Over the years, Gmail has grown from a convenient online email service to a powerful business tool and an integral part of Google’s G Suite productivity platform. but as more features have been added to gmail, the performance of the web application has become slower.
You may have noticed that it can take anywhere from a second to several seconds to load (or reload) gmail in your browser, a sure source of frustration when you just want to check your inbox or write an email quickly. This can be made worse if your computer has a low-end processor, your internet connection is slow or spotty, or you have too many extensions installed on your browser.
As a regular user of gmail, I’ve been looking for ways to improve its performance. If you feel that Gmail has become abnormally slow for you, the following tips may make you feel snappier again.
1. kill the chat window
The default layout of your gmail inbox includes a chat window in the bottom left corner. you can use it to chat with people in your google contacts, but it may slow down the initial loading of your inbox and the overall performance of gmail while using it.
the chat window in the left sidebar can affect the performance of gmail.
This chat window also takes up screen space in the sidebar that displays your email categories and labels. so ditching chat will help you see more of your labels at a glance without having to scroll through them, especially if you’ve created a long list of labels to assign to your emails. (See “How to Use Gmail Labels to Control Your Inbox” for more details.)
To banish the chat window: Click the gear icon in the top right corner of your inbox, then click Settings from the dropdown menu. in the tabs at the top of the screen, choose chat. select chat off and click the save changes button. your inbox will be refreshed and you will be free from the chat window.
2. reduce the number of email conversations displayed in your inbox
When you have a lot of emails stored locally on your PC, a desktop application you use to read and manage them can get slow in sorting them to present them to you. in that situation, deleting as many emails as you can can speed up the app. Because gmail stores your emails in the cloud, however, deleting them won’t necessarily speed it up.
But there’s something you can do to help your browser load your inbox page faster: reduce the number of conversations that appear on it. gmail can be configured to display 10, 15, 20, 25, 50, or 100 email conversations at a time. the higher the number, the longer it will take for gmail to display them.
Whatever number you choose, you’ll still be able to access the rest of your messages; it just takes one extra click. you can experiment with different numbers to find the balance between convenience and page load speed that works for you.
To make the change, click the gear icon and then settings. you should be in the general tab. Next to “Maximum page size”, click the dropdown box and select the maximum number of email conversations you want to display in your inbox at one time. scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the save changes button.
You can limit the number of email conversations that gmail displays when it loads your inbox.
Note that the “max page size” control only works with the default inbox view in gmail. if you have chosen a different inbox view, you may see a different number of messages in your inbox. (See “Is Your Gmail Inbox Settings Slowing You Down?” for more information on the different Gmail Inbox views.)
3. archive your emails
another technique you can try is to archive all your emails that don’t need to be visible in your inbox but don’t want to delete. archiving them gets them out of the inbox but keeps them easily accessible. With most of your archived messages out of the way, Gmail will only need to load and display new, unread incoming email conversations in your inbox.
To archive a message to your inbox, hover over the message and then click the first icon on the far right: the box with the down arrow is the archive button. the message will be removed from your inbox, but you can access it by clicking all mail in the left sidebar. (You may need to click “more” at the bottom of the left sidebar to see the “all mail” option.)
Archiving messages cleans up your inbox and helps it load faster while keeping your messages easily accessible.
You can also archive multiple emails to your inbox at once: Click the checkbox to the left of each message you want to archive. then click the file button on the toolbar above your inbox and below the search box.
If you want to select the checkboxes for all emails in your inbox, click the checkbox just below the search engine’s magnifying glass icon. Clicking the down arrow to the right of this checkbox opens a menu that allows you to easily select all emails in your inbox, deselect all of them, or select only read emails, unread, featured, or unfeatured.
You can even set up filters in Gmail to automatically archive all messages that meet certain criteria, such as from a particular sender. if you do, those messages won’t even appear in your inbox view, but instead go straight to your all mail list. See “How Gmail Filters Can Help You Organize Your Inbox” for instructions on working with filters.
4. reduce the number of tabs in the inbox
An interesting feature of the default gmail inbox view is that it uses artificial intelligence magic to sort incoming emails into a category: main, social, promotions, updates, or forums. The emails that Google decides are the most important to you go in the main category; those that contain information linked to their social networks are classified as social; promotional emails that are not spam become promotions; bills, statements, and the like are updated, and mailing list messages are posted to the forums. each category is represented as a tab at the top of your inbox. clicking on that tab displays the emails sorted below it.
Unfortunately, these tabs can slow down the loading of your gmail inbox. therefore, you should keep only the tabs you want and remove the ones you don’t want.
click the gear icon and then select configure inbox. In the panel that appears, uncheck the inbox categories that you no longer want to have. click the save button. incoming emails that would have been classified in those categories will go to your main inbox.
Uncheck the boxes for the tabs you don’t need.
5. take it easy with browser extensions
There are many extensions for chrome, firefox and other browsers that add features to gmail that it doesn’t already have, like email tracking or extra formatting tools for composing messages. the gmail sender icons extension, for example, displays the domain name and favicon associated with the sender’s email address next to the subject header of their email, which I find useful for quickly identifying senders .
Unfortunately, each of these extensions can slow down the loading and performance of gmail at least a little. so stick with one or two gmail extensions that you find most useful.
Browser extensions can add useful features to gmail, but using too many at once can slow it down.
6. use an ad blocker
Using an ad blocker and/or an anti-tracking extension in chrome not only speeds up chrome but also gmail. i tried ublock origin, a traditional ad blocker, and disconnection, which prevents sites from tracking you. using both in chrome significantly sped up my gmail inbox loading and refreshing. (firefox, edge, and other browsers have more built-in anti-tracking capabilities, so you may not notice as much of a difference using those extensions there).
Please note, however, that using an ad blocker may prevent certain features of Gmail from working normally.
Using browser extensions that block ads and trackers can also help speed up gmail.
7. use the html-only version of gmail
while your gmail inbox is loading or reloading, you will see a link labeled “load basic html (for slow connections)” in the bottom right corner. Google has anticipated that gmail might have less than optimal performance for you: the longer it takes for the gmail home page to load, the more likely you are to notice this option.
Clicking the link loads the gmail inbox with a simpler user interface. you can compose an email and perform basic maintenance, such as archiving or deleting a message, reporting spam, or marking an email as read or unread. however, several of the robust features of the standard gmail service are not available, such as scheduling an outgoing email to be sent at a later day or time. also note that any extension you have installed in chrome that adds a function to gmail will not work with the basic version of html.
the html-only version of gmail allows you to perform basic tasks quickly but removes advanced features from the full gmail interface.
there are more limitations: images or graphics that are embedded in incoming emails will not be displayed when you open them. Similarly, you may not embed images in an email you compose, or format its layout or text.
Using the html version also requires you to take additional steps. for example, while you’re writing your email, it’s not automatically saved to your drafts folder. you must do this manually by clicking the save draft button in the email compose window. and there are no one-click buttons for quick email maintenance: to delete an email from the main page, you need to click the checkbox next to the sender’s name and then click the delete button on the main page. top of the page.
However, the html version works very fast: it reacts almost instantly. it’s useful even if internet connection or computer specs aren’t an issue, and all you want to do is check your new emails and compose basic emails with no performance lag. I recommend keeping the html version of gmail bookmarked so you can quickly jump to it when the standard version of gmail is running slow for you.
8. use keyboard shortcuts
So far in this story, I’ve covered a few tips to make gmail more responsive and load faster in your browser. my final advice is a way to speed up the work with gmail.
Memorizing the keyboard shortcuts for some of the most common gmail functions can improve your productivity as you use it and make it feel like it works faster. reducing cursor movement across the screen and clicking elements on a page invariably speeds up workflow.
first, you need to verify that gmail is configured to recognize keyboard shortcuts. click the gear icon and then choose settings. in the general tab, scroll down to “keyboard shortcuts” (this is the 20th item on the page) and select enabled keyboard shortcuts. scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the save changes button.
Below are some keyboard shortcuts worth remembering.
useful gmail keyboard shortcuts
To see a full list of keyboard shortcuts: When you have Gmail open in your browser, type ? on your keyboard. you can also check the official “keyboard shortcuts for gmail” page.