Set up your inbox

10 years ago, the official Gmail application for Android began to be gradually updated to version 4.5. One of the new features is the inbox, with new categories that automatically organize our mail.

If we wanted to sort emails in Gmail before, we had to do it manually using labels and filters, which was not easy for most users. With new inbox categories, everyone can now easily organize their inbox.

To use the new Gmail inbox on an Android device, we must first activate it. Currently, it can only be activated from the Gmail website. Just go to Gmail.com, click the gear icon (Settings), access Configure Inbox, and select the desired categories for your Gmail Inbox.

The Gmail inbox includes categories like Family, Social, Promotions, Notifications, and Forums. The main category contains emails between people, and Social covers messages from social networks, contact pages, and file-sharing sites.

Among promotions we find advertising and offer emails; among notifications we find receipts, invoices and reminders; among forums we find emails from online groups, discussion forums or distribution lists. Gmail automatically sorts each email into the appropriate category.

Once the new inbox is activated, we can use it in Gmail for Android. Categories are available in the side navigation bar. From Menu > Settings > Gmail Account > Inbox Categories we can enable the required categories and decide whether the featured messages should also appear in the main categories.

Synchronization and notifications can be configured for each category, similar to the actions of tags. This is done via Menu > Settings > Gmail Account > Manage tabs, selecting the category of interest. Manual configuration is also possible from the category-specific email view of Menu > Label Settings.

Finally, to change the category of emails that Gmail misclassifies, we can do this by clicking on the folder icon in the action bar. This can be done from your inbox, by pressing and holding on the email, or by clicking on the sender’s image, or even opening the email.

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