Email is the best and the worst thing to happen to the typical 9-5. It makes connecting with others incredibly easy – almost too easy, now that work still has a way of knocking on your window after EOD. It’s tempting to go through yourinboxafter hours and try to chip away at the mountain of digital mail piling up in your computer.
Yes, the dreaded red notification symbol hovering over your Gmail app. I know it well, unfortunately. Though my work email’s unread count pales incomparison to the personal Gmailthat’s been collecting tens of thousands of marketing emails for the last decade, the dozen or so I receive a day still feels daunting. However, I’m in publishing, and I can’t imagine what my comrades in sales must go through every single morning they open up their laptops.
Luckily, there’s a setting buried in the menus of yourGmail accountthat can streamline the process of getting through the mountains in the morning. Enabling it is easy, and you’re going to wonder how you made it to Friday every other work week of your life.
Gmail is one of the most popular email providers. It is incorporated into the Google Workspace universe, connecting all of your favorite productivity apps.
What is Auto-Advance?
Your lifesaver
Auto-Advance isn’t new.Google announcedit 15 years ago when users requested a feature that automatically moved them to the next conversation after they acted on the current one. It still functions as such today – ‘act’ meaning deleting, archiving, or muting a conversation. Without it enabled, Gmail bounces you back to the main inbox page, which isn’t ideal if you’re trying to cruise through spam or marketing emails in particular.
Auto-Advance does not automatically move you to the next conversation after replying or forwarding.
It’s super intuitive, and you’ll wonder why you ever did the mass select-and-delete of old. Here’s how to turn on Auto-Advance:
Out of thenewer,older, andthreadlistoptions, I chose to go to the older conversation. It’s a lot less overwhelming for me personally to start at the top and work my way down rather than dig deep into the unread pile and try to work my way up.
Can I use Auto-Advance on mobile?
If you’re part of the lucky group
There’s good and bad news – Auto-Advance does exist on the Gmail mobile app, just not on iOS. It’s a great day to be an Android user, while folks locked inside the Apple walled garden (like me) have to enjoy it only on a browser for now. I’ll take that as an extra measure to keep work on my laptop, and off my iPhone, though.
To do this on your Android phone:
Until this is available on iOS, I’ll let the Android users rejoice. However, a big shoutout to Google for throwing Apple users a bone and letting us enjoy Auto-Advance on browser. Here’s to less cluttered inboxes all around.
