MacMost Now 459: Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts

Gmail is often the choice of email power users. You can optimize your Gmail experience even more by learning some simple keyboard shortcuts that allow you to navigate, read and compose email without having to move your fingers from the keyboard.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost Now. On today's episode, let's learn about using keyboard shortcuts with GMail. So I know a lot of MacMost users use Gmail, and the web interface for Gmail is fantastic, especially if you take advantage of keyboard shortcuts. Let's take a look at some of them. So the first thing you want to do, you want to go to settings and make sure keyboard shortcuts is turned on. You can see it right here. If it's turned off, you won't be able to access any of them. So we'll first take a look and notice that to the left of my conversations, I can see this little arrow here. That's the key to using keyboard shortcuts. If I use the "j" and "k" buttons, j for next and k for previous, I can move that arrow between the different conversations. When I find one I want to look at, I use "o" to open it, and I can jump down into the conversation, and I can also use "u" to go back up, so I can quickly look through my conversations using j and k, o for down, u for up. Now once I'm in a conversation, like let's go to this one here that has three messages in it. I can navigate around here using "p" and "n", n for next and p for previous, and you can see the arrow moving between them. I can then use o again to open up one of these and toggle it shut as well with o. I can use u to go back up. I can also use also use "g" to navigate between the different mailboxes. For instance, g and then a will jump to all mail, g and d to drafts, and g and I to the inbox. Now what if I want to start a new conversation? I can do that by pressing "c", start a completely new email message there as well. And then, when I'm finished with it, I can actually use "tab", and it will jump, and you will see it highlighting send there and a return would send the email. So I can do it all from the keyboard without using the mouse at all. So one of the most powerful features for Gmail is search, and you can jump right to a search box by pressing the "/" key, and it will take your cursor right there, and then, you can type your search. So replying to messages is easy to do as well. You can select the conversation. I'll go down to this one here with o, and then I could go through the different messages. There's only the one here and tap "r" to reply to it, and it instantly opens up the reply below it. Now you can also archive a message while you are in it. Let me go down to this one and tap "e" to archive it and jump back up to your inbox. You can also go through here and select various messages like this one by pressing "x" and this one as well and then tap e and it will archive the ones that are selected. Now that's just the tip of the iceberg. Now wouldn't it be great if you could see all the keyboard shortcuts very easily, and there's a keyboard shortcut for that as well. You just do "shift" and "/" or in other words the question mark on your keyboard, and you instantly get this handy list that overlays Gmail, and you can look through it all, and tapping anything, even shift will dismiss that. So you can quickly look at all the shortcuts and learn new ones until you know them all. So I hope you found this look at Gmail keyboard shortcuts useful. Until next time, this is Gary with MacMost Now.

Comments: 7 Responses to “MacMost Now 459: Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts”

Bob

14 years ago

Cool, thanks again for the education.

Arieh

13 years ago

Hi Gary..... sorry to bother you with this question but I have searched everywhere for an answer and have come up empty, so I hope you can help.
I want to know how I can export photo`s from gmail into iphoto ?
I know I can drag to the desk top and/or right click and send to iphoto but that`s allot of work when I have 20-30 photos. Is there not an easier way ?
I do have my apple mail synced with gmail and I know how to send a batch of photos from apple mail but I would really love to learn how to do it from gmail.
Please help if you have the time, Thanks and hope your weekend is going well.

Gary Rosenzweig

Why not just save them all to the desktop and then drag and drop them all together in one go?

Good Morning Gary...... I have tried everything I know, however saving 26 photos to the desk top at the same time, I just can`t figure out how to do this. :-(
If you have any suggestions I would love to read them.
Thanks again, Have a great Monday :-)

In Mail, any time you get an email with an attachment there is a Save button at the top of the message. Click it and you have the choice to "Save All"

LOL ..... I guess you have forgotten. We are talking about "Gmail" A.K.A. Goggle mail. I explained to you in my original msg that "I know how to save photos from Apple Mail.... but I would like like to learn how to save multiple photos from GMAIL at the same time and export them to "iphoto"

Sorry, I assumed you were getting your gmail in Mail. But you are using the Web interface, correct? I don't remember if there is a "save all" option in the web interface. If not, can't you just click on each item for download and then they will all go to your Downloads folder? Then you can drag them all in one go from there to iPhoto? So 26 quick clicks and then one drag and drop?

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MacMost Now 459: Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts

Comments: 7 Responses to “MacMost Now 459: Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts”

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