New "e" shortcut archives every time

Posted by Vivek Gupta, Engineering Manager

Introducing: shortcut "e." It's a new shortcut key that archives email. You might be thinking, "Doesn't shortcut key 'y' archive email too? Why make a new way to archive?" Well, let me explain. I'm a heavy Gmail user, to say the least--I get 1,000+ emails a day. So to manage it all I have filters that auto-label emails while still showing them in my inbox. Sometimes I read them from my inbox, but many times I click on the label name to pull all of my new mail from a certain category ("label view"). In reading mail from these two views, I noticed a quirky instance where you cannot use shortcut keys to archive email while in label view.

Shortcut "y" archives when you are reading mail from your inbox, but it actually removes the label if you read email from your label view. This is because technically, "y" removes the conversation from the current view. In inbox it removes from inbox, and in label view it removes the label. So to archive in the true sense of the word (removing it from inbox view) in "label view," I had to click the "more actions" drop-down menu and actually hand-select "archive." After enabling shortcuts in Settings, tapping "e" will now archive your message no matter what. No more unnecessary mouse movements for me, and hopefully for you.