If you receive hundreds of emails daily, keeping your Gmail inbox organised can feel like a full-time job. Fortunately, Gmail includes a powerful filtering system that allows you to automatically sort incoming emails into specific folders (labels), mark them as read, or even delete them before they reach your primary inbox.
How to Create a Filter in Gmail
To start automatically sorting your emails, follow these steps on your computer:
- Open Gmail in your web browser.
- In the search box at the top, click the Show search options icon (it looks like three sliders).
- Enter the criteria you want to filter by. For example, type a specific email address in the From field, or a keyword in the Has the words field.
- Click the Create filter button at the bottom of the search window.
- Choose what you want Gmail to do with emails that match your criteria. To sort them, select Apply the label and choose an existing label or create a new one.
- To keep these emails out of your main inbox, also check the box next to Skip the Inbox (Archive it).
- Click Create filter to save your settings.
Managing Existing Filters
If you ever need to edit or delete a filter, you can do so easily. Click the gear icon in the top right corner and select See all settings. Navigate to the Filters and Blocked Addresses tab. Here, you will see a list of all your active filters, and you can edit or remove them as needed to keep your inbox perfectly organised.