5 must-have lab features for Gmail

Google’s popular emailing service, Gmail, has a lab feature, where you can select some experiments that can be applied to your Gmail account. Some of these experiments or features are really helpful, while others may be quite outta place.

Gmail Labs

We’ve hunt down the best 5 of these experiments that will make your Gmail experience even better.

How to enable Gmail Labs

1. Sign into Gmail & click on the gear icon in the top right hand corner of your inbox. Now select Mail Settings from the drop-down menu. (or select labs if it appears in your menu)

Click Gmail settings from drop down menu

2. In the settings page, click on the Labs tab.

Click on 'Labs' from Settings

3. Here, you just need to click enable against any lab experiment you want to allow, or you can search for experiments from the search box

you have enabled gmail labs

Top 5 Gmail Lab Experminents

Here is the recommended experiments list. Just search for the following experiments in the Gmail Labs page (see how to enable gmail lab above) & enable them.

1.) Mouse Gestures

In the recent Gmail Update (2nd May, 2012), this lab feature seems to have been scrapped.

This is my favorite Gmail lab feature. After you have enabled this experiment, when you are reading a mail, just hold your right mouse button and drag mouse:

• Towards left to open previous mail
• Towards right to open next mail
• Towards up to go back to inbox

mouse gestures

It’s fun & handy.

2.) Undo Send

Hmmm, no that’s no typo, this Lab feature actually allows you to call-back an accidentally sent email. But here’s the catch: It can undo a sent email only till a few seconds after you have hit the sent button.

Undo sent emails with gmail labs

This is because Gmail has not actually sent the mail, it’s still in the queue & you can call it back. But that few seconds are sufficient for me, as it has proved useful, many a times.

3.) Unread Message Icon

This lab experiment tweaks the Gmail favicon (image shown in the title bar of your browser) to show the number of unread mails in your Gmail account.

show unread mail count in Gmail Labs

Very useful feature to instantly check how many mails have landed in your account in just one quick look, while working on a different tab of our browser.

4.) Pictures in Chat

With this Gmail lab experiment feature, you can see the profile picture of your friend while chatting with them inside Gmail.

enable profile picture in gmail chat

A must-have for aesthetic lovers.

5.) Old Snakey

In the recent Gmail Update (2nd May, 2012), this lab feature seems to have been scrapped.

This feature allows you to play the classic old mobile game of Snakes in your Gmail inbox! Seems like Google is really fascinated by Snake game, as even Youtube contains this easter egg in its video player.

Play snake game in Gmail

You will need to enable this experiment from Gmail Labs, then go to General tab in Gmail Settings and choose Keyboard shortcuts on. Now simply press ‘&’ key on your keyboard from Gmail Inbox and you will be able to play the Snake Game

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Author: Ishaan Garg Categories: Chat, Gmail, Google, Surfing
Tags: gmail, google Last Updated: May 2, 2012