Gmail Introduces a Host Of Small Tweaks to Improve Your Email Experience

Although I would have no qualms about saying that Gmail is the best email tool out there, I’d admit that it is far from perfect. There are little annoyances that bother me now and then, and while I can live with them, I’d prefer that they are taken care of by the Gmail team.

Looks like some of them were taken care of today. The Gmail team has announced a number of small changes which could a long way in enhancing your everyday email experience.

Lets see what they are, and how they can help you.

1. Optional Auto-Save Contacts

Gmail auto-saves the email addresses of everyone you send an email to. As a result, they pop up in the auto-complete options whenever you are tying to type the name of the recipient. It can be annoying sometimes if you send a lot of emails every day. Now, you can turn off this option in Gmail Settings.

2. Improved Typo Correction In Email Addresses

This will come in handy for those who frequently mass-send emails to their contacts. Previously, if you missed the “.com” in an address in the to: list, Gmail won’t specify it (though it would tell you that there’s an error). From now on, it will.

3. Reducing the Number of Error Pop-ups

Gmail’s error pop-ups are one of my pet peeves with this email service. While they haven’t said anything about doing away with them completely, they mentioned that on some occasions – like replying to a message that ended up accidentally in Trash – it’ll show the error in a different (and less irritating) format.

4. Quick Transitions

They’ve introduced quick transitions between certain actions. Like, if you create a filter from “Filter Messages Like This” in an email, after you done creating the filter you are sent right back to what you were doing instead of directing you to the Filters page.

5. Shift+? is Always ON

This is my favorite among the tweaks. I remember how annoyed I was when I wanted to show Gmail keyboard shortcuts to my brother and Shift+? just won’t bring up the list. I then realized that I had to first turn the Keyboard Shortcuts feature on in the Settings. From now on, this won’t be an issue.

6. Refresh Link Replaced With a Button

I think I have been seeing this in my Gmail for a long time, and hence I am a bit surprised that they are introducing it now. Basically, they’ve replaced that Refresh link in the menu bar with a button that matches the other buttons. Simple.

So, which one in the above list is your favorite new Gmail tweak?