Gmail’s five features every user must know

Gmail, the most widely used email app comes with some nifty features every user must know to make their experience better.

Gmail features every user should know. (Pixabay)

Gmail, Google's 15-year-old email service, has 1.5 billion active monthly users making it one of the most popular email clients across the globe.

Gmail started off in 2004 as an invitation only product on beta platform. It was only in 2009 that the brand decided to drop the beta label after multiple design changes.

Here are the 5 lesser known Gmail features that may enhance your user experience

Schedule mail

With this feature users can schedule the time at which they want the mail to be sent. The user will also have to set the time zone for the mail to be sent. At a time one can schedule up to 100 mails.

Here are the steps you need to follow for scheduling a mail on your computer:

• On your computer, go to Gmail

• At the top left, click compose

• Create your email

• At the bottom left next to "send," click the dropdown arrow more send options

• Click schedule send

In case the user wants to cancel sending the scheduled mail, it can be done by:

• At the left panel, click scheduled

• Select the email you want to cancel

• At the top right of your email, click cancel send

Self-destruct mail

As per this feature, Gmail users can set a mail to destroy itself over a period from one day to a maximum of five years

In order to send a self-destructing mail users have to follow these steps

• Click on compose

• Select the lock with a clock icon on the bottom of the screen.

• Choose the time period till which you want the mail to be in recipient's mailbox

• Click send

Unsend mails

With this feature, in case the user has sent an email which they after sending want to retract they can do it within a particular time frame which cannot exceed more than 30 seconds.

To do so, these steps need to be followed:

• In the bottom left, there are options of message sent, Undo, view message

• Click undo

• Go to Gmail

• In the top right, click settings

• Next to "undo send," select a send cancellation period of 5, 10, 20, or 30 seconds

Use Gmail offline

With this feature of Gmail, users can read, respond, and search Gmail messages even if they do not have the internet connected. In order to use this feature, the user should have Google Chrome on their system, as it does not function in any other mode.

This is how you can use this feature:

• Go to Gmail offline settings

• Check "enable offline mail"

• Choose your settings, such as how many days of messages you want to sync

• Click save changes.

Gmailify other email accounts

With this feature users can use features of Gmail on their non-Gmail account. To do this, the user will need to link his/her account to Gmail. After the account has been linked, user will see all messages in Gmail inbox.

Here are the steps that need to be followed to Gmailify:

· Open Gmail on computer

· In the top right, click settings, choose settings again from the drop down menu

· Click the accounts and import or accounts tab

· In the "check mail from other accounts" section, click add a mail account

· Type the email address you want to link, then click next

· Select link account with Gmail (Gmailify), then click next

· Sign in