Comments on: A Self Cleaning Inbox

By: Toe

Toe — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:12:45 +0000

Some mail providers do this, too. Like with Dreamhost, if you use IMAP (or their IMAP-based webmail client), after a while old messages are automatically moved to a folder called old-messages. This is done more to keep your inbox small & server loads light than for organizational purposes.

By: Stephen Paul Weber

Stephen Paul Weber — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:42:34 +0000

It seems like this problem can be also solved (somewhat) by reducing one’s email – ala efail/email reduction by tantek

tantek.pbwiki.com/EmailReduction

By: Chris Pratt

Chris Pratt — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 18:16:21 +0000

This is a fantastic idea, but is unfortunately not support in Gmail, currently. The only time-based filtering Gmail allows you to do is with the ‘before’ and ‘after’ filters, which take static dates as arguments, i.e. no way to filter say all messages older than 3 days.

I’m not overly familiar with mail clients, since I’ve almost exclusively used Gmail’s online interface for years, but there’s probably a way to filter messages this way in something like Outlook, Thunderbird or Apple Mail. And, with Gmail’s IMAP, you should be able to sync it back into the actual Gmail interface.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:13:25 +0000

Does anyone know how you would do this in Gmail? I think it actually might help my email management.

By: Bill Barry

Bill Barry — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:11:17 +0000

With thunderbird:

View -> Threads -> Threads -> Threads with Unread (this way you don’t lose context)

Anything that becomes important I tag.
‘
Then I also have search folders for tagged messages.

By: Frankie Roberto

Frankie Roberto — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:38:51 +0000

I’ve had that exact same idea too. It occurred to me when noticing that my Gmail said ‘Inbox (1008)’ – when actually it’s be more useful if the number in parenthesis was the number of new and unread e-mails since the last time I logged in – ie, discounting all the e-mails which I’d already ignored.

How are you setting up your Gmail rules?

By: Laurens Holst

Laurens Holst — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:40:24 +0000

What’s wrong with just having a couple of thousand emails in your inbox? Filters move mailinglist mails into separate folders, but my inbox contains all my personal mail and goes pretty far back…

By: db48x

db48x — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 05:02:35 +0000

Actually it’s not really a new idea. My email client (Gnus) is something like 20 years old, and it’s always worked that way. I love it.

By: Mossop

Mossop — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 04:25:55 +0000

I don’t have anything to automatically clear out my inbox, but my inbox is almost permanently empty. If a mail requires no work (junk, or just info) then I move it to the appropriate folder. If it requires work then I generally take care of it there and then and move it out, it stays in my inbox as a permanent reminder that something needs to be done. My urge to keep the inbox clean makes me do that.

By: Daniel O'Connor

Daniel O'Connor — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 04:05:31 +0000

That’s exactly what I do with thunderbird + our trac emails.

It’s also pretty much exactly what google reader does.