Do you wanna view your inbox in a different layout?
Do you wish that you could customize your view right here within Gmail, to better suit your style?
Or perhaps are you tired of seeing things like this Meet and Chat window, especially if you don't use it, so that you can view all of your labels on the left-hand side?
Well, in today's video, I wanna show you all the different ways that you can view and interact with your messages, right here within Gmail.
But first, I'd like to thank today's sponsor, SaneBox.
SaneBox is the email tool to help you keep your inbox under control.
Why so few emails here? That's because SaneBox is using artificial intelligence to help filter out my email.
I particularly like the SaneLater folder where I can go back and look at unimportant emails as it learns the way that I deal with my messages.
If you'd like to try SaneBox for yourself and receive a special credit, go to sanebox.com/simpletivity.
Gmail Quick Settings
So in order for us to change our views within Gmail, all we need to do is go up here to the gear icon.
Now recently, this settings area was altered.
If you want to see all of your full settings, you'll want to come here and say, "See all settings," but Gmail has made it that much more convenient for us to change our different views.
Now most of these are not new, but they've been put in a location which is so much more...
Change Inbox Density in Gmail
Convenient for us to use.
So here, our first option is density. And by default, this is actually the default view.
Now the big difference here in the change that Gmail made just a few years ago, is that if you have an attachment like you see here in the default view, it will show that attachment on a separate line.
So you can see that this particular message really jumps out.
Now this can be convenient because I can go right to the attachment, I don't even have to open up the email.
This is especially helpful if I already am expecting perhaps a document and I don't need to see the message, however, this can be a little jarring I think in some cases, because that one really stands out.
And if you have a few different attachments here, they're gonna jump out and look twice or maybe three times as large as the other messages in your list.
So in that case, you might want to go to the comfortable look here.
Here we can still see that paperclip there, identifying that we have an attachment on that message.
If you want even to go even smaller, you can select compact and have even more messages on the screen in front of you.
For myself, I typically prefer comfortable, so I'm gonna leave it at that.
Edit your Gmail theme
I'm not going to spend a lot of time when it comes to themes, I'm using the default theme here, but if you want something a little more adventurous, or if you want to upload your own photo as your background, you can do so here within the theme section.
Change the Inbox Type in Gmail
But the real goodies come down below when we can choose between different inbox types.
Now by default, again, this is our view here. We're gonna have our new messages appear at the top, a fairly basic and straightforward inbox.
However, we can choose to have a different type of inbox where we have our important emails first.
So here you can see things have been split up, anything that has one of these important markers on it are going to show first at the top of my list here, at the top of my inbox.
And then I've got this section which is called everything else.
Now you can conveniently minimize or maximize these areas if you want, but this can be especially helpful if you are using that important marker.
You can next choose the unread first, so this is going to automatically put your unread messages at the top, and anything which you have opened or laid your eyes on before, are gonna show down below.
Our third option here has to do with a starred first. So if you are using these stars or perhaps you have some filters or rules where these stars come into place, well then those stars are gonna come up at the top as well.
And again, the great thing is, is that you can do this dynamically, you don't have to set this as your inbox for all the time.
You can always choose this gear icon and come down here and choose the one that is most suitable to you.
Next we have a priority inbox, which is going to sort of break out a number of different things.
Here we have important and unread at the top, then we have Starred and Everything else.
How to customize your inbox type settings
What you'll notice here when it comes to priority, multiple inboxes, and also the first one, default, is that we can always click on this customize option here.
So here I can choose what do I want to show within that priority inbox.
Under priority inbox, you know, what are the different sections that I want to display here?
You can choose what you like here within the regular settings area. You can do that for the other types of inboxes as well.
Let's jump back to our inbox though. I'm gonna hit that gear icon so we can come back down to that inbox type.
Multiple inboxes, again, very similar to what we've seen before.
In this case, it's branched it out into a few different ways. I've got a few different filters, starred, drafts, inbox, but I can customize that the way that I want.
For the sake of today's demonstration, I'm gonna go back to that default, which is probably what you're most used to here, but I know a lot of people are not aware of all of the different inbox types that they can set up and the customization.
Edit the inbox reading layout and split pane in Gmail
That comes along with it.
Now, the next one can be really valuable to those of you who may be coming, especially from a Microsoft Outlook world.
And one of the things that I routinely hear is that Scott, this looks very different and I'd love to see the messages, I'd like to interact with one message but also see the rest of my emails.
Which is pretty standard within an Outlook world.
Well, by default, you're gonna have no split. You're just going to see these messages and if I want to go into this message, I open it up and then I have to go back to my inbox, back and forth.
But we have two other reading pane options here. The first one is right of the inbox.
So let me just close this for a second here, and again, if you're an Outlook user, you'll probably be familiar with this.
Here I can select the message on the left-hand side, and then I can read, I can reply, I can do whatever I want. I can go to the next message, I can go up and down this list, and I can interact with my message here on the right-hand side.
But we can also choose another view. We can come down here to below the inbox.
So here you can choose, you can drag and see how many messages you'd like to see at the top of the screen. And then you can see your message down below and interact with it down here.
Now I think one of the caveats of using this particular view is that sometimes this reply and forward, some of these quick buttons down below, get a little hidden depending on the screen size that you have.
But again, you can drag that up and down to your liking.
Toggle between split views with the quick icon
But there's one other thing that I wanna highlight here is that you don't always have to come up here to the gear icon to make this switch.
Gmail recently has also made this more convenient for us here by giving us the ability to toggle between these modes.
So, for example, I can immediately go back to no split or the vertical split, or the horizontal split, depending on my mood (chuckles), depending on how I'm working, depending on the screen size.
You don't always have to select the gear icon; you can come here as well.
Conversation view and email threading
So the last thing I want to show here is at the very bottom of these quick settings is the option for email threading.
By default, this is going to be selected, conversation view.
In summary, conversation view is going to group all of your email threads together.
So if you're having a back and forth conversation amongst people with the same email thread, it's gonna keep everything tightly together. You're not gonna see those as separate emails.
In today's day and age, I find it's really odd, or I find a really hard argument to turn this off, because otherwise you're gonna find yourself replying to an email, which may not be the most recent in that particular thread.
So I would encourage you in most cases to keep this turned on.
Minimize the Gmail label and menu bar
All right, so now for a bonus tip as a part of today's video, and this comes over to the left hand side of the screen.
A couple of things to keep in mind here, as we were looking at the different split and the toggle panes here, keep in mind that you can always minimize this side of the screen.
If you don't want to see all of those labels, you can have them minimized just by selecting the little hamburger, main menu icon in the top left hand side of the screen.
And if you just hover your mouse over, it will auto-expand.
And then I can come back over here. This gives me a lot more real estate as a part of my email inbox.
But let me open this up again.
How to hide Meet and Chat section in Gmail
One of the frustrations is that this Meet and this Chat window is displayed by default.
I know that there are many of you who are not using either of these features, or at the very least, you're not using them very frequently.
That can make the top of the screen a little cumbersome because you have to scroll through and you may have a lot of labels, like you see that I have here in this demonstration account.
I want to be able to click them more easily.
Well, how do we get rid of Meet and Chat?
What we need to do is come here, back to the gear icon, but we are going to say “See all settings.”
This is going to open us up to the main settings screen.
Near the top, near the end, we’re going to have this Chat and Meet area where we can choose to turn off either both or just one of these areas.
I'm going to turn them both off for now.
Don’t forget to hit “Save changes.”
Now it's going to refresh our screen, it’s going to refresh our Gmail account, and look at that—I have access to all of my labels. I don’t even have to scroll very far.
Right, I can access all of my labels here on the left hand side.
If you want to get even more out of Gmail, be sure to check out my video below where I show you seven settings I feel every Gmail user should know.
Thanks so much for watching, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
