Google has added a new feature to its e-mail service. As the amount of e-mails to handle each day increases for most users, an automatic filter system tries to keep your inbox clean.
For years, Gmail offered the possibility to label incoming messages. These labels are a combination of a color-coding and folders that categorize emails. Until now, you had to get active once and set up your filters. The Smart Labels now presented will do at least part of the work automatically.
The experimental feature that you can turn on in Gmail’s Labs section, tries to detect certain e-mail types automatically and adds a matching label to them. Google developer Stanley Chen talks about advertising mail, social network notifications as well as messages from mailing lists or similar discussion platforms.
Chen explicitly notices that you can still use your existing filters. If there are some duplicate actions resulting of the new Smart Labels, you can edit them too. If an e-mail gets miscategorized, you can forward it to the developers. They will then check why the error happened. However, be conscious that you will send the complete e-mail to the developers.