Struggling to sort through endless spam and marketing emails in your inbox? Gmail has a solution.
The popular Google-built email service has started to roll-out a major update designed to make it easier to clear out your inbox and put a stop to unwanted messages. Before you even open an email, you’ll find a new “Unsubscribe” prompt in the list of your unread messages in your Gmail inbox.
Tapping the new button will automatically inform the brand that you no longer want to receive messages from them. In some cases, Google will send you directly to the email settings page from the brand, so you can choose to unsubscribe or change the frequency of messages.
An example of the new "Unsubscribe" button appearing in the inbox
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If you’re reading emails on the Android or iPhone app, you’ll need to open the message, where you’ll find the new “Unsubscribe” button next to the name of the sender. Until now, the button was hidden under the three-dot menu with the email.
With a single tap, you’ll be able to put an end to a flood of spam messages to your Gmail address.
Gmail boasts more than 1.8 million users worldwide, making it comfortably the most popular email service. The new functionality was announced by the Google team in a recent blog post.
“We know managing unwanted emails is a source of frustration for many users. Now, we’re introducing new ways to make it even easier to unsubscribe from unwanted emails in Gmail on web and mobile,” the company has promised.
The introduction of the “Unsubscribe” button, which should be to all Gmail users worldwide within weeks, follows an update at the end of last year to enable you to bulk delete messages on mobile.
Google has moved the "Unsubscribe" button from the three-dot menu in the iOS and Android apps to a more prominent position at the top of each spam message
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The long-awaited change lets you select a batch of messages within the email thread list with a single tap and delete multiple messages or mark them all as “read” or “unread”, as needed.
Both changes should be widely available in desktop web browsers, Android and iOS before next month.
Google is playing catch-up with Apple with the introduction of its new one-tap “Unsubscribe” feature. The iPhone manufacturer introduced the ability to unsubscribe from mailing lists with a single tap with its iOS 10 update, which rolled out in 2016.
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Using AI, Apple will scan the contents of an email to find a link to unsubscribe – often found in the footer of marketing emails – and offers a similar one-tap prompt at the top of the message.
This doesn’t just work with Apple’s own iCloud email service, but any third-party emails that are connected to the Mail app on iPhone and iPad, including Gmail, Outlook, Proton Mail, and others.
