Using Gmail Categories

Many months ago, Gmail rolled out "categories" to the Gmail inbox.  I have not written about it sooner, because I did not particularly like it myself.  But some users have found it useful, so I thought I should discuss it further.

Categories tries to to organize your inbox better into up to five separate categories.  Instead of a single inbox, you will see up to five tabs at the top: Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates, and Forums.  You do not have to select all five, but you don't have the ability to change the names or do much else to control them.

Once enabled, Google will decide on its own what incoming emails belong in which categories.  The idea is that less important email, e.g. stuff from vendors, newsletters, notifications from Facebook or Linkedin, will not clutter your inbox (which is the "primary" tab).  Instead, such items will go into one of the other tabs.  These are emails that you don't consider spam, but don't also consider a top priority.

I am not a fan of categories, primarily because I don't have much of any control over what Google considers important.  As a result, I just have to spend more time going through all five tabs rather than looking at everything in one place.  You do have the ability to create filters, i.e. rules that will force an incoming email into a particular tab.  They work pretty much the same as using filters to force mails into a particular label (i.e. folder) rather than going into your inbox.

Another limitation of the Categories is that if you use another program, say Outlook on your computer, or the built-in mail program on your iPhone or Android, then Categories will not work in those places.  All the stuff is dumped into your inbox.  Therefore, your Gmail inbox and the Gmail inbox on your phone may have different contents.

If, however, you get a great deal of automatic mail that is not quite spam but also is not as important as other things, you may find Categories useful.  You can set it up in Gmail simply by going into "settings" then "inbox".  Select the categories you want to use, and then save.  Gmail will take it from there, auto-sorting all the messages in your inbox.  If you decide you don't like it, just turn it off and everything returns to one inbox.