A messy inbox is a problem that everyone faces. There’s just too much email. I was the same with a deluge of emails dropping in every day.
Now, it’s not because I’m unusually busy. Instead, the reason is simple. Pretty much everything lands in the same spot. Be it newsletters, receipts, sign-up emails, work queries, download links, and, of course, actual correspondence.
Filters help, and so do labels, but both need a significant amount of effort upfront and constant maintenance.
That changed when I started using a simple feature built into Gmail that most people either forget exists or don’t know about.
It’s called plus addressing, and it’s rarely, if ever, addressed by Google. But after you start using it deliberately, it easily restructures how your inbox works without adding any complexity or cognitive overhead.
Here’s everything you need to know.
Newsletters, without the inbox clutter
Moving clutter out of the main inbox
Here’s the basic idea, and it is deceptively simple.
If your email is something like yourname@gmail.com, you can add a + followed by anything before the @, and Gmail will still deliver the email to your inbox.
So, yourname+shopping@gmail.com and yourname+newsletters@gmail.com end up in the same inbox.
Now, you might be wondering if it all lands in the same inbox anyway, how does it solve the problem of an overflowing inbox? That’s where it gets fun.
This might sound like a small trick on the surface, but in practice, it is a whole system. Here’s how I use it.
I don’t want order confirmations cluttering my main inbox, but I still want easy access to them to review past transactions.
So anything sent to the +shopping tag is labeled and archived automatically. It skips the main inbox but remains searchable, and when I want to dive into past transactions, I can drop into that specific label.
The same goes for newsletters. I subscribe to too many of them and rarely unsubscribe. Instead, I route them into a separate label using the +newsletters tag.
This way, when I have time, I can go to a specific folder and review my newsletters without them clogging up my entire inbox.
It solves a very specific kind of problem that filters alone can’t. Most filters tend to rely on the sender’s email address or the subject line. Predictably, this can change over time.
However, if the send-to email address has been pre-defined using a plus code, the filter can’t falter. It works like a fail-safe, and there’s a lot of reliability built into it.
If you want to get into the weeds, using plus codes also helps you identify where your email address might be getting leaked.
Let’s say you signed up for a service using yourname+label@gmail.com and later started receiving spam emails addressed to that exact variation. You’ll know exactly where it originated. It’s a simple way to trace leaks without any extra tools.
Finally, if you want to dabble with one-time interactions, like a one-off download locked behind an email page, you can use plus codes. I’ll often use a temporary tag, like +temp or +download. These emails go straight to the trash after their initial use is done.
When combined, these plus codes have helped massively reduce clutter in my email inbox. The bulk of my email is now automatically sorted out.
Organizing email even before it arrives
A cleaner alternative to multiple inboxes
As cool as the feature is, it’s interesting to note just how old it is. Plus, addressing has been around for years. It’s not something recently added, certainly not something that’s actively promoted by Google, and it hasn’t changed all that much.
Not that I’m complaining, as it works perfectly well as is. Additionally, it solves a problem that newer tools often address by taking control of your inbox.
Be it tools that offer smart categorization, AI prioritization, or automatic grouping, they require access to your Gmail account. I’m not comfortable with it.
Plus, these tools are all reactive. Using plus codes and labels is proactive and lets you define your intent even when giving out your email address.
When you sign up for something, you already have a good idea of the kind of emails you’re going to get. Be it invoices, newsletters, or notifications, defining tags with plus codes.
Giving an appropriate email address ensures that these emails go into their own separate inboxes without cluttering your main email inbox.
Sure, you can always create multiple email addresses to solve the same issue, but that comes with a different set of problems. Between multiple logins, scattered emails, and history, it is way more complicated than it should be.
This minor change in workflow completely cleans up your inbox
The best part is that the feature is easy to integrate as part of your setup.
Signing up for a new service, and want to create a distinct label for it? No need to do anything. Just use a plus tag while signing up. It’ll immediately start working. You can set up labels and filters later on.
If you are drowning in email spam, this one trick might be the simplest way to fix your inbox.
