Speaking with Joe Solomon (@EngageJoe on twitter) yesterday about an awesome project, he reflected on the difficulty of keeping up with email and we realized that we both use Gmail as our default email client.
If you’re anything like me, getting to inbox zero is a pipe-dream. Joe, this post I won’t stop the email from coming in, but it will trick your inbox out and maybe make it prettier as well.
Google settings
Gmail’s normal settings already allows a surpring number of options for tricking out your Gmail. I like that you can cull together your other email accounts in one inbox and respond from whatever address you prefer. You can also compose a signature to go out with all your sent messages and include html if you want to.
The next source of Gmail customization comes from the google labs section of Gmail settings. Here are some of my favorites.
Superstars – If the default yellow stars don’t seem like enough for you, enable superstars and you can have even more icon options that starring an item will let you rotate through. If that’s still not enough you can add the Superstars Turbo script.
Keyboard Shortcuts – If you hate using a mouse in your inbox, or miss the old days when you used to se pine, enable shortcuts in labs and you can set a ton of actions to simple keystrokes.
Pictures in Chat – see your friends’ pictures when you chat with them in gchat – makes it that much closer to a normal chat client.
Forgotten Attachment Detector -With this activated, Gmail will prompt you if you fail to attach a file while your message contains phrases like “check out the attached Godzilla cartoon,” or my favorite, “my resume is attached.”
Custom Label Colors – Now we’re getting to the money stuff. I’ve actually had people make me show them on the spot why my inbox was so colorful when they noticed the effects of this feature. Not for everyone, but if you label often it can help things stand out.
Gadgets – These can really move your Gmail window towards being a one stop shop. Gadgets appear in your Gmail sidebar ad Google calendar and google docs are built in options, but you can add any gadget you enjoy on your iGoogle homepage to your Gmail sidebar, like the weather, a calculator, your favorite news site or the remember the milk task manager.
Greasemonkey
The key to a lot of the deeper Gmail customizations is the GreaseMonkey Firefox Addon. If you don’t have that installed yet, now’s the time. That said, the remainder of the customizations will only work in FireFox because they depend on Greasemonkey.
Better Gmail 2
The Better Gmail 2 add on is a collection of a ton of Gmail Greasemonkey scripts into one FireFox addon. Here are my favorite features from the options menu.
Force encrypted connection – You can force Gmail to engage the google server using the more secure https protocol. Nice added security for working at coffee shops and in public.
Macros ? shortcuts – Enables a ton of shortcuts and you can always hit ? to bring them up if you forget.
Show CC Automatically – You can have the BCC box display as well if you like, but I find I use that one less frequently. There are other composition defaults you can change as well.
Collapsible Calendar and Reader – With this option these applications will appear in panes just below your inbox within the main Gmail window. Useful so you don’t have to open another tab each time you want to add an event to your calendar or find something quickly in your feed reader.
Attachment Icons – pretty!
Skins! – I use the Gmail blue skin. Skins are essentially custom theming for your Gmail display – It’s really like night and day when you first see your inbox using a skin. I use the Gmail Blue skin, but check out Gmail Redesigned if you want something more radical.
update: gmail has just released a themes tab within settings that will be rolling out to all users in the next weeks.
Those are all the changes I have made using Better Gmail 2 though there are more options to explore. After you’re done configuring the addon just refresh the page to see the changes.
Phew! That’s a lot of customization. Which of these do you use and find helpful and what have I left out? Also feel free to share general email management tips and link
