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Are you a user of Gmail? Are you a fan of Gmail? Google’s email service launched 10 years ago in beta as an invitation-only service and has expanded to over 425 million users since then. In the beginning, Gmail gave you 1 GB of space but now you get up to 15 GB of space for free. Since then, Gmail has added plenty of useful features to make it a much more powerful email service.
Useful Gmail Features
One of the many useful features of Gmail is Labs, which provide unique functions such as Undo Send. The Wonder of Tech has covered many of Gmail’s capabilities in these articles:
⇒ Undo Send – change your mind about that email after you hit Send? You can take it back with Undo Send: Gmail Undo Send – Saving You from Your Mistakes.
⇒ Rapportive – a service that gives you instant information about who is sending you email: Rapportive – Peeking Behind the Email Curtain!
⇒ Boomerang – don’t want to deal with an email now? Return it to the top of your inbox later with Boomerang: Boomerang – Put Off Today’s Gmail Until Later.
⇒ WiseStamp – create a custom signature line for your Gmail account with WiseStamp, including images, links to your social media accounts, quotes, favorite music and more: Dress Your Email for Success with WiseStamp!
Forgotten Attachments
Have you ever sent an email and forgotten to include the attachment? Gmail will automatically alert you about your mistake if you’ve used words such as “attachment” in your email message but didn’t include an attachment.
Imagine the embarrassment that can be avoided by these reminders!
Learn More about Gmail
Are you a Gmail Pro? Do you think you know everything there is to know about Gmail? Check out this infographic to learn even more about Gmail features:
Infographic courtesy of Visualistan.
Your Thoughts
Are you a fan of Gmail? Which features are your favorite? Which features would you like to see come to Gmail? Let us know in the Comments section below!
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RiteTag Update Including Safari and Android!
Great news for fans of #hashtags! RiteTag has been updated and expanded to become available as a Safari extension and as an Android app. The developer says the updates include:
- $Cashtags are linked to the $cashtag stream in Twitter. $cashtags are the tags for stocks, and now, Tweet Composer detects then.
- # within URLs do not get detected as hashtags anymore (as they shouldn’t).
- Undo/Redo works in Tweet Composer now
- The percentage of hashtags that are not yet graded is down by over 60%
- For URLs that are simply domains, such as forbes.com, the character count bug has been fixed
You can find out more about the Safari extension from the RiteTag website: The RiteTag Safari Extension: get your hashtags graded as you type.
Get the Android app free at Google Play. Make sure to give the app a review and share your opinion of it with others. An iPhone app is due soon. Stay tuned to The Wonder of Tech for news of future updates!
Check out the full review of RiteTag at The Wonder of Tech: RiteTag – A Handy Tool to Make the Most of Your Tweets!
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Hang w/ 3.0
Hang w/ fans also have reason to celebrate: the live-streaming social media site has released its latest update, 3.0, which add plenty of new features:
- Private Broadcasting – Now users can choose if their broadcasts will be public, public with private chat, or entirely private
- Discover – New section of curated content
- New Log-In experience and a Guest User access
- Inbox – Notifications of new followers
- Live Now – View snapshots of live content from the home screen
- Mid-Broadcast Controls – View profiles, follow and block other users who chat during broadcast
- Improved archive functionality
Learn more about Hang w/ from my full review: Hang w/ – Who Knew the World Was This Much Fun?
Hi Carolyn,
Gmail is great as I use it to back up my business emails as every email that comes into my domain gets CC’d to a gmail account.
Also the in-expensive cost for the drive is brilliant too!
Steve
Hi Steve, Great points. Gmail’s ability to handle third-party website email is very useful. You can have the benefits of Gmail functionality with the convenience of a website email address.
You’re right about Google Drive too. The price of added storage is very reasonable.
This is a very cool infographics anf definitely worth sharing. Which feature of Gmail is my favorite now, perhaps the Undo sent. And I’m glad I came to this page to learn that. Thanks!
Hi Cathy, Yes, Undo Send can really be a useful feature. By taking just a few minutes to set up this feature you can save yourself a lot of stress in the future!
Many thanks for including RiteTag, Carolyn!
My pleasure, Saul. I look forward to reporting on RiteTag launching its iPhone app soon!
Hey Carolyn,
These are some brilliant information about Gmail, though I know lots of them but haven’t noticed “Forgotten Attachments” popup. Do I need to do something else to start this feature? Would love your help here. 🙂
Hi Pankaj, yes, Forgotten Attachments is a brilliant addition to Gmail. You don’t need to do a thing, just include the word “attachment” or “attach” or some other version of the word and than don’t add the attachment. Gmail will give you the pop up reminder shown in the article above.
You can test this yourself to see how it works. Very cool!
Hi Carolyn,
I am SO patting myself on the back here because I knew about all these features and almost used them all, not quite though.
I’m a big Gmail user and when Mom moved over here I set her up in Gmail too. Before she was with her carrier but since she’s using my service I thought this would be much easier for her.
I love Rapportive but haven’t needed to use Boomerang but I was aware of it. You’re probably the one that told me about it too! I use to use WiseStamp but I created my own signature that works just fine so I don’t need that one.
Love Gmail and thanks for the news!
~Adrienne
Hi Adrienne, I know you’re a Gmail Pro! You taught me about using Gmail with your website’s email address so you can have the functionality of Gmail with the professionalism of a website email address.
You are a true techie, Adrienne! :-j
Thanks Carolyn for this eye opener, i appreciate your effort, keep doing good.
Hi Emebu, I’m so glad you found this article helpful. Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to comment.
Hello Carolyn 🙂
This is my very first visit to your blog. Wow what an article about gmail!!! . Even gmail itself can’t tell this much about itself i guess. Though we are aware of the features we don’t use them properly. If used in a proper way gmail is just amazing. Although i have used some other mailing services gmail is the best among all of them .And I prefer gmail above all of them 🙂
Hi Surya, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! I’m glad you found this article to be helpful. I hope you’re able to make good use of these features of Gmail.
Hey Carolyn,
Great post indeed.
We all use G-mail but few of us know more about it.
The options you have mentioned in the infographic are new to me. I use G-mail in my daily routine but don’t use all the options. Selecting themes is an option which surprised me.
I never think that G-mail can have this facility.
Thanks to you for telling.
This post can help many people like me who don’t know much about G-mail so deeply.
Enjoy the weekend.:)
~Ravi
Hi Ravi, Yes, Gmail is fine as an email provider, but its greater value comes when you take advantage of these advanced features.i hope you get a chance to try these out so you can make the most of Gmail. 🙂
Hi, Carolyn
What a great article! Nice infographic, by the way. I’ve been using Gmail for quite some time, but still didn’t know about all these additional features. I love the Undo Send option the most from your list. That one surprised me, actually, as I didn’t even know it existed! I wonder if it works 100% of the time. Very cool if so.
Another feature which I like and dislike (can’t decide which at times) is how Gmail groups my emails. I like how it automatically sends emails to their own category – social, promotions, etc., so I don’t have to categorize them myself, but I hate missing some emails, not thinking to check those sections.
Thanks for sharing!!
Allyson
Hi Allyson, Yes, Undo Send works all of the time so long as you don’t click away from the message you just sent. Check out my article on Undo Send (linked above) for a complete discussion of this very handy feature. Undo Send has saved me quite a few times!
Good news. You can disable Gmail’s categorization easily. Click on the gear icon in the upper right corner above your inbox. Choose Configure Inbox and uncheck all of the categories except for Primary. You can also keep any checked, such as Promotions, that you don’t want to see in your primary inbox.
Hmmm. Maybe this would be a good article topic!
Thanks for your wonderful comment, Allyson. 🙂
Ah, yes. Thank you, Carolyn. I’ll definitely have to put that undo button to good use then. I appreciate the tip on the categorization as well. Sounds like a good future topic. At times, I like having it in place, but it’s great having options to change the settings if desired.
Much appreciated. Talk soon.
Yes, Allyson, people have very mixed feelings about Google’s categorization for Gmail. Some love it and think it’s a great time saver. Others can’t wait to figure out how to turn it off.
You’re exactly right. Options help make everyone happy!
Hi Carolyn,
I have been using Gmail for the past 5 years and I must say its the best Email service provider as far as I am concerned.
I must thank you for sharing details on using Google hangouts directly from my Inbox ( never knew about this before).
Did you create the inforgraphics yourself, or probably outsourced?
Thanks for sharing
Hi James, Yes, I’ve been using Gmail since it was a year old, invitation-only beta and I have really enjoyed seeing it develop into the powerful service that it has become today.
I did not create this infographic, it was created by a tribemate of mine from Triberr, linked above. When I saw it I knew that Wonder of Tech readers would enjoy learning more about Gmail.
If there is one email provider you can securely rely upon, then gmail is what must come into the equation.
I have of course activated the undo settings and it is just a great feature from Google!
Hi Emmanuel, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Yes, Gmail can be very secure, especially with two-step verification.
You’re right about Undo Send. I often wish I had this Undo feature in other parts of my life!
Hi Carolyn,
Its nice to see that how you have collaborated your previous posts into something new and informative. I guess that’s what we bloggers do, right? Though I have gone through these posts of yours earlier when you have written them. But with the infographics, it looks like a total new thing to learn.
I loved the feature of undo send. And with so many changes in G-mail the one I like is Filtering the mails according to our needs. We can categorize all mails we receive into the particular folders automatically. Isn’t it a good feature? What do you think?
Hi Aditya, Yes, I didn’t think about incorporating my other blog posts into this one until I started writing the article and realizing that I had covered a lot of features of Gmail previously. Instead of rewriting that information, I decided to link to my full reviews of those features. I was please how this article came together nicely.
I’m a big fan of Undo Send too. That feature has saved me quite a few times!
I don’t really use the automatic categorization feature of Gmail. I don’t want to be bothered checking a lot of folders. One Gmail inbox is enough for me. I do use the folders to organize emails I want to keep, but you can do that with a lot of email services.
I’m glad you like the filtering feature of Gmail, Aditya, and that it works well for you. I know many people are fans of this feature as you are!
Hello Carolyn,
Yeah Undo send is a great feature. It can can you from getting mails which one ha sent accidentally. But, i was thinking about it that what if you send the mail and the receiver was online and he/she already read that mail? Does this feature confirm immediately or how can one undo the mail? Because once a mail is sent and read, damages have already been done(In case someone has resigned and want to take a step back and re-think about the mistake).
Excellent question, Aditya. The good news is that when you use Undo Send, you undo the email before it’s sent. You can adjust the time you have to change your mind up to 30 seconds. My review of Undo Send covers how to do this.
That 30 seconds may make a big difference if you decide not to send your message after all. But the 30 second delay in sending your messages out probably won’t make a difference to the receiver who gets your message 30 seconds later than he would have if you weren’t using Undo Send.
Such a wonderful invention! :-bd
That’s great!! 30 seconds to save the disaster is more than enough. Will try it and let you know about my Undo experience.
Yes, Aditya, 30 seconds can seem like a lot of time. But when you realize your mistake after 31 seconds or later, you might wish for a 60 second delay. 😉