Look on the left facet of your row of e-mail in Gmail. See the star there? You can click on on it to trace totally different messages—belongings you wish to observe up on, keep in mind for later, or in any other case discover shortly.

If you’ve used it earlier than, you possible solely comprehend it as a yellow star that may be toggled on and off. But do you know that different colours exist too in addition to different icon shapes that embrace totally different coloured exclamation marks, a verify mark, and a query mark?

To broaden your lineup of star varieties, click on on Gmail’s gear icon, then select See all settings. Under General, scroll all the way down to Stars. By default, the “1 star” possibility can be chosen, however you may as a substitute select the choice for “4 stars” (yellow and blue stars, inexperienced checkmark, and pink exclamation mark) or “all stars” (six coloured stars, plus a wide range of six further icons). After you choose the 4 stars or all stars possibility, preserve clicking when starring an e-mail to cycle via the set.

Further studying: Check out these 10 tricks to use Google more efficiently.

PCWorld

This is considered one of my long-time favourite options in Gmail—I’ve used it day by day since I found it effectively over a decade in the past, again when it was a part of Google Labs experimental add-ons. (RIP). Fortunately, it graduated to changing into an official integration into Gmail and survived the reaper. I exploit it to extra distinctly flag gadgets for my psychological to-do record, separating out what’s excessive precedence, requires follow-up, and potential reference materials. You can seek for e-mail tagged with a specific star type, too, which is useful when in search of particular teams of e-mail.

There are different methods to get extra out of Gmail, in fact, so it’s price studying different tips, like how to change your display name, how to block (and unblock) someone, and how to better search your e-mail. But I discover that this tiny function can supercharge e-mail sorting, particularly when mixed with Gmail’s filters and labels.