Among the billions of emails sent every day, 80% of them are spam. According to Google, the Gmail spam filter blocks 99.99% of these emails before they reach your inbox.
Even after that, custom gmail filters can provide an extra layer of security. for example, you can create a filter for all emails that contain the word “unsubscribe”. this will filter out any automatically generated emails, which have the unsubscribe button.
but what if you keep getting spam emails? Have spammers gotten smarter? or is there a fault in your filter?
If your inbox is full of useless emails, even after this protection, your gmail filter might have some problem. In this complete guide, we will list all possible troubleshooting methods to fix gmail filters not working.
why aren’t my gmail filters working?
There are several reasons why your gmail filters are not working and it depends on the type of filter you are using.
There are two types of gmail filters. one is the official gmail spam filter which is in constant use and is automatic. the other is a custom filter that you, the user, can configure.
gmail spam filter
gmail spam filter is a powerful tool that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to determine which emails are spam. self-learns and analyzes millions of emails for trigger words, ip addresses, domains, and user input to filter out spam.
However, some spam emails still go through that merging process. now, the problem arises when you accidentally mark a normal email as spam. gmail’s spam filter is temporarily confused, and your normal email can sometimes be sent to the spam directory.
You also can’t disable gmail’s spam filters as it runs only in the background. you can’t even configure gmail spam filters. there are limited actions you can do with it. however, you can:
- move spam emails to spam directory.
- report email as spam.
- block user’s gmail and all its future emails will go to the spam directory.
gmail custom filter
The other type of gmail filter is a user-configured custom filter. It works differently than gmail spam filter, but it can also filter spam.
Instead of using machine learning and artificial intelligence to differentiate emails, gmail’s custom filter uses the configured settings and search filter to differentiate emails. you can also use it to organize all the emails in your inbox.
However, there are some mixed settings in custom gmail filters, and most users have their custom filters misconfigured. it generates a lot of problems and gmail filters don’t work.
how to fix gmail spam filter not working?
gmail spam filter runs by itself and there is not much you can do about it. But, if your gmail spam filter doesn’t seem to be working, there are limited options for you to fix it.
double check before flagging an email
You may have accidentally marked a spam email as normal email or a normal email as spam. As a result, the gmail ai spam filter may misplace your emails. and could end up in different places.
This problem is only temporary, and as long as you don’t make any more of these mistakes, the gmail spam filter should work fine. you can even take the time to personally sort out the messy emails to get gmail back on track.
change your password
If you receive any unintentional approval and suspicious site in your emails, your gmail account could be compromised. Just to be on the safe side, it’s always a good idea to change your password every few months.
If your account has been showing suspicious activity recently and you seem to be getting even more spam, please change your password immediately.
Finally, if your gmail spam filter is still not working as expected, you can use a custom filter to override some of the gmail spam filter functionality.
how to fix custom gmail filter not working?
custom gmail filters have a wide variety of configuration settings, and any small change could cause gmail filters to not work as intended. Before jumping to conclusions about the issues, let’s learn how to properly set up a custom gmail filter.
set up a custom gmail filter
custom gmail filter is versatile and easily customizable with its wide variety of options and settings. It has several purposes, like organizing incoming emails, overriding some of gmail’s spam filter features, auto-forwarding emails, etc. however, its wide range of configurations and functions allows for many user errors.
To successfully set up a custom gmail filter, follow the steps below.
- Open Gmail in your browser of choice.
- Click on the three parallel lines on the right of the search bar.
- Fill up the search criteria. (You can pick from various criteria to separate emails and apply pre-recorded settings to them.)
- Hit Create filter.
- Choose the Settings you want to apply.
- Hit Create filter.
Most of the time, people misconfigure the settings in Step 5 and the filter does not have the desired effect. Please read the method below to correctly configure the settings.
configure filter settings
There are several applied settings to choose from in the filter settings, and people can easily get things wrong.
your custom filters work independently of gmail spam filters. If you’re setting up a custom spam filter, keep in mind that your filtered spam will never end up in the spam category. however, you can create a label for the spam and group it in a different directory that you have created.
to bundle your spam in another directory:
- Hit Apply the label option in step 5 of method 1.
- Choose New label, and enter a name for the label. (You can name it something like Junk.)
- Choose the Skip the Inbox option. (Your filtered spam will only show in All mail and the label directory after doing this.)
- Choose the Apply filter to … matching conversations. (The filter gets applied to old emails that trigger the search criteria.)
- Hit create.
Your custom spam filter will now filter based on your search criteria and tag them with the name you’ve given it. make sure to hit the bypass inbox option or your filtered emails will still appear in the inbox.
You can use this method to filter many emails and group them together. you will not see it in your inbox and you can go to any particular directory to view the leaked emails. for example i get a lot of emails from reddit and my custom filter filters all emails from reddit to a directory called reddit. makes my inbox look so much cleaner.
the rest of the options are quite simple and their names give away their function. customize the filters to your liking.
remove overlapping filters
One of the reasons your filters aren’t working could be because there are too many filters. Please note that only one filter can work at a time. if an email meets two different filter search criteria, only one of the filter settings will be applied.
If your emails end up in the wrong places, disappear, or are randomly marked as important or spam, it’s probably due to overlapping filters.
To resolve this issue, you can make the filter search criteria stricter or remove unnecessary filters.
Here’s how to edit or delete a filter.
- Open Gmail.
- Click on the settings icon in the top right.
- Click on See All Settings.
- Go to the Filters and Blocked Addresses heading. (It will list all filters here.)
- Choose from editing or deleting the filters.
disable override filters
Your gmail account defaults to filters overridden when marked as important. Google uses your past actions to determine if an email is important. If some emails that should clearly be filtered still show up in your inbox, it could be an arbitrary decision by gmail.
To disable filter settings override, follow the steps below.
- Open Gmail.
- Click on the settings icon in the top right.
- Click on See All Settings.
- Go to the Inbox heading.
- Scroll down and choose the Don’t Override filters option.
- Hit Save Changes.
if you also want google to stop flagging important emails based on your past actions, do this. above the override filters option, choose don’t use my past actions to predict which messages are important options, and click save changes.