andy pai's tils

Convenient Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts

Today I was looking for a quick way to check mark a message while using email so looked up the official Keyboard shortcuts for Gmail and found some others that are super convenient as well.

gmail select email

Turn on keyboard shortcuts

First I needed to turn on keyboard shortcuts from the Gmail settings menu:

gmail keyboard shortcuts

My typical workflow is to check my email inbox and then start ticking off any messages that don't require a response or can be archived. This is why I was looking for "Select conversation" which can be done with the shortcut "x".

gmail select email selected

Shortcuts I'll actually use

There are tons of shortcuts listed on the page but these are the ones I think I'll actually use:

Action Shortcut
Archive e
Delete #
Send ⌘/Ctrl + Enter
Report as spam !
Select conversation x
Open conversation o or Enter
Reply all in a new window Shift + a
Move focus to toolbar ,
Undo last action z
Go to label g + l

Non-obvious shortcuts

Once I'm in a conversation, it's annoying to have to use the mouse so this "Reply all in a new window" shortcut is pretty great.

gmail open reply window

After reading the content of an email, I often want to get back to the list view. The "Move focus to toolbar" shortcut is a nicer way to select the back button quickly:

gmail select toolbar.png

The "Go to label" shortcut (g + l) is especially useful since I have AI classify all emails into labels. If of interest, you can read more about it here.

gmail go to label