How to Pin Starred Emails at the Top of Your Gmail Inbox
How often do you find yourself scrolling through your inbox and not really focusing on the email you’re reading? It can be easy to feel like email is just one long list of things you need to reply to or take action on, but it doesn’t have to be that way! Here are some Gmail tips and tricks to help you quickly and efficiently organize your emails so you can get down to business. The first and easiest thing you can do is pin starred emails at the top of your inbox so they stay there regardless of how many new emails you receive or click Archive on.
Open Gmail
To pin starred emails to the top of your inbox, right-click on one email, then select Starring -> Pin. That message will now appear first when you open your inbox. To unpin a message, right-click on it and select Unstarring -> Unpin. You can also filter by starred messages by going into Settings (via the gear icon in the upper-right corner) and changing your search settings. You can choose what type of conversations are shown in your inbox (e.g., just conversations with people who starred me or who I starred), how many messages are shown per page (you can decide if you want as few as two or as many as 20), and more.
Click your profile picture in the upper right-hand corner
By clicking your profile, you’ll see a drop-down list. Click on Settings. Next, click Inbox. Now you’ll be in your inbox settings. Click on Unread messages. From here, you can scroll down and check out two new features: Starred emails will appear at the top of your inbox and prioritize important emails first. You also have the option to show only unread emails or only starred emails (both unread and starred). You can do this by checking off those options under Include these types of messages. After that, all you need to do is hit Save Changes!
Select Settings
Under the General tab, you’ll find a search bar. You can type in text and all emails that contain that text will be shown, even if they are not in your inbox. This is an excellent tool for research! To activate it, just click inside the box and start typing. Click Save if you want it to always be on by default.
To keep your starred messages from moving back down below all your newer unread messages after you’ve opened them, click Show Previews so that emails with attachments appear as previews rather than their own individual window.
Scroll down until you see Starred messages
- From your inbox, select any email you want to mark as important.
- Select More, then Mark unread, then Mark starred.
- You’ll now see a star next to any email you’ve marked with the tag starred. You can use this feature to locate those emails quickly and move them back up in your inbox so they’re easier for you to find! With these three tips, you should be able to clean up your inbox in no time!
Check it by clicking on your email address on the left-hand side
If you love getting that notification that a message has been starred, don’t get frustrated when you have to scroll down to find it. You can always pin starred emails at the top of your inbox. It’ll save some scrolling and your eyesight, too!
Head into settings>Labels, categories & filters>Filters>
Now, when you star an email, it will be pinned at the top of your inbox.
- Create a rule in Gmail’s settings. For now, we’ll assume you want all emails from your boss or other important people automatically pinned. Head to Settings and select Filters and Blocked Addresses. Then click Create new filter, give it a name (like Important People), choose who should be blocked or starred by selecting people from your contacts list, then hit + star or -star. Now repeat this process for the other types of pinned emails you want.
- Archive! You know how sometimes you open up an email like 8 hours later and wonder what in it? Well, just archive that sucker!
It will still show up in your inbox with a small arrow icon next to it so you can see which ones have been archived. If there are any messages you need to refer back to later on, just unarchive them and they’ll reappear at the top of your inbox.:
Right-click any message
Right-click on any message and choose either pin or mark as unread. If you pin an email, it will always show up as the first message in your inbox. So, if you only want that one email showing up in your inbox, right-click on it and select pin.
If you use Gmail exclusively for professional purposes, I recommend you keep all messages with attachments in the same folder. This way they don’t get mixed in with non-professional messages and archived emails that are irrelevant.
Choose Pin to Start
It is incredibly easy to create a filter in your inbox that will cause emails you’ve starred to show up at the top. However, there are several other ways you can make better use of this handy new feature. Here are some tips for how to pin starred emails in Gmail and get more out of Google’s new filter:
1) By adding an ‘s’ in front of your starred keyword(s), you can view all starred messages by sender.
2) If you are tracking tasks, with reminders and due dates within email threads, stars can help remind you if they’re missing a deadline or just generally overdue.
Hit save
- Navigate to your inbox
- Click on the three vertical dots in the upper right corner of your screen and then click Star.
- Now, hover over a message that you want to pin and click on its star icon once again (just like how you unpinned it earlier). This will bring it back up at the top of your inbox with your other starred messages. You can also search for your desired email by typing saved into the search bar. The email will now be located among your most recent searches in the left-hand column.
