Gmail is constantly adding features to help people become more organized. Today, Google has tweaked its Labels feature to add more functionality to the labels toolkit, helping users implement labels in a more organized way. Your labels will now be located in a new area on your Gmail interface, above your chat list and grouped together with Inbox, Drafts, Chats and other system labels. You can also now control which labels you’d like to show on your UI and you can hide the rest under a “more” tab.
Of the more innovative features that has been added is the ability to drag and drop messages into labels, just like you can with folders. You can also drag labels onto messages too. It’s also possible to drag labels into the “more” menu to hide them, making it easier to change labels than going to the Settings function. This feature is huge for those people who complain about Gmail not having some of the drag and drop features of Outlook.
Google says these changes will eliminate the need for Right-side Labels, which was an experimental Gmail Labs feature. Apparently, this is the first Labs feature that Google is retiring.
useful certainly, but yahoo mail has had drap and drop since 2007, in fact, you can even CTRL select multiple emails together, and drag and drop them all together.
As much as you guys at TechCrunch like rip on Google Android, I am surprised you haven’t written about how bad the email client is on Android phones.
http://bit.ly/oTSva
Frankly, I don’t know how they expect the phone to compete with the likes of RIM in its current state.
This is supercool! But I don’t see it yet in Gmail. Looks like they’re doing a phased roll-out like they usually do.
Now all they need to do is make a button for “label:unread” — hurry up already!
You can do this already with the QuickLinks feature in the labs.
Best
Hans
No kidding. The inability to view only unread messages is insanely primitive.
[Hoping someone swiftly corrects me and tells me it is possible]
Great News! You can read only unead emails.
Enable Quick Links in labs.
Go back to gmail and search is:unread
After the search, cick add quick link on the left side in the Quick Links box.
Name is Unread Emails and now you can easily view all unread emails.
I hope I get this soon. This is a welcome change.
Great to know that Gmail is getting better.
I like having my labels on the right hand side. My labels have moved back to where they used to be but I haven’t got the new bit yet. It’s frustrating! I wouldn’t mind so much if I had the new system to try out but they are now annoying me!
Same here
I am was very satisfied how labels worked on right side. It was bit stupid to tell by Google to use Chat box instead of labels on right side. I already did it and it just worked well. Now there is just wasted room under Chat box on right side.
Dont *remove* features, i have to drag my mouse to the left of the screen every time. I’m right-handed like most and the right side labels feature was so cool. I keep my Ubuntu menu on the right side (panels+shortcuts, right-click+Move) and use keyboard shortcuts wherever possible.
Gmail team, at least announce that you will restore right-side labels if all you want to do is make d-n-d work for right-side too. I know it might be difficult to build on another person’s work, but at office, I have to fix other people’s mistakes from my time – to the extent of days, sometimes (the joys of helpdesk
).
So it’s not out-of-the-world to support existing features.
I have lost right-side labels, but not got the new implementation.
Would have liked to have both change at once!
oh and I wonder if this will kill “folders 4 gmail”?
What I really want is a better way to manage mailing lists. Currently I subscribe to 70+ mailing lists, mostly from open source projects. Each of those mailing lists needs its own label under gmail.
The long list is difficult to navigate the way it is now, and will probably get more difficult with the changes they are talking about making. Aside from that, if I actually want to really *label* some of my items, how do I separate those labels from the ones I use for my mailing lists? The UI does not handle it in a useful way.
I’m surprised that it’s like this, since I’d expect most developers to be on as many mailing lists as I am.
Sorry didn’t completely understand what your issue is… You will still be able to choose which labels are shown or hidden in the “More” link. So if you just want it like before, just show all of them…
Brendan Miller
Try Yahoo? It has real folders and subfolders instead of labels, and it supports drag-and-drop.
grrrrrr
i LIKED my right side labels
having that huge list on the right allowed me to not scroll (w/ left side labels)
I agree – right side labels were a great use of screen real estate. Now I have to scroll to see all my labels.
Same here
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maybe “effective spammers” would be a better name for your website.
actually, scratch “effective”, and go with “annoying” instead.
I was waiting for drag n drop feature from a long time.This is really cool .
http://tekunik.blogspot.com
I want my labels back on the right! I have extensive filtering built around right-side labels to screen messages and help me focus on the matters at hand.
No matter what features are added, having the label list under the left-side functions is completely unhelpful.
I actually really preferred having the labels on the right side. This really throws off the feng shui of my gmail. Please give us the option back google!.
This is awesome. I just had to refresh my Gmail and the new label system was there immediately.
It checks which of your labels are most used, and puts the rest in a drop-down “More” section. Saved me space so I can see more of my gadgets! I never had any gadgets or labels on the right side because it would break my Multiple-Inboxes lab feature.
Thanks Gmail team!
Back to the same problem that made me happy to be able to move labels to the right. Now my calendar is way down the bottom, not where i can see it constantly, Boo Hiss Let me move calendar to right above chat
I’m in the same boat. I extensively used right-side labels. I’m one to attempt to keep my inbox tidy and small, and right-hand labels helped me do so. We’ll see with this new addition how things work, but, as of right now, I don’t have the feature.
As a few other people have commented, I too have lost my right side labels but have not yet received the updated label functionality. I actually spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out what happened before I gave up and hit Reader only to find this waiting for me.
@gsm I agree!
I can understand why the Inbox, Drafts, Chats and other system labels should be more or less static, but I really do not understand the reasons for limiting what can live on the right side. It seems like it should be somewhat trivial to allow any of the gadgets to float freely to either column since they can already float vertically.
This new label functionality sounds like a great addition and I’m sure I’ll love it, but I really would have liked to have the option to continue to use the old label panel as well (so I can quickly scan the all of my labels, not just my favorites) and still have the full list on the right hand side so it doesn’t interfere with my other gadgets.
Same here. my right side labels were moved to the original spot. But is still don’t see the new improvements. Why can they just improve the labeling system but leave the option to have the labels on the right since heavy label users like myself tend to prefer having the right side dedicated to labels, no matter how many labels you have. I guess I have to wait for the new changes to test the improvements.
arg, this totally blows. Right side labels worked really well, i’ve got a lot of labels and having them on the right side made perfect sense. Too bad google doesn’t allow comments on their blog, guess they don’t really care what their users think.
Drag and drop / smarter labels does not obviate the need for the right-side labels feature. It makes the labels more manageable but it being on the left side now requires me to scroll on my netbook (and, ironically, makes it a lot harder for me to drag and drop).
I say either reinstate the feature or activate universal drag-and-drop and put the arguments to rest.
Lots of people didn’t liked the idea of left side, check out gmail discussion: (all 3 threads)
http://tr.im/qw5g
http://tr.im/qw5i
http://tr.im/qw5l
Damn, no right side and folders4gmail is broken. This sucks big time as I’ve got over 100 nested folders and looking in ‘more’ means a lot of scrolling.
Poll: For Right side http://poll.fm/11jas
Yes…please bring right-side labels back.
I think it’s BS. Some of the new features are absolutely wonderful, but i want to be able to have my full list of labels on the right. Why NOT?
Please bring back the right side labels!!!
It would be nice if Google sent me an email (or a gmail) to let me know of these changes before they do them!
it is so difficult to use, you have to precisely put the mouse over there to move, stupid.
There must be an option to show labels with unread messages before the remaining labels.
They retired the default “Reply All” function from labs, too. SO sad.
Count me amongst those who are not fans of this move. I didn’t even make use of right sided labels, I actually used the left side ones and found them to be great. Being able to hide all my labels when I needed to, and see all of them when I wanted to was great. I get mail that goes to most of my labels via filters every day and I like having the ability to see the entire list with a click of the button, while still being able to see Chat or my Calendar. Drag and drop was a nice step forward, but the new inherent layout is crap.
Wow. The more I [try to] use them, the less I like them. Bring back left and right sided labels. Make this new variation an option.
I’ve never understood this. Why in chat are your friends that are not available listed before those that are just idling? Wouldn’t you want to message someone that might not be looking at their gmail tab before someone that has explicitly changed there status to “busy” (aka don’t bother me)?
I didn’t have the new labels activated either and I just went into Lab settings, toggles a couple things, saved and went back to inbox and the new Labels system appeared. Works great. Anyone know if there’s a way to COPY-drag a conversation into a label instead of just Moving it?
What I love is how the new version makes you open up your list every time you want to look at a new label (assuming it isn’t in your “most used” list). Open up label ABC and check the new mail there, then you have to open up the entire label list again and scroll to XYZ and click on that. Heaven forbid you want to look at another label that isn’t in your “most used” list or you have to open it all up and scroll again.
Ugh. Really poorly designed.
Nice article. One thing you forgot to mention is perhaps how other web-email providers like Yahoo! provides the same feature since before 2007. Not even one sarcastic remark! Totally biased towards Google.
Also, perhaps you haven’t used the drag-drop in Yahoo! mail, its far more easier to operate than to pin-point your mouse on that small handle in front of the email that Gmail provides.
How much did Google pay you to exclude all this?
Yeah… same with Hotmail… drag and drop was normal… but well it’s Google… so it is SPECIAL :-p
I find it really annoying that Google are prioritizing such stupid gimmicky features like this above important issues like lack of rich text signatures. I think they need to get their priorities right. This is supposed to be a business-ready product.