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Ask HN: Gmail feature you just can't live without.
What features in gmail or your favorite email service that can't live without? What features in your email service help improve your productivity.
- joeblubaugh 17y agoThreaded conversations & multiple labeling. This just destroys the folder metaphor other apps use.
- buugs 17y agoLabels 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.
- xsc 17y agoFilters + Archive. Keeps my life in check.
- jmonegro 17y agoe-mail :D But seriously, a good, no, great spam filter.
- intranation 17y agoSeems 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.
- jmonegro 17y agoThat is true for me as well. I wonder what happened.
- geuis 17y agoSearch. Absolutely the most important feature I use.
- kqr2 17y agoI use gmail to send myself technical notes constantly. The search feature is invaluable for looking them up again.
- jtuyen 17y agoI 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.
- vaksel 17y agoability to use it on my own domain.
- mlinsey 17y agoSearch, threaded conversations, the excellent spam filter, and excellent integration with Google Calendar.
- manticor 17y agoSearchable archive. I don't know how many times this has saved me, and how many times I was screwed by Yahoo!
- bingaman 17y ago'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.
- solutionyogi 17y ago1. 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. :)
- Prolitheus 17y agoEverything should have Vim key bindings.
- progLiker 17y agoVi 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.
- enomar 17y agoMute
- joeyo 17y agoI 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.
- enomar 17y agoI 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.
- yan 17y agoKeyboard shortcuts, and auto-filtering to different labels. I'm actually quite obsessive with my filters.
- jerryji 17y ago1. label 2. spam filter 3. search 4. thread 5. archive
- zecg 17y agoSpam filter, IMAP, threads, importing from other accounts (for those in which I can't just set .forward). Search. Mailbox size.
- andrewl-hn 17y agoI 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.
- ruchi 17y agoPop and forwarding.
- da5e 17y agoThe "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".
- rokhayakebe 17y agoShortcuts On. I almost never use my mouse with Gmail.
- tralfam 17y agoSpam 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.
- xenophanes 17y agoYou can only do 100 emails at a time, though...
- Hexstream 17y agoRule-based action system (filters). I wish such intuitive and user-friendly programmability was part of more services.
- zackola 17y ago- keyboard shortcuts - best spam filter on planet (although it seems a few obvious ones have slipped through recently) - search
- mimmo 17y agoIn no particular order: labels, filters, spam filter and the ability to search everything.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- pg 17y agoBeing 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.)
- alanthonyc 17y agoI'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?
- ujjwalg 17y agointerface of gmail on iPhone.. I just love it..
- bayareaguy 17y agoI use http://www.fastmail.fm/mail/familyplans.html http://www.fastmail.fm/mail/familyplans.html because it allows me to trivially manage everything related to email for my entire family.
- pt 17y agoUnlimited 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.
- vivekamn 17y agokeyboard short cuts.