Triage your inbox with smart views, snooze and send later

Your inbox is more than one long list. In Mail, the sidebar groups conversations by what you need to do about them, so you can work through the ones that matter first and ignore the rest until later.

The smart views

Under Smart views in the left sidebar you will find:

• Needs reply: mail from people that is waiting on an answer from you.
• Waiting: conversations where you asked someone something and are waiting to hear back.
• Promised: things you or the other person said they would do.
• Today: items due today.
• Follow up: conversations that have gone quiet for a few days (three by default) and may need a nudge.
• Completed: the last 30 days of promises kept and conversations marked done.

Newsletters, notifications and other machine-sent mail are recognised automatically and kept out of these views, so they only show real conversations. Each view shows a count of how many conversations are in it, except Completed.

Below the smart views you will also see Categories such as Promotions and Subscriptions, then your Labels and Folders.

Note: A smart view that has not caught up yet shows when it was last checked. New mail is normally picked up within a minute or two. If a view looks wrong, use Rebuild smart views, which re-reads the last 14 days of mail.

Work through a view

1. Open Mail and choose Needs reply.
2. Open the first conversation and answer it. Once you reply, it leaves the view and may appear under Waiting.
3. For conversations that need no answer, use the status chip on the conversation to mark it Done or FYI.

Snooze a conversation

If you cannot deal with something now, snooze it so it comes back when you can.

1. Open the conversation and choose the clock button (Snooze) in the toolbar.
2. Pick Later today, Tomorrow morning or Next week, or choose Pick a date and time.
3. The conversation shows Snoozed until with an Unsnooze link if you change your mind.

Send later

When you write a message, the composer has a Schedule send option (the Send later button). Choose when it should go, using the same quick choices or a custom date and time. Scheduled messages are listed under Scheduled in the sidebar, where you can edit or cancel them.

You can also give yourself a safety net: Settings, Preferences, Undo send sets how many seconds a message waits after you press Send, so you can press Undo and fix a mistake.

Keyboard shortcuts

Press c to compose, / to search, j and k to move between conversations, r to reply, e to archive and # to delete.

Common problems

• A conversation is missing from Needs reply. Automated mail is deliberately excluded, and mail in Junk, Trash or Drafts never changes a conversation's state.
• Send later or Snooze is not shown. These need the workspace's productivity services to be switched on. Ask your administrator.