How to Create Folders and Labels in Gmail

There are millions of Gmail users, but we bet most of them barely keep their inboxes with folders, labels, and filters or even know about it. If you receive lots of emails, they tend to pile up over time, and managing them becomes increasingly difficult. However, did you know that you can keep your inbox organized in just a few clicks? This is done using Folders and Labels in Gmail.

Even though Gmail doesn’t have ‘folders’ per-se, the email platform’s ‘labels’ feature works pretty much the same way. You can filter the emails into various categories and block emails based on a specific keyword. You can also choose to move a particular type of message to a custom folder by creating rules on Gmail. If that sounds interesting, here’s how to create folders and labels in Gmail to keep your inbox organized.

Create Folders or Labels in Gmail

On Web

You can quickly go to the newly created tag from the left sidebar. Alternatively, you can type “label:” in the search bar to go to the label.

On Phone

The ability to create a label is unavailable on Gmail for Android but can be found on the iOS app. Hence, if you use an Android device, you would need to add a label using a browser.

Move Emails from Inbox to Folders

Now that we have set up labels, the only thing left to do is to move emails into the new labels. There are a few ways to do this — Manually applying labels to emails in your Gmail inbox, or you can create filters in Gmail to automatically organize upcoming mail into different labels for a cleaner inbox.

On Web

On Phone

Automatically Apply Labels to Incoming Emails

Now that you know how to apply labels to emails, let’s take things one step further by automating the process. Unfortunately, filters are only available on the Web and not on Android or iOS apps.

Create Sub-folders in Gmail

As you must have realized by now, labels in Gmail are really powerful and useful. Plus, they are a great substitute for folders. So, if you want to create nested labels (or sub-folders, so to speak) in Gmail, here’s how you can do that as well. Nested labels are only available in the Gmail web app.

Edit or Delete a Label

Unfortunately, the only way to Edit or Delete a label is from Gmail for the browser. Here’s how you can edit or delete a label.

Similarly, if you want to categorize your labels based on the colors to quickly spot them, you can do so by clickingLabel colorand choosing the color.

Edit Labels in Bulk

Adding, Deleting, and Editing labels one by one could be a tedious process, and that’s where you can use the expanded label settings in Gmail settings. All you need to do is click oncogwheel icon>See All Settings>Labels tab. Scroll down to manage your labels.

So these are the best ways you can use labels or folders in Gmail to clean up your inbox and get rid of clutter, spam emails, and promotional messages. If you’re looking to switch to a different email client, check out our take on thebest Gmail alternatives.

Abubakar Mohammed

Abubakar covers Tech on Beebom. Hailing from a Computer Science background, the start of his love for Tech dates back to 2011, when he was gifted a Dell Inspiron 5100. When he’s not covering Tech, you’ll find him binge-watching anime and Tech content on YouTube, hunting heads in competitive FPS games, or exploring Teyvat in Genshin Impact. He has previously worked for leading publications such as Fossbytes, How-To Geek, and Android Police.

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