Google Gmail Reorganizes Its Mailbox Around New Tabs

It's a commonly shared truism that people are inundated by too many notices, updates, and, especially, emails every day. For people with Gmail accounts, Google's upcoming facelift for Gmail's mailbox might be just the thing to sort out the chaos of your insane inbox (at least a little).

Often, for people who are active on the web, there are just too many notices that come by email for one inbox to manage. It gets to the point where you might have more than one primary email account - just to sort the social media notifications from your personal mail, and that from your shopping and receipts for your purchases.

With Gmail's new inbox, which is coming to both desktop and Gmail's mobile apps, you'll get more control over your inbox. Google is sorting your mail automatically into one of four primary tabs, which sit at the top of your email list.

On the desktop version of the new Gmail, email is sorted into Primary, Social, Promotions, and Updates tabs. Your Primary box is for personal and important emails - the stuff you most often want to check without having to slog through everything else. Social, as the name implies, will contain notifications from social networks like Google+ and Facebook. Promotions will hold those oh so delete-able emails from places that require you to sign up on their list in order to use their services. Updates will contain official notifications from your services, along with important things like receipts. You'll be able to add other tabs, too, though Google hasn't specified what categories the extra tabs will be or if they'll be customizable.

On the desktop and your mobile app, each category will independently flag the number of new emails that each category has sorted. No word yet if you can set smartphone notifications based on only one or a few of the sorting categories, but it would be really nice if you could.

If you'd like to try out the new Gmail inbox, check the desktop version first - specifically the "gear" menu, where the option to switch to the new version will appear soon (you can also use that to switch back if you don't like it). The new Gmail for Android and iOS will be rolling out in a few weeks.

(GmailBlog via Gizmodo)