Gmail Filters: How to Use Them to Organize and Prioritise Your Inbox

Overwhelmed with emails?

I was too 🤷‍♂️

Now, I have a few smart filters in Gmail to make sure I only see the emails that matter.

In this guide, I’ll show what they are, how to use them, and will give you some handy examples.

Ready, set, filter! 🚀

About filters

What are filters in Gmail?

Filters in Gmail are like superpowers for your inbox! 🦸‍♂️

They let you create rules to automatically manage your messages, such as labeling, archiving, deleting, or forwarding them based on certain criteria.

This can save you time and help you stay organized 💪

Filters are like a personal assistant for your inbox, taking care of the boring stuff so you can focus on the important stuff.

Just sit back and let them do their magic!

How to create a filter

Creating a filter is pretty easy.

In the search bar, click on the slider icon on the right:

This will give you a window where you can create the condition(s) for your filter.

So if we would like to filter all emails that contain the word unsubscribe, we do this:

You can then click Search to see if it gives you the desired result.

It’s good to look at these to see if it maybe included emails you didn’t intend to create a filter for.

Then, if you’re satisfied, click the slider icon again, and click Create filter.

This will give you the window with actions below:

As you can see, they’re pretty straightforward and don’t need much explanation.

You can use one at the time, or multiple actions at once.

These are the actions I use most often:

• Skip in Inbox: handy if you don’t want the email to be in your inbox. I use this often in combination with labels.
• Mark as read: some emails I want to have, but don’t need to read.
• Apply the label: superduper handy for sorting your emails automatically.

And that’s it! You can now create filters 😄

Using operators in filters

With operators you can create some seriously impressive and precise filters.

In Gmail, an operator is a word or symbol that is used to narrow down your search results by including or excluding specific search criteria.

For example, the OR operator allows you to search for messages that contain either of the words or phrases that you specify.

Here’s a list of the operators:

Operator: OR
Function: Contain either of the words or phrases
Example: browser OR unsubscribe
Result: filters all emails with the words browser or unsubscribe in it.

Operator: -
Function: Exclude a specific item from the filter.
Example: -john@example.com
Result: don’t filter emails from john@example.com

Operator: " "
Function: Look for an exact match
Example: "Hey Max"
Result: filter emails with exactly Hey Max in it

Operator: ( )
Function: Group items together
Example: -(john@example.com OR emma@example.com)
Result: don’t filter emails from john@example.com or emma@example.com

Operator: *
Function: Wildcard symbol so it doesn’t matter what text appears there
Example: *@example.com
Result: filter all emails from the example.com domain.

And you can also combine all of these operators if you like.

Here’s an example:

So with these conditions, only new emails get filtered that match these three conditions:

• Are not from any email address from the someoneawesome.com domain.
• Does not have Your invoice or Your order in the subject
• Contains either the word unsubscribe or browser in the email

Where to manage your filters

At some point, you probably want to modify your filters.

You can go that by going to the gear icon at the top right, click See all settings, and go to Filters and blocked addresses.

On the right side of your filter you can edit or delete them.

Use filters with labels

One of my favorite use cases is using filters to give emails labels.

To me, they are folders which I sort my emails (automatically) into.

Here is an example of what that looks like:

You can easily create new labels by clicking the + icon in the sidebar.

And then, when creating your filter, you can use the Apply the label action.

Useful Gmail filters

Here are some examples of Gmail filters I find particularly useful 🤗

Filter #1: archive marketing emails

Want a simple way to get rid of all marketing emails?

Check if an email contains the word unsubscribe and skip the inbox. I also included the Dutch translation afmelden to make sure it also works for Dutch newsletters.

Condition

Includes the words: unsubscribe OR afmelden

Action

• Skip the inbox

Filter #2: sort newsletters you like

Besides all marketing emails, I do have a few creators I follow that I would like to get emails from.

But I don’t want those in my main inbox, since they don’t need any kind of action from me.

So I’ve made a filter for their email addresses, and added the Subscriptions label.

Condition

From: *@backlinko.com OR *@wanderingaimfully.com OR *@createandsell.co

Action

• Skip the inbox
• Apply the label: subscriptions
• Never send it to spam

Filter #3: sort invoices

I created Financial label, with a Purchases label nested underneath that.

Whenever I get an invoice for a purchase or subscription, I want all my invoices to go into this folder.

With the filter below, they skip my main inbox & go straight to that folder.

Condition

Includes the words: invoice OR receipt OR factuur

Has attachment

Action

• Skip the inbox
• Apply the label: Financial/Purchases

Filter #4: delete spam

Gmail does a pretty good job of detecting spam & putting it into the spam folder.

But sometimes, I keep getting emails from people that keep bugging me about something that I’m not interested in.

That’s why I created a filter based on their email address, and those emails get deleted right away.

Condition

From: *@horriblespammers.com OR john.doe@spammer.com OR *@spammerwebsite.com

Action

• Delete it

Filter #5: updated term & conditions

I don’t know about you, but I get quite a lot of emails about companies that updated their terms & conditions:

Nice that they let me know, but I’m really not interested in reading those boring emails.

So I created this simple filter to never see those again.

Condition

Subject: Terms and Conditions

Action

• Skip the inbox
• Mark as read

Conclusion

Filters are incredibly useful to keep your Gmail inbox clutter free.

There should only be emails in your inbox that require action.

Everything else can be either archived, deleted or sorted into labels.

What do you think?

Are you going to start using them too?

Or do you have a different method to keep your inbox free of clutter?

Whatever it is, I would love to hear from you in the comments below 🤗