Gmail has now become ubiquitous. Every other person out there is using Gmail as his preferred e-mail service. Since there are hundreds of tips and tricks to customize how Gmail works, and most of them are not much useful to everyone.

So, I thought of compiling a list of 10 Gmail tips, tricks and hacks that are incredibly useful to anyone using Gmail.

1. Filters and Labels

Filters and Labels are one of the greatest innovations in Gmail. Filters let you do specific actions based a particular criteria. Labels let you organize your e-mails. Labels can be given specific colors so that they are easily identified.

Filters enhance the capability of labels to a great extent.

Filters can be created based on six criteria: From, To, has the words, subject, doesn’t have or has attachment. Based on this criteria you can ask Gmail to take one or more of the available actions when mail satisfying a particular criteria arrives.

Useful Label Trick: Using unique characters to prefix label names brings them to the top of the alphabetized list of labels. The @ symbol, numbers and even underscores are all useful for bringing important labels out of their standard organization.

2. Infinite e-mail addresses with single Gmail address

You might be aware of the fact that if you have a Gmail address say example@gmail.com, then mails sent to example@googlemail.com, e.xample@gmail.com, e.x.ample@gmail.com or example+something@gmail.com etc. addresses reach the mailbox of example@gmail.com.

You can use this feature of Gmail while subscribing to newsletters. e.g. if you are subscribing to our newsletter, you could simply use yourname+technotraits@gmail.com address for subscribing. Then you can setup a filter in your Gmail to do a specific action when mail is sent to yourname+technotraits@gmail.com.

Here are a few innovative ways to use Filters and Labels with infinite e-mail addresses:

• Know which website gives your e-mail address to spammers
• Conduct Surveys using Gmail

3. Access e-mail from other accounts

With Gmail you can access up to 5 other mailboxes via POP3. Using this feature, you can make Gmail your ultimate e-mail service with all your e-mails accessible in Gmail. You can also apply labels to mails from other accounts using filters.

4. Save Time by Bookmarking Gmail URLs

Gmail uses an easy to remember url for all its functions. e.g. Inbox is accessible at https://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox, Compose Message at https://mail.google.com/mail/#compose and if you have a label named say example, then all mails with label example are accessible at https://mail.google.com/mail/#label/example.

You can bookmark these urls so that they are one-click away when you open your browser. This’ll definitely save you a lot of seconds.

5. Open mailto: links with Gmail

If you prefer Gmail for all your e-mail conversations then this one’s surely for you. Gmail-to is a nice windows utility that will make Gmail your default e-mail client whenever you encounter mailto: links on web.

6 Mute Conversations

If you have ever subscribed to a mailing list, then you must be aware of that long threaded e-mails in Gmail relating to a long conversation. If you don’t want to receive notification when a new mail arrives from a particular conversation, you could simply mute it.

After muting a conversation, you won’t receive any further unread notice of  that conversation, though it can be shown using search for is:muted in Gmail.

7. Use Gmail Space as Online Backup

Use around 7GB of Gmail space which Google has generously provided for free  as online backup.

Gmail Drive is a shell extension for Windows that adds a Gmail drive to explorer. You can drag and drop files to Gmail drive and it’ll upload to your Gmail account as an e-mail with uploaded file attached. Pretty neat online backup tool!!

8. Get Notified of new e-mail with Gmail Notifier:

If you’re not a Google Talk fan, then you can use Google Notifier to get notified the next time a new mail pops in your inbox. It’ll show a alert above your system tray with a preview of who sent the mail with its subject. You could click the alert to directly open that mail.

9. Attach files in Gmail with drag and drop

If you are annoyed by the file selection dialog of adding an e-mail attachment, then you should consider using DragDropUpload Firefox Add-on which lets you drag and drop Files over a file selection dialog. In Gmail, you can drop files over Attach a File link.

You could also drag multiple files at once and drag it on Attach a File link to attach multiple files.

10. Save Time with Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts:

Gmail provides you with option to use keyboard shortcuts to save time and increase productivity. Here is a complete reference of Gmail keyboard shortcuts which you can print for future reference. Once you start using keyboard shortcuts, they would save you a lot of time.

Besides these, you could also try out Gmail Labs experiments to further enhance your Gmail Experience.

Which tricks and hacks you use with Gmail? Let us know in comments below.