November 7, 2012

Archive Social Updates and Other Gmail Smart Labels

Some people complained that Gmail doesn't automatically archive "social updates". It's a new category of messages created if you use the Smart Labels experimental feature from Gmail Labs.

It turns out that that the "skip inbox" rule is only enabled for newsletters and promotional messages (the smart label name used to be "Bulk", but now is "Promotions"). They're not exactly spam messages, but Google assumed that they're less important and it's a good idea to archive them automatically. If you take a look at the list of filters from your Gmail account, you'll notice that Google added 5 special filters:


You can remove them, but you can't edit them. If you'd like to automatically archive social updates, forum messages or notifications, just click the smart label in Gmail's sidebar and enable "archive incoming social updates (skip the inbox)" at the top of the page. Obviously, the setting will use the smart label name: "archive incoming notifications", "archive incoming forums", "archive incoming bulk."


What if you accidentally delete a filter or a label added by Gmail's Smart Labels experiment? Just disable Smart Labels from Gmail Labs and enable it again. Don't forget to click "save changes".

It's worth mentioning that Gmail has 5 built-in labels: ^smartlabel_group - for forum messages, ^smartlabel_newsletter for newsletters, ^smartlabel_promo for promotional messages, ^smartlabel_notification for notifications and ^smartlabel_social for messages sent by social networks. You can use the built-in labels to create your own filters or queries and they work even if you remove the filters and user-friendly labels added by Gmail.

{ Thanks, Frank. }

11 comments:

  1. more specific, more job is safety :D

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  2. I disabled Smart Labels and re-enabled to get the Promotions filter back, but it didn't show up in the filters list.
    Also I've now lost the option to "Exclude from Smart Label categorization" in my other filters.

    Any one else run into this issue?

    I've deleted all the smart filters and labels, and tried disable/enable again, but they still won't show up in the settings/options.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Can't for life of me figure out how to make this work. Clicking on "Social Updates" in the sidebar does not give me an option to "Archive incoming Social Updates" as illustrated in your screenshot.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You must have magic Gmail, or special powers.

      Delete
    2. I can't figure out how to make it work either. Clicking on "Social Updates" in the sidebar does not give me an option to "Archive incoming Social Updates" either. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

      Delete
  4. I disabled Smart Labels and re-enabled to get the Promotions filter back, but it didn't show up in the filters list.
    Also I've now lost the option to "Exclude from Smart Label categorization" in my other filters.
    http://photoebookpublishing.com

    ReplyDelete
  5. Is this not implemented for Apps users yet? I'm not on regular gmail(mine is a Apps account) and I'm not seeing this new feature.

    ReplyDelete
  6. When should I give up on training Smart Labels?

    Most of my mailing lists correctly go to "Forums", but my heaviest traffic one (15-20 threads per day) goes to "Notifications" despite training on every message.

    When should I give up? I my interpretation of "Forums" as the best place for mailing lists incorrect?

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete

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