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A comprehensive guide to keyboard shortcuts to help you boost your email productivity.
I use Gmail almost every day of my life but I constantly had the feeling that I was not being as productive as I could be with the tool. I wanted to understand what efficiencies I could squeeze out of it and how this would work alongside Sortd for Gmail.
Apart from keyboard shortcuts, tools like Sortd for Gmail can help you boost your Gmail productivity by an order of magnitude.
For a long time I have known that keyboard shortcuts could deliver a great productivity boost but I had only tried a few of the most common ones.
I have read that it takes time to form a real habit and soI decided that I was going to invest 21 days using the Seinfeld Method to see what type of productivity boost I could achieve. In short the Seinfeld method focuses on you developing a daily habit and it encourages you not to break the chain.
"After a few days you'll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job is to not break the chain."
And as it turns out, there are a lot of shortcuts that I didn't even know existed and this habit forming exercise made me feel that I 10x my Gmail productivity!
I compiled a list of the top 50 most useful Gmail keyboard shortcuts (and custom keyboard shortcuts) to boost your productivity.
A keyboard shortcut is a key press or a series of keys presses that performs typically achieve with the mouse.
There are a number of common shortcuts like Copy and Paste you’re probably comfortable with using, like Ctrl+C (Windows), ⌘+C (Mac) and Ctrl+V (Windows), ⌘+V (Mac).
Benefits to using these shortcuts are :
Gmail shortcuts are not on by default. To turn on Gmail keyboard shortcuts follow the steps below:
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Shift + ?
This shortcut opens a pop-up within Gmail keyboard shortcut help with a short list of common short cuts.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: /
This shortcut activates the search bar at the top of Gmail and allows you to immediately type without clicking. Type your search phrase and press enter to run the search.
If you want to search for something particular, try using these Google search operators.
Common search operators are: to:david cc:david subject:dinner
Search multiple terms: from:amy OR from:david
Date searches: after:2022/04/16 before:2022/04/18
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: E
All the selected emails will be moved into the archive and the Inbox label will be removed. Archiving will note delete the email but will rather keep the email in the “All Mail” label or folder.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: C
This shortcut creates a new email message, in the same way as pressing the Compose button. It’s a fast way to quickly create new emails.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: #
This keyboard shortcut moved the selected emails to the trash label or folder. In Gmail trash is automatically cleared our after 30 days.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: *+A
This shortcut selects all the emails threads on your current view. This is useful if you want to archive or move a numebr of emails at one time.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Shift
To select multiple messages from the current email message list view, click the checkbox on the left of the emails while holding down the shift key. This will select a sequential list of messages between where you clicked first and last.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Command
To select multiple messages from the current email message list view, click the checkbox on the left of the emails while holding down the command key. This will select only the messages that you have selected.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Shift + 8 + u
This shortcut selects all the unread messages from the current email message list view.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: A
This shortcut to compose a reply to all the recipients included in the previous email message. It will not include people who are Cc’d or Bcc’d in the previous email.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: R
In a similar vein to the previous shortcut, this one opens a response email. However, it will only directly reply to the person who sent you the original message (not other Cc’d or Bcc’d recipients).
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Enter (Windows) or ⌘+Enter (Mac)
This shortcut will trigger the email to be sent or replied to. Note: if you need to undo an email send, you can use Ctrl+Zwithin a 10 seconds to stop the email from sending (you’ve sill need “Undo Send” activated in Gmail settings).
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Shift+A
This keyboard shortcut will open a reply in a new window. This is useful for preparing longer emails.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+I (Windows) or ⌘+I (Mac)
This shortcut takes any text that you’ve selected and makes it italics. This shortcut is great for formatting text to emphasize particular words or to quote text.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+B (Windows) or ⌘+B (Mac)
This shortcut takes the text that you have selected and makes it bold. This shortcut is great for formatting text to emphasize particular words and phrases to make subheadings in your emails.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+U (Windows) or ⌘+U (Mac)
This shortcut underlines the selected text. This shortcut is great for formatting text to highlighting particular words.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Alt+Shift+5 (Windows) or ⌘+Shift+X (Mac)
This shortcut will draws a line through selected text.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: G+K
This shortcut will open the “My Tasks” tab from Google Tasks on the right-hand side of your screen. Special note: If you want a tool far more powerful than Google Tasks, use Sortd for Gmail.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Shift+T
This shortcut will create a task from the email you are viewing. It is useful when wanting to track an email to completion like an email that you have delegated but want to come back to. If you want power powerful email and task management features, we recommend using Sortd for Gmail.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+K (Windows) or ⌘+K (Mac)
This shortcut will pop up a control where you can specify an URL for the selected text. You can included text to display for the URL.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+C (Windows) or ⌘+Shift+C (Mac)
This shortcut will add the Cc field into the compose or reply window. This is where you can specify the people’s emails addresses to be CC'd.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+B (Windows) or ⌘+Shift+B (Mac)
This shortcut will add the Bcc field into the compose or reply window. This is where you can specify the people’s emails addresses to be Bcc'd.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+8 (Windows) or ⌘+Shift+8 (Mac)
This shortcut will add a numbered list to the selected lines of text. It looks like this:
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+7 (Windows) or ⌘+Shift+7 (Mac)
This shortcut will add a numbered list to any vertical lines of text that you’ve selected. It looks like this:
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift++ (Windows) or ⌘+Shift++ (Mac)
This shortcut will increase the size of any text that you have selected. Gmail offeres: small, normal, large, and huge text sizes.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+- (Windows) or ⌘+Shift+- (Mac)
Like increase Text Size, this shortcut decreases the size of the text you have selected.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+9 (Windows) or ⌘+Shift+9 (Mac)
This Gmail shortcut will take any text that you’ve highlighted and turn it into a call out or quote. Gmail formats the quoted text differently from regular text, to emphasize your text. See below:
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+M (Windows) or ⌘+M (Mac)
Gmail will show you spelling corrections for your highlighted text when using this shortcut.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+\ (Windows) or ⌘+\ (Mac)
This shortcut will remove the text formatting from the text you have selected, resulting in plain text. For example, “this is italic" would become “this is italic”
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+[ (Windows) or ⌘+[ (Mac)
This shortcut decreases the text indentation, moving the text to the left across the screen.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+] (Windows) or ⌘+] (Mac)
This shortcut increases the indentation to the left of your text. Your selected text will "tab" to the right of the screen. This shortcut is handy when you need to make your emails more readable.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+E (Windows) or ⌘+Shift+E (Mac)
This Gmail shortcut adjust the alignment of any selected text to the middle of the screen, moving the highlighted text into the middle from the standard left alignment.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+R (Windows) or ⌘+Shift+R (Mac)
This shortcut will adjust the alignment of any selected text to the right.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+l (Windows) or ⌘+Shift+l (Mac)
This shortcut changes the alignment of any highlighted text back to the left-hand side of the screen. As this is the default alignment, this shortcut only works on text aligned to the center or right-hand side of the screen.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: + or =
This keyboard shortcut will mark the selected emails as Important and will simultaneously train Gmail's important algorithm. Gmail will show a notification to say that the “Conversation is marked as important” and the email itself will get a yellow chevron indicator. Note: As of writing this article this is not longer possible with Gmail's new user interface.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: -
This shortcut will remove the Important label from an email you marked as important when using this shortcut. Note: As of writing this article this is not longer possible with Gmail's new user interface.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Shift+I
This shortcut will mark any selected email or emails as read. This will remove the bolding to indicate that an email is unread. Naturally this will only works for emails that are unread.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Shift+U
This shortcut will mark any read emails that you have selected as as unread. It will bold the email in your mailbox to highlight it, so that you can come back to it later.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: ;
This shortcut expands any collapsed email threads within an email conversation.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: :
This shortcut collapses emails thread that are expanded. Gmail will still show the most recent thread in an email conversion expanded. You can manually expanded collapsed emails by clicking on them.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: F
This shortcut opens the forwarding screen for you. From there you can add the recipient’s email address and then send the email using the Send keyboard shortcut above.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Shift+F
This shortcut will pop an email out into a new compose window and allow you to forward it as a new email.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: !
This shortcut will mark an emails that you have selected as spam. This will automatically place the email into the spam spam folder.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: G+T
This shortcut will help you to quickly move around the Gmail interface more quickly. It will open your Sent Messages folder.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: G+D
This shortcut will help you to quickly move around the Gmail interface more quickly. It will move you to the Drafts folder or label. This is where all incomplete or draft messages are kept until they are ready to be sent.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: G+S
This shortcut will move you to the Starred folder or label. It will work in your “Sent” folder and your inbox. If you want to undo this action, simply press “Undo” or Ctrl+Z/⌘+Z.
Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+5 (Windows) or ⌘+Shift+5 (Mac)
This shortcut adjust the font of the selected text to the next font in Gmail’s list of finds. Gmail includes 11 default HTML fonts.
Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+6 (Windows) or ⌘+Shift+6 (Mac)
This shortcut adjust the font of the selected text to the previous font in Gmail’s list of finds. Gmail includes 11 default HTML fonts.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: M
This shortcut is useful if you receives a lot of emails on any particular email thread. Google will mute any new email on a particular email thread or email conversations. Just a note, you will continue to receive email and replies, but you won’t receive email notifications through your inbox.
Gmail Keyboard Shortcut: Shift + / after first clicking on the Spaces, Chat or Meet icon in Gmail.
Google Spaces shortcuts below:
Google Chat shortcuts below:
Google Meet shortcuts below:
Frequency asked questions -
This can be a difficult question to answer, as the best choice depends on your needs and preferences and your keyboard dexterity. Some people feel that a mouse is more ergonomic, while others find that a keyboard is more efficient.
Efficiency. You may work quicker, more effectively, and with greater accuracy by using keyboard shortcuts rather than the mouse, which saves you time as well as improving your productivity. Keyboard shortcuts are also valuable for people with mobility or vision issues.
Ergonomics. Repetitive strain injury (RSI) can be avoided by using keyboard shortcuts, which may be brought on by repeated use of the mouse over long periods with your wrist resting on the mousepad and bringing your fingers to left- and right-click.
Precision. Using your keyboard to work on paragraph text, for example, is more precise than using your mouse. To move your cursor around the word, line, paragraph, or page more easily, use a combination of the Ctrl + Arrow keys and Home and End.
Keyboard shortcuts can be an incredibly powerful boost your day to day productivity, efficiency and effectiveness. Once you have gotten used to this new way of working, you may never want to switch back!
Over the course of the list 21 days I got into the habit of using Gmail's shortcuts and I must say that Gmail felt and acted like a completely different product. There are a lot of shortcuts that I didn't even know existed, which was refreshing as Gmail is a far more extensive product than it seems on the surface.
All in all, this experience was a positive one and it is not often that I can say that a tool was able to boost my productivity by 10x. But it did! I feel more productive and I am flying through my inbox with ease.
