Gmail Tips for Apple Mail

If you use Gmail or G Suite for your email, and you use the Apple Macintosh built-in Mail App, changes in Gmail over the past few years may impact your Mail performance. Most noticeably are the uses of Social Inbox, and the Important flag for mail messages.

Fortunately, there are a few minor settings changes that you can make in Gmail that will help your Mail client perform better.

Recommended Settings Changes

Google enabled multiple versions of the standard Inbox: Social, Promotions, Updates, and Forums. Also, Google automatically added categories, including "Important", to your mail messages. If you aren't familiar with these, or if you simply do not use them, then make/check the following settings in Gmail.

First, if you have the Mail App open, QUIT it.

Next login to https://www.gmail.com with your web browser.

Then go into Settings from the menu shown below.

Next, click on the Inbox Tab, and make your settings look like the ones shown below.

Then move on to the Labels tab, and make your settings for Important and Chats look like the ones below; also, under Categories, copy the settings shown. Leave everything else as-is.

That's it. The next time you open your Mail App, it will sync-in these changes, and the extra mailboxes and categories will go away (depending on how much mail you handle, this can take minutes to hours). Afterwards, your Mail app should perform much better.