Gmail tends to be a bit like a teenager’s room; messy with socks lying all over. From promotional emails to credit card offers, everything just kinda lives together. That also makes it harder to find a certain email among the cluster.
True, the introduction of categorized emails; where Gmail segregated emails into different labels, was a huge relief and kept our primary inbox slightly cleaner. However, what needed work was Gmail’s native search function.
Unlike the web application, the search feature went through all tags and categories and compiled a jumbled up list of results. While we can see the merit of having a thorough search, this made it doubly difficult to pinpoint an email among the ruckus.
Luckily, Google has introduced ‘Search chips‘ to its Gmail application that seems to be drastically changing the game.
What is the exclude chat function?
In Feb 2020, Google announced the introduction of ‘Search chips‘ in Gmail. Search chips essentially help users set parameters to their searches within the app. This is a hugely welcomed update to the native search function.
The new ‘Search chips’ function gives the user options to narrow down their search by date, time, attachments in the email, whom the email was sent to, and more. One of these options is the ‘Exclude chats’ chip that lets you remove chats from the search. By default, a Gmail search includes all your conversations in a search, including al your Hangouts chats.
How to use exclude chats in a Gmail search with Search Chips
Search chips have been added to Gmail’s native search function. The search parameters appear when a search has been initiated in the search bar. Follow this simple guide to exclude chats in your Gmail searches using ‘Search chips’.
Step 1: Open Gmail.
Step 2: Using the search bar at the top of the page, type out a user’s name, and hit ‘Enter’.
Step 3: The Search chips bar will appear at the top of the search results. Click the ‘Exclude chats button’.
The search results will now be filtered and all chats with the searched user will be left out, leaving you only with emails pertaining to the user.
Search chips for regular Gmail accounts
Well, it just showed up on our free, regular Gmail account. Check out this screenshot.
As of May 2020, the official word is that the ‘Search chips’ is available only for Gsuite users. So if you have a regular Gmail account, you won’t see the Search chips below the search bar yet. However, we are hopeful that Google will release the update for regular users too.
Have you received the new search feature on Gmail yet? Let us know in the comments below.
