Ask HN: Gmail feature you just can't live without. | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Gmail feature you just can't live without.

11 pointssarvesh37 comments

What features in gmail or your favorite email service that can't live without? What features in your email service help improve your productivity.

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Threaded conversations & multiple labeling. This just destroys the folder metaphor other apps use.

Labels has to be the most useful feature there is especially when you get to use incoming filters to catch all the mail you want and pre-organize it.

Being able to archive stuff and find it again by searching, instead of having to organize old email into folders. I never realized this till Gmail, but folders were just a clumsy, manual precomputed search result. (So are most book indexes.)

Search. Absolutely the most important feature I use.

I use gmail to send myself technical notes constantly. The search feature is invaluable for looking them up again.

Spam filter. Gmail has blocked 2000 spam in the last 30 days. Spam almost never makes it past that filter.

Second is the ability to easily manipulate large amounts of email. I mean, easily archive, make read, etc. any amount of email through search. I like to see when people follow me on twitter via email. I get an email everytime, which means there is a ton of email that I want to only look at once. Gmail allows me to go: Search:"Twitter", then "Select All", Archive. Now all that is out of my inbox.

You can only do 100 emails at a time, though...

e-mail :D

But seriously, a good, no, great spam filter.

Seems to me that the spam filter has gotten worse lately--I've had a false positive for the first time I can remember, and regularly get 1 or 2 spam emails in my inbox each day. It's a testament to Gmail's normal spam performance that this shocks me, but shock me it does.

That is true for me as well. I wonder what happened.

'Send and Archive' from the labs. Once I've replied to an email, 9 times out of 10 having an email sitting in my inbox is pointless.

1. Speed (I think it's faster than Outlook in almost all operations) 2. VIM like keyboard shortcuts

1 and 2 combined makes it a winner for me. :)

Everything should have Vim key bindings.

Vi like keys definitively for me too.

Every thing not beeing a "full-blown" editor should have bindings to support a subset of your favorite keymap. So those who like Emacs or Vi, or Wordstar for that matter, could leverage their habits.

Search, threaded conversations, the excellent spam filter, and excellent integration with Google Calendar.

ability to use it on my own domain.

Shortcuts On. I almost never use my mouse with Gmail.

- keyboard shortcuts - best spam filter on planet (although it seems a few obvious ones have slipped through recently) - search

Spam filter, IMAP, threads, importing from other accounts (for those in which I can't just set .forward). Search. Mailbox size.

Rule-based action system (filters). I wish such intuitive and user-friendly programmability was part of more services.

Keyboard shortcuts, and auto-filtering to different labels. I'm actually quite obsessive with my filters.

The "send to" feature using Gmail is my favorite. Combined with the ability to turn the email into a Google document it lets me research, write and format articles or web pages without ever leaving "the cloud".

I use Yahoo! Mail for historical reasons. I receive about 12-20 emails per day. Besides writing and reading emails I use Search - that's the only thing I really need. I also started using folders this year: the folder names are 2005, 2006, ... 2008 :) Current year emails are stored in inbox. On average day I spend very little time on emails, though.

I have a Gmail account, too, but I haven't found any Gmail-specific features I would use. Conversations or labels are neat and my spouse adores them. As for me I just don't care as long as my search box is working.

I have to say it's the lab features. With all the cool addon features you can enable on the fly. Canned responses and Undo features is the top 2 I can't live without.

1. label 2. spam filter 3. search 4. thread 5. archive

Searchable archive. I don't know how many times this has saved me, and how many times I was screwed by Yahoo!

Unlimited email addresses for my Inbox with a pattern such as myid-*@yahoo.com (e.g. myid-ycombinator@yahoo.com). Great for spam protection when registering on little known websites, etc. This is provided in the Address Guard feature in Yahoo email.

In no particular order: labels, filters, spam filter and the ability to search everything.

I use http://www.fastmail.fm/mail/familyplans.html because it allows me to trivially manage everything related to email for my entire family.

Mute

I don't fully understand this feature. I presume it does something different than archive, but I haven't figured out what.

Edit: Ah, it keeps future messages in the thread out of the inbox too. Neat.

I don't filter anything, but I use mute aggressively.

This ensures that I see all threads at least once, but if I'm not interested in the thread, I never see it again.

I'm addicted to the temporary passwords on yahoo mail. I use them all the time when signing up on random sites.

Has anyone else made the switch from this to gmail?

Pop and forwarding.

Filters + Archive.

Keeps my life in check.

interface of gmail on iPhone.. I just love it..

keyboard short cuts.

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