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How to Use and Search Gmail Superstars
Posted by Adam Pash at 6:00 AM on July 15, 2008
All things Google weblog Google Operating System details how to take full advantage of Gmail Superstars, a souped-up version of Gmail's standard yellow star available in previously mentioned Gmail Labs. When enabled, Gmail Superstars allows you to set the star to one of 12 different icons for more robust labelling via the previously single-function star icon. The really cool part? Gmail Superstars are incorporated into Gmail's advanced search, so you can use queries like:
has:yellow-star...to narrow down your starred items. Even better, you could bookmark specific star searches with the previously highlighted Quick Links feature to set up quick access to any Gmail Superstar. Be sure to check out the original post for all the different available search terms.
has:blue-star
has:red-star
has:orange-star
has:green-star
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
StareClips.com
Posted October 4, 2008 7:01 AM
For those who think that the stars are merely a redundant feature, consider that some people prefer icons over text links. Whenever there is an option to show text links in a toolbar or menu, or to show icons, or both, I always use only icons. I value screen real estate. Furthermore, the eye can scan a page and easily pick out red stars much more easily than, say, looking for text-link labels like "Action Needed" and so on.
This was the very reason that Google allowed labels to be color-coded... but sometimes a color alone just isn't enough, especially when you run out of colors or two colors are too similar to each other.
daybringer
Posted 6:57 AM 15/7/08
Ooh shiny.
I think I will stick with one color of stars
daybringer
Drewzy
Posted 6:27 AM 15/7/08
I tried using "has:yellow-star"(without the quotes, of course) and it only pulled up four random starred items out of almost 300 in my starred folder. How can this be? disconcerting.
Drewzy
Kraft
Posted 7:47 AM 15/7/08
I'm playing with combinations, but no luck so far: Does anyone know if there's a search term that would work for pre-Superstar yellow stars?
in:star and in:starred pulled up all messages with any star.
has:yellow-star only pulls Superstarred yellow stars. has:star, has:starred does nothing.
Not that it really matters too much since once you start using Superstars, there would be no additional items in my mythical "has:pre-superstar-yellow-star" search results, but damn curious.
Kraft
Biologyfool
Posted 7:46 AM 15/7/08
Wow that makes the stars just like tags. Thank goodness because Gmail doesn't have...oh wait it does, never mind.
Biologyfool
cinnamon3
Posted 7:30 AM 15/7/08
It works for me. But I don't have so many starred items.
cinnamon3
Kraft
Posted 7:21 AM 15/7/08
has:yellow-star only works, or for me at least, on items that were starred *after* the Superstars was used.
To test, I went to the built-in "Starred" link. I de-starred one e-mail and re-starred it. The Superstar yellow star is lacking the blue outline of the pre-Superstar star.
I don't know if this is universal, but seems to explain it to me.
Kraft
_Jonny
Posted 7:20 AM 15/7/08
As was mentioned when the new Labs features were revealed, it's really annoying to click through them all. A drop down list would be much easier.
Anyway, thanks for enlightening us about the searching.
_Jonny
Kraft
Posted 7:51 AM 15/7/08
@Biologyfool - True, but this could be nice for a GTD-style system. Yellow-bang = action, red-bang = next action, etc. Save the screen real estate that's used for a "S/Next Action", "!Next", etc tag.
Kraft
marc.j
Posted 9:00 AM 15/7/08
@Drewzy, Kraft:
Yeah, I noticed the new stars right when the new star feature was added. The new yellow stars even look a bit different than they used to.
I hope gmail will find a way to change them all to the new style, and add support for searching all yellow stars
marc.j
Mister Mau
Posted 10:56 AM 15/7/08
Excuse me for being lazy, but is it possible to assign superstars with filters?
Mister Mau
vidyadhariiit
Posted 5:29 AM 16/7/08
Thanks for given such an easy search tip which actually makes sense in using those color stars....
vidyadhariiit
reallyseth
Posted 3:40 AM 17/7/08
@Biologyfool: Yeah, that was my first thought. The stars provide the same information a tag would, which makes the stars redundant and unnecessary.
reallyseth