Searching Gmail Will Be Much Easier
Finding specific messages in Gmail will become much easier – at least if your organization uses G Suite. You can still play the keyboard and populate your Gmail search bar with parameters like from: soandso@gmail.com to: 2020/2/20 , or use its drop-down menu to narrow down your searches if you don’t remember these operators … But to make things easier, Google will now add handy little “search chips” to the interface that you can use to filter out a crowded inbox.
Yes, I hate the phrase “search chips” too, but that’s what Google calls them. And here’s how they will look:
The Google screenshot isn’t great, but you can just see these new little rectangles underneath the main Gmail search bar. You will be able to click multiple fields to customize whatever filter you want after the feature is deployed, which should happen over the next 15 days for G Suite users.
Unfortunately, regular Gmail users like you and me won’t get these handy search features to play with – at least not yet. Google told TechCrunch that it plans to add the feature to Gmail after it rolls out to G Suite, but it is not yet known when this might happen.
If you don’t want to memorize Gmail’s useful search operators (which I wholeheartedly recommend doing), you can use a utility like AutoHotKey to create custom keyboard shortcuts for your most frequently used queries. This will at least save you from having to search for the right set of words to search for each time.
I haven’t found any great extensions or services to make your life easier when it comes to Gmail’s search functionality, but I’d also be a little skeptical about giving third parties direct access to your Gmail anyway. Gmail tabs seem to be the best option as they allow you to create custom tabs in the Gmail interface that filter messages based on whatever search parameters you want. Otherwise, you’re going to want to wait for Google’s “search tricks” – I just can’t say that anymore – and hopefully it won’t be long.