How to create multiple inboxes in Gmail

Email in web 1.0 was a boring affair. You just got one inbox with everything thrown in together. But over the years, Gmail has shaken up how we look upon email. One extremely useful feature, which originally started out as an experiment and eventually became mainstream, is Multiple Inboxes.

How do Multiple Inboxes work in Gmail?

Multiple Inboxes is a feature where you can specify a certain search string, and all emails that meet that search criteria get their own dedicated inbox. This can be especially useful if you need to separate out emails with specific keywords, or you want emails from a particular label to be more front-and-center.

The only downside is, if you’re a user of the Preview Pane, it won’t work if Multiple Inboxes are enabled.

How to create Multiple Inboxes in Gmail

Enabling and creating multiple inboxes in Gmail is very easy. Here’s how to do it.

Go to Settings and then Inbox. There, you’ll see a drop-down menu. Choose Multiple Inboxes.

When you do, the 5 custom sections appear. You don’t have to use all five if you don’t need them. Start with the first one and enter the search query you want the emails for that inbox to show. To get the search query, just search for the emails in Gmail and then copy the URL.

Alternatively, you can add a label to the search query box. Just type:

Or if it’s the name of a folder (such as the Starred folder), type:

It’s then recommended to add a name for each inbox so you can see which one is for what emails. So your boxes may look something like this:

Scrolling down, the next two sections asks you how many emails you want to have in each inbox (maximum of 99).

You can also specify where the new inboxes will go, in relation to the main inbox. I prefer it above the main inbox, but this is just a personal preference. You choose whatever you want.

Scroll right down to the bottom of the page and save your changes. Gmail will now reload, and your new inboxes should now appear.

No. You can only create and view multiple inboxes on the desktop version of Gmail.

Emails are appearing in both the main inbox and the newly created multiple inbox. How do I stop that?

Archive the one in the main inbox. That one will disappear and the one in the multiple inbox will stay.