{"id":19811,"date":"2022-03-29T18:05:28","date_gmt":"2022-03-29T18:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/?p=19811"},"modified":"2022-05-27T04:30:56","modified_gmt":"2022-05-27T04:30:56","slug":"best-gmail-extensions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/best-gmail-extensions\/","title":{"rendered":"11 best Gmail extensions you\u2019ve never heard of"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gmail is used by more than one billion people. Not your parents, who are ride-or-die AOL email forever, but one billion other<\/em> people.<\/span><\/p>\n

And every single one of those one billion people has their own personal email needs.<\/span><\/p>\n

At that scale \u2014 and with how high maintenance we all are \u2014 it\u2019s impossible for Gmail to perfectly tailor itself to meet each of our very specific needs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fortunately, there\u2019s a <\/span>whole ecosystem of Google Chrome extensions to add, change, tweak, improve, and otherwise enhance the Gmail experience<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of those extensions make a tiny change \u2014 but one that might save you hours over the course of a year. Some, like the Chrome extension we’ve developed here at GMass, are massive \u2014 an entire email marketing platform that works inside of Gmail. And some extensions don\u2019t work at all, so we filtered those right on out.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are some really popular Chrome extensions for Gmail out there (like Boomerang, Mailtrack and Grammarly) \u2014 but you don’t need us to tell you about those. Instead, we dug deep<\/em> to find extensions you probably haven’t heard of \u2014 but which could be really valuable for you going forward.<\/p>\n

We tested dozens of Gmail Chrome extensions<\/b>, many of which are relatively unknown, to find the extensions that can help <\/span>boost your productivity<\/b>, <\/span>improve your Gmail experience<\/b> \u2014 and potentially even <\/span>advance your career<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n

We also made sure all are under active development or, at the very least, are still working with the latest version of Gmail.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are our picks for the <\/span>best Chrome extensions for Gmail<\/b>, many of which you\u2019ve likely never heard of\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

The 11 best Gmail Chrome extensions and add-ons<\/h2>\n

1. Gmail Sender Icons – visually identify what domain emails came from<\/h3>\n

\"Sender<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re staring down a very full inbox, <\/span>how do you prioritize which emails to open<\/b>? One of the most common ways: You scan who the emails are from. (In fact, some studies have found the \u201cfrom\u201d field is more important than an email subject line when we\u2019re deciding what emails to open.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Gmail Sender Icons gives you an even <\/span>faster visual shortcut for your inbox triage process<\/b>. This extension grabs the domain name from a sender\u2019s email address, then puts that domain name and its favicon next to the email\u2019s subject line.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now you can do a quicker visual skim through your inbox to spot the emails you most want to read.<\/span><\/p>\n

(Install <\/span><\/i>Gmail Sender Icons<\/span><\/i><\/a>. Free, but with some in-app ads for other products.)<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

2. Reverse Conversation for Gmail – reverse Gmail\u2019s \u201coldest to newest\u201d threading style<\/h3>\n

\"Reverse<\/p>\n

When you open a thread of Gmail messages, the messages are ordered from oldest to newest. You\u2019ve probably gotten used to that over the years\u2026 but it\u2019s arguably less logical than the reverse.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are a handful of Chrome extensions that can <\/span>switch up the order of a thread, making it newest to oldest<\/b> (rather than Gmail\u2019s default). We liked Reverse Conversation because it\u2019s simple to use, you can toggle it \u201con\u201d indefinitely or choose to reverse an individual conversation \u2014 and it even moves the Gmail response field to the top of the conversation as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

(Install <\/span><\/i>Reverse Conversation for Gmail<\/span><\/i><\/a>. Free.)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

3. Gmail Message Preview – see expanded previews of your emails in your inbox<\/h3>\n

\"Add<\/p>\n

It\u2019s nice to be able to <\/span>preview an email without opening it<\/b>. But the Gmail inbox only shows an email\u2019s subject line and a short preview.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You <\/span>could<\/span><\/i> turn on the Reading Pane in Gmail, which opens the email in its entirety \u2014 but that\u2019s not a perfect system. It marks the email as opened. It lets open trackers know you opened it. It loads the full email, even a spam email you might not want to open. And it can work slowly as you try to power your way through your inbox.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gmail Message Preview is one of the many, many Gmail extensions made by a company called cloudHQ. It\u2019s a lightweight extension that doesn\u2019t require registering for an account and offers exactly one useful function.<\/span><\/p>\n

With Gmail Message Preview, you can <\/span>choose to expand the emails in your inbox to see a preview of one line, two lines, or even the entire email<\/b> (but without triggering an open tracking pixel when you do, or marking the emails as read).<\/span><\/p>\n

(Install <\/span><\/i>Gmail Message Preview<\/span><\/i><\/a>. Free.)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

4. Short Gmail Labels – view labels without their entire path<\/h3>\n

\"Shorten<\/p>\n

Gmail doesn\u2019t use folders to sort and organize emails, it uses labels. (Or, if you\u2019re like me for most of the past decade-and-a-half, you don\u2019t have any organization at all and just wind up with around 350,000 emails in your inbox. I\u2019ve since reformed my ways, but things got out of control for a while there.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Even though Gmail labels aren\u2019t folders, they do, however, have some folder-esque traits \u2014 specifically that you can nest labels inside of other labels. For instance, with GMass, you\u2019ll have a GMass Reports label, then individual labels nested inside like [CAMPAIGNS], Clicks, and Opens.<\/span><\/p>\n

When you search your email, Gmail puts an email\u2019s labels at the beginning of the subject line. With <\/span>long label names and nested labels, that can take up a lot of real estate<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Short Gmail Labels is a simple extension that <\/span>removes the parent labels from that view<\/b>. So instead of seeing a label like \u201cHigh-priority correspondence\/Client emails\u201d you\u2019d just see the \u201cClient emails\u201d part.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a cleaner presentation that can be more user-friendly, especially if you\u2019re running lots of searches and using lots of labels.<\/span><\/p>\n

(Install <\/span><\/i>Short Gmail Labels<\/span><\/i><\/a>. Free.)<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

5. Gmail \u2018Expand All\u2019 – expand every message in an email thread<\/h3>\n

\"Expand<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another extension to help get around Gmail\u2019s default (and otherwise unchangeable) way of displaying email threads.<\/span><\/p>\n

When you open an email conversation in Gmail, earlier messages are contracted so you have to click on each one to open it within the chain.<\/span><\/p>\n

With the Gmail \u2018Expand All\u2019 extension, you can <\/span>click one button (or hit one keyboard shortcut) to automatically expand all of the messages in a thread<\/b>. You can also click the same button to contract the messages.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is a single-purpose, micro-niche extension \u2014 but one you just might find wildly valuable if you wind up in a lot of longer Gmail threads.<\/span><\/p>\n

(One quick warning: While this extension worked when we tested, it has not been updated since 2014. So if a future change to Gmail breaks it, odds are no one\u2019s going to fix it and you’ll be back to manually expanding your threads again.)<\/span><\/p>\n

(Install <\/span><\/i>Gmail \u2018Expand All\u2019<\/span><\/i><\/a>. Free.)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

6. Just Not Sorry – flag weak language in your emails<\/h3>\n

\"Eliminate<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a very well-known Chrome extension for fixing your grammar as you type \u2014 it\u2019s so well-known we didn\u2019t include it on this list.<\/span><\/p>\n

But occasional grammatical errors aren\u2019t the only things that could hurt the effectiveness of your emails \u2014 <\/span>poor word choices<\/b> could potentially have an even greater impact.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just Not Sorry checks your email as you type to <\/span>flag word choices that undermine your credibility and your message<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, it flags when you say things like \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d or \u201cI think that\u201d or \u201cto be honest\u201d \u2014 and recommends you say something more definitive and confident.<\/span><\/p>\n

(Install <\/span><\/i>Just Not Sorry<\/span><\/i><\/a>. Free.)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

7. Inbox When Ready – hide your inbox to stop procrastinating by checking your email<\/h3>\n

\"Inbox<\/p>\n

It\u2019s really easy to lose half your day in your inbox. In fact, one of the most common ways people mindlessly procrastinate is by quickly flipping over to their email browser tab to see what\u2019s new.<\/span><\/p>\n

Inbox When Ready makes some changes in Gmail to keep you from living in your inbox.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It <\/span>hides your inbox by default<\/b>, so you have to click a button to view your messages. (You can still compose emails even with the inbox hidden.) Plus, it can also <\/span>schedule when to lock your inbox<\/b>, to give yourself set times to \u201cbatch process\u201d your email.<\/span><\/p>\n

Word of caution: The free version of the extension adds a signature to the end of all of your outgoing messages to promote Inbox When Ready. The pro version costs $4 per month to remove that signature (among a few other features). So unless you\u2019re ok with a promotional message in all of your emails, you\u2019ll have to pay.<\/span><\/p>\n

(Install <\/span><\/i>Inbox When Ready<\/span><\/i><\/a>. Free with mandatory email signature added to outgoing emails; paid plan for $4\/mo.)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

8. Auto Expander for Gmail – automatically expand longer messages that Gmail normally cuts off<\/h3>\n

\"Auto<\/p>\n

If you send out an email larger than 102 KB, Gmail cuts it off and includes a line at the bottom of the email that says \u201c[Message clipped] View entire message\u201d with a link to view the rest.<\/span><\/p>\n

I receive a few email newsletters, both personally and professionally, that are <\/span>always<\/span><\/i> getting clipped. (I also send out a weekly newsletter that almost always gets clipped. Could I make it shorter? Absolutely not. I have far too much to say and every word is gold.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Auto Expander automatically expands<\/b> (so it\u2019s not just a clever name) longer emails so you can <\/span>view them in their entirety without needing to click the \u201cView entire message\u201d link<\/b>. And it expands large emails very fast; it took me no less than 12 tries to snag that screenshot above in the moments while Auto Expander was still in the process of expanding the gargantuan Wikipedia page I sent to myself.<\/span><\/p>\n

(Install <\/span><\/i>Auto Expander for Gmail<\/span><\/i><\/a>. Free, and <\/span><\/i>open source<\/span><\/i><\/a>.) <\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

9. Gmail Copilot – get an overview of your history with a contact in the Gmail sidebar<\/h3>\n

\"Gmail<\/p>\n

The more information you have about someone (in a non-creepy way, of course), the more effective and targeted your emails can be.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Gmail Copilot <\/span>works like a CRM-lite<\/b> (and a low-budget private investigator-lite).<\/span><\/p>\n

When you open or compose an email, Gmail Copilot pulls up information about the person in the Gmail sidebar. You\u2019ll see profile info and social media links (if available), <\/span>your message history with them<\/b>, and your attachments to and from them. You can also leave yourself notes about that contact.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gmail Copilot is free, but you\u2019ll have to register for a cloudHQ account to use it. There\u2019s a paid version as well if you want to integrate it across a Google Workspace team.<\/span><\/p>\n

(Install <\/span><\/i>Gmail Copilot<\/span><\/i><\/a>. Free for individual users, $4.99\/mo for teams and support.)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

10. Gmail Show Time – show the full date and time of an email<\/h3>\n

\"Gmail<\/a><\/p>\n

When you look over your Gmail inbox (or any Gmail label\/folder\/search), the right-most column shows you the date you received the email. If you received the email today, you see the time. And even though the emails are listed in reverse chronological order, sometimes you want to know more info about exactly when your emails arrived.<\/p>\n

Gmail Show Time is a free extension that allows you to display the Gmail date however you want. It takes a minute or less to configure the date exactly how you want to see it (in the example above, I went with the formatting of %a, %-m\/%-d\/%y, %-I:%M %p<\/code> but you may opt for something that takes up less space).<\/p>\n

(Install Gmail Show Time<\/a>. Free.)<\/em><\/p>\n

11. Tracker Blocker – avoid false opens on your email campaigns by blocking your own open-tracking pixel<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Tracker Blocker<\/span><\/a> is a new extension from our team here at GMass to help cold emailers and marketers <\/span>get more accurate open-tracking data<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The problem: It\u2019s pretty easy to trigger \u201c<\/span>false opens<\/span><\/a>\u201d on emails you send. For example, if you check an email you sent in the Sent folder, the open-tracking pixel fires. Another example: If an email bounces, the bounce notification contains the email \u2014 so when you open it, the pixel fires.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You want to avoid false opens, which can skew your reports and affect the decisions you make from your data. Tracker Blocker blocks your GMass pixel (with other email marketing platforms\u2019 pixels to come) so <\/span>your own opens will no longer count in your stats<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n

(Install <\/span><\/i>Tracker Blocker<\/span><\/i><\/a>. Free.)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The best Gmail Chrome extensions you\u2019ve never heard of: Summary and conclusions<\/h2>\n

Gmail is probably your email platform of choice \u2014 but it could <\/span>always use a few more features<\/b> to work even better for you.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Chrome extensions can fill in the gap for both tiny and massive changes and improvements to your Gmail experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

We <\/span>hands-on tested dozens of Gmail Chrome extensions<\/b> to find some really handy ones for you. And all of these are either totally <\/span>free or, at the very least, have a free plan<\/b> as you\u2019re getting started.<\/span><\/p>\n