sure, made to adapt Mail to the way Gmail works. Mail now hides the copies, so you won’t be bothered by them, but the copies do take up disk space. One note: With All Mail enabled, Mail will keep multiple copies of your labeled messages. However, unlike previous advice, make sure All Mail is enabled. Two such labels are “Chats” and “Important,” so in the Labels tab, ensure that the Show in IMAP checkbox is disabled for them. Here, you make labels invisible to apps that can’t deal with them, such as Mail on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad. To ensure a smooth multidevice ride, stay in Gmail’s settings and click the Labels tab. Instead of filing messages into single folders, as Mail and most other clients do, Gmail lets you tag email messages with multiple words, or labels, just as you can with photos on Flickr.Ī few tweaks to Gmail’s Labels settings will help messages appear correctly on your different devices. When you use Gmail on the Web, you can take advantage of a few unique features that traditional email clients like Mail don’t support. Enable IMAP so you’ll be able to see mail across all your devices.