A free Gmail setting can sort promo emails away from real ones

A free Gmail setting can do much of what a roughly $30-a-month email app does: keep promotional emails out of the way so real messages stay on top. Android Police writer Haroun Adamu used it on an inbox with 55,275 unread emails. One filter cut his unread count by more than 20,000, and he says all of it was promos he did not care about.

What it does

The setting is called Multiple Inboxes. It adds up to five custom sections to your Gmail inbox page. Each section is a saved search that decides which emails land there. You could have one for unread mail from real people, one for starred emails and one for promos Gmail has detected.

It is similar to Split Inbox in Superhuman, a paid email app that costs about $30 a month. It is not a full copy. You write the rules yourself, and the sections only appear on the Gmail desktop site.

How to set it up

Open Gmail on a computer, click See all settings and choose the Inbox tab. Next to Inbox type, pick Multiple Inboxes. Then make these changes:

• Under Multiple inbox sections, add: is:unread -category:promotions -category:social
• Set Maximum page size to 10 items so each section stays short.
• Set Multiple inbox position to Above the inbox.
• Scroll down and click Save Changes.

The writer advises against the Right of the inbox position. It squeezes everything into two narrow columns and cuts off most subject lines. With sections on top, you see them first, and each one collapses with a click.

Keeping the top section clean

Some unimportant mail can still slip into the unread section, such as updates from certain platforms and bank alerts. The fix is to add -category:updates to the first section, so the full rule reads is:unread -category:promotions -category:social -category:updates. Gmail sorts mail into categories like Promotions, Social and Updates behind the scenes, and the rule skips those. Bank alerts will still be in the general inbox.

Because you write the rules, the result is more predictable than Google's AI Inbox, which decides on its own what goes where. The article also points to five more Gmail filters from a colleague, Akshay, for things like one-time passcodes and receipts.

The catch

Multiple Inboxes only works in the Gmail web app. On the writer's Android phone, Gmail showed the normal inbox with no sections. If you mostly read email on your phone, this will not help. The writer says you may need a separate email app for similar sorting there.

Who it suits

People who mainly check Gmail on a computer and feel buried in promotions are the best fit. Setup takes a few minutes. Promos move out of the way, and starred emails wait at the top.