The more you work, the less you want to move your hands away from the keyboard. And most of us spend shitload of time browsing through emails. The last thing that you want to do is have to use your mouse when you want to do bulk actions using email such as deleting, archiving or moving emails to specific labels.
If by any chance you are gmail user, you have a lot of options to improve your productivity - at least during email time.
So, lets cut the crap and get to the point.
Things to get you started with using keyboard shortcuts in gmail
- Setup your gmail to make use of keyboard shortcuts.
- Know where to look for help when you start learning or when you forget a shortcut.
- Memorize the common shortcuts that are relevant to YOU.
1) Setup your gmail to make use of keyboard shortcuts
- Go to the cog icon in the new gmail interface (new as of this writing in Oct 2012)
- Go to 'Settings'
- Look for the keyboard shortcuts option and enable it.
2) Know where to look for help when you start learning or when you forget a shortcut.
There are 2 ways you can do this
- Instant help : Press ? anywhere in your gmail (while you not typing, of course). You get a list of available shorcuts.
- Official google documentation - List of all the shortcuts with their explanation
3) Frequenty Used ones you might LOVE to have at your finger tips
- Select conversation - x (One of the most basic ones, You definitely would want to learn this one to combine it with others)
- Next conversation - j
- Prev conversation - k
- Delete conversation - # (This is just so important!)
- Move to label - First select using x , and then press v (Definitely learn this one)
- Go to inbox - g then i
- Compose - c
- Search - /
- Reply - r
- Reply All - Shift + a
- Mark as read - Shift + i
- Mark as unread - Shift + u
- Move to chat search - q
Happy Programming :)
Signing Off
Ryan
