Superhuman-like setup in Gmail
I’m a big fan of Superhuman. They just created an email client so good that I wanna use it even though I don't really need it. And it almost kinda feels guilty to say this, but Gmail just works for me.
Gmail only works for me though, because I set it up a lot like Superhuman.
My whole setup is based on the idea that email is the center of notifications. And the thing that makes that work is Superhuman’s Split Inbox feature.
To recreate that in Gmail, follow these steps:
Activate Gmail Shortcuts: Go to Gmail Settings > General, scroll to "Keyboard shortcuts" and enable them.
Enable the Preview Pane: Go to Gmail Settings > Advanced and enable "Preview Pane". This lets you scan through emails quickly like in Superhuman.
Once those are on, you can move through emails with the arrow keys and process them using shortcuts like:
- X = select
- Enter = read
- R = reply
- C = compose
- CMD + Enter = send
- Z = undo
But the most useful shortcut is Y. Why’s that?
In Gmail, when you select a message and press the shortcut Y, it performs the action of removing the selected email from its current view. Specifically, this means:
- If you're in your Inbox, pressing Y will archive the email, moving it to the "All Mail" folder.
- If you're in the Trash, it will move the email back to the Inbox.
- If you're viewing a label, it will remove the label from the selected email while keeping it in your Inbox or "All Mail" folder.
So just like you can press Y in the main Inbox to archive an email, you can also press Y when you’re inside a label view to remove that label. Since those emails are already archived, pressing Y just removes them from that label view—they stay in All Mail.
To really make use of that, you can create filters. That way, incoming emails get labeled automatically and skip the inbox. So each filter should do two things:
- Skip the inbox (so the email is archived)
- Apply a label (so it shows up in the right label view)
This setup lets you process emails by context. I use labels like Newsletters, Events, Social, Ops to split my inbox into different lists based on context. You go into a label, go through the emails, press Y when done, and move on. That’s how I get to inbox zero.
If you wanna mimic the Split Inbox feature even more, you can use the Gmail Tabs extension to turn labels into tabs. And of course, there are more ways to make Gmail more Superhuman-like.
I feel like the day will come when I make the switch to Superhuman. But for now, this setup works for me.
On a similar note, I wrote about email as building block of everything.