How to change the design of your inbox in Gmail

Gmail offers you several customizable formats, so many that you can have multiple Gmail accounts and they all look completely different. For example, you can have all of your emails in one long list, you can separate your messages into multiple tabs, or you can divide your inbox into unread and read messages.

On top of that, there are several other ways to organize your inbox, from adding a reading pane to creating your own categories for organizing emails. Here we show you how you can customize your Gmail interface and explore all the options.

How to change the design of your inbox:

• Click on the gear icon in the upper right corner of the screen.
• A “Quick Settings” sidebar will open on the right side of your inbox, allowing you to adjust some settings. For example, you can adjust the display density, which controls how compact your messages appear. You can also choose the position for your reading panel and what type of input tray you have. (We’ll get into that later.)

• Click “See all settings” at the top of this sidebar for more options
• Click on the Inbox tab

Next to “Inbox Type”, you have several options to choose from in the drop-down menu:

• “Default” places your emails in the familiar separate vertical tabs
• “Important first”, “Unread first” and “Featured first” each divide the inbox into two sections horizontally: the section you choose first (Important, Unread or Featured) and then everything else
• “Main Inbox” and “Multiple Inboxes” create different sections within your email, and you can scroll down to see each section. (Later in this article, we’ll see how to customize both settings.) Depending on the type of Inbox you choose, the following steps will be slightly different.

• If you select the default inbox settings, under “Inbox type” next to “Categories”, you can check the boxes to decide how your emails are sorted. You can scroll over the name of each category to see examples of what types of emails will be sorted in each tab. If you want your email to appear in a single tab, you can uncheck all the boxes. (But you cannot deselect Principal.) You also have the option to “Include Featured in Primary” so that any email you highlight is also displayed in Primary, no matter what other category it is in.

• The options for “Important first”, “Unread first” and “Featured first” are similar. Under “Inbox Sections”, you can click the Options button to select how many emails you want to appear in each section.

• If you select “Important first” or “Priority inbox”, you will see an additional option that allows you to change how Gmail counts your unread emails: if that number reflects only important unread emails, all your unread emails, or a proportion of the important ones compared to all of them.

• You also have the option to add a reading pane, unless you are in the Multiple Inboxes layout. After checking the box next to “Enable Reading Pane”, you can use the options below it to select the location of the pane.

• In the “Importance Marker” section, you can choose whether Gmail displays yellow tabs (indicating an important message) next to emails and whether Gmail automatically assigns them based on your activity

• At the bottom of the page, there is an option to “Override Filters” or “Don’t Override Filters”. You can adjust those filters in the “Filters and blocked addresses” tab in Settings.
• When you’re done, don’t forget to click “Save changes”

How to configure the Priority Inbox:

If you choose to go with the priority Inbox, you can use the drop-down menu next to each option under “Inbox Sections” to choose which categories to include and which to delete, how many messages in each section to include, and whether to hide a section when it is empty.

• To add another section, go to the Label tab at the top of the Settings menu
• Click the “Create New Label” button at the bottom of the menu
• Enter a name for your label in the popup window. Then click “Create”.

• Go to the “Inbox” tab and click “Options” next to a section of the inbox
• Select “More Options” from the dropdown menu
• Select the label from the dropdown options that appear

• Click “Save changes” at the bottom of the menu.

How to set up multiple inboxes:

• Select Multiple Inboxes under Inbox Type.
• To configure your inboxes, you will need to enter each category as a search operator, such as is: starred or is: unread. You can create up to five sections.
• You can add a label for each category in Section Name
• Type the number of emails you want to display in each category, next to “Maximum page size”
• To change the location of the sections, set it to “Multiple input tray position”