Less is more: create order in your webmail
Advertisements
Ads can be very annoying in free webmail apps such as Gmail ( https://mail.google.com ) and Outlook.com ( https://outlook.live.com ). Gmail shows them at the top of the Promotions tab. These resemble e-mail messages to encourage you to click on them.
There is an easy way to remove them: simply disable the Promotions tab (check out https://support.google.com/mail/answer/3094499 for instructions). Outlook.com displays its ads in a separate panel on the right. For an ad-free version of Outlook.com, you can subscribe to Office 365 ( https://bit.ly/2lQaFSG - starting from £60 per year). If you already have a subscription, this offers a good solution: all you have to do is link your Outlook.com account. A free external solution is the Webmail Ad Blocker browser extension ( https://jasonsavard.com/Webmail-Ad-Blocker ), which makes all advertising disappear and uses the free space for your e-mails.
Menus
Menus also take up space in your webmail interface. In Gmail, it’s easy to make them smaller. After clicking on the hamburger icon in the top left corner, you can have the left-hand menu reduced to a minimal version consisting only of icons. When you hover the mouse over the menu, it will automatically expand again. You can optimise the content of the menu. First click on More to unfold everything and then drag the labels or categories that you don’t need on a regular basis downwards, moving them to Less . If you click on Less , you’ll now see that your default menu only contains the elements that you haven’t moved. You can also collapse the right-hand panel, which contains the Calendar and Tasks buttons, by clicking on the arrow in the lower right corner. In Outlook.com, you can use the hamburger icon in the top left corner to make the menu more compact. Within this menu you can collapse Folders and Groups .
View
To customise the display, Gmail has an option for adjusting the density (cogwheel on the right, choose Display Density ). By setting this option to Comfortable , you will obtain a more uncluttered appearance that shows fewer messages. In addition, you can choose a theme that is visually more attractive or less cluttered (cogwheel/ Themes ). You can use the buttons at the bottom of the page to blur the background photo you’ve chosen or to apply a vignette to it. Finally, you can give your labels a custom colour to make them more easily recognisable - just hover over a label and click on the three dots. You can apply the same tricks in Outlook.com, to adjust the display density, customise the look of your mailbox via themes, etc. (see https://bit.ly/2m0F00T for more details).
Extensions
Alternatively, you can use a browser extension to customise your webmail. The Simplify extension ( https://simpl.fyi ) produces a clean, minimal version of Gmail. A good alternative is Inbox Theme ( http://flowapps.co/inboxtheme - for Chrome only). For Outlook.com, there is Outlook Web Enhancement ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/outlook-web-enhancement - in Firefox only), which removes all ad messages and unnecessary clutter.
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