Gmail Adds New Move To And Labels Drop-Downs, Autocomplete

Today Gmail will begin rolling out a new feature to improve your email labelling workflow and mitigate folder-vs.-label confusion with two new drop-down menus: Move to and Labels. Even better: Keyboard shortcuts and autocomplete are baked in. We’re not seeing the updates in our accounts yet, but the new features are pretty simple. If you want to label an email, just click the Labels drop-down or hit ‘L’ on your keyboard and start typing; Gmail will autocomplete the label as you type. The Move to menu works the same but uses ‘V’ as the quick keyboard shortcut. When you apply a new label via the Move to menu, Gmail will apply the new label and automatically archive the email—mimicking folder behaviour while still sticking with Gmail’s label structure. You’ve been able to access Gmail’s More actions menu for quite some time using the period (’.') shortcut, but the label and move to shortcuts are a godsend for keyboard lovers and folder lovers alike. The Better Gmail extension has always included the very cool Gmail Macros script, which itself added new labels by pressing ‘L’ and then autocompleting labels, so this functionality will be easy to adopt for Gmail Macros users. (Though autocomplete for navigating to a new label from the keyboard with the ‘G’ shortcut would be nice, Google.) Is your account enabled yet? Let’s hear how you like the changes in the comments.