06 Sep 2011
The Holy Trinity of Gmail Plugins
First of all: You’re all using gmail, right? Right. Good.
There are three features in the gmail web client that I absolutely cannot live without:
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Auto reply all
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Send and archive
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Undo send
Auto Reply All
I find this to be the most valuable of the three. I used to break untold numbers of email threads by hitting ‘reply’ instead of ‘reply all’. No longer! Especially in a business environment when you have multiple correspondents more often than not, this should be the default. I was using it a couple of years ago when it was mysteriously removed, and I nearly cried.
Send and Archive
The only thing more satisfying than archiving email is archiving it automatically. As far as I’m concerned once I’ve sent a reply to an email the responsibility lies with the other party, so I’m perfectly happy to banish the conversation from my inbox until they respond.
Undo Send
Perfect for when you neglect to remove the placeholders from a form email, or realize that you’ve forgotten to add the links you promised you were going to send.
Others
I also use other labs features in gmail, but I think the ones I’ve mentioned are the ones I rely on the most. Here are the others in no particular order:
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Multiple inboxes - I keep my starred mail visible in another inbox directly under my regular one so that I don’t forget about it.
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Custom date formats - Because the month comes after the date.
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Title Tweaks - Somewhat redundant now thanks to App Tabs, but still useful in some cases.
Thanks for reading! If you like my writing, you may be interested in my book: Healthy Webhook Consumption with Rails
David at 10:00
