Andrew Wirtanen is a usability specialist in Cary, NC More »

Gmail Labels – New Features

Google has rolled out some new features for labels in Gmail. Personally, I am a heavy user of labels, with almost 30 different labels. I have some filters that automatically assign labels (e.g. Newbury Comics weekly deals get assigned the “Shopping” label and skip my inbox) and I assign some labels on-the-fly.

Now, you can choose from 24 different colors for your labels. Associating a color to a label makes it more salient, and it is a lot easier to visually recognize what an email is (e.g. is it from your work life or a personal email?). Another great feature Google added was the ability to remove labels with ease without having to use any drop-down menus:

This simple feature will probably save me a lot of time because I am always accidentally assigning a label to something. Previously, you had to go the particular label’s emails and then find the email you wanted to remove.

Google says that these features are only available in Firefox 2 and IE7. They only work in the latest version of Gmail (with IMAP and the re-organized contacts section).

Good article, but I don’t have an option for applying different colours to labels. Any ideas?

Hi Alan, you may be on the older version of Gmail. See if there is a link in the top-right to switch to the newer version. It should be between the “Settings” and “Sign Out” links in the top-right.