How to: Search gMail WITHOUT Opening Inbox

search gmail without opening inbox

Hello everyone – this is a follow up gMail “hack” which can dramatically increase your productivity.(the first post was how to send an email without opening gMail inbox)

Premise: Seeing your inbox is distracting & often forces you to forget what you went in there for in the first place. <– That’s happened to make at least 2734928398 times.

Solution: Search gMail inbox WITHOUT opening gMail inbox!

 

BONUS: You can also do this with Google Drive.. here’s how… (SETUP)

  1. In Google Chrome browser, open settings (CMD + ,)
  2. Click “Manage Search Engines…”
  3. Scroll to the bottom where there is a blank text box with grey’d out writing “Add a new search engine”
  4. Enter “GMAIL” in the left box
  5. Enter “gmail.com” in the center box
  6. Enter “https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/%s” into the right box

Now, how to use it… (USAGE)

  1. Open a new tab (CMD + t)
  2. Start typing “gmail.com”
  3. After several characters (or typing the whole thing), press TAB
  4. You should see “Search GMAIL” in a blue box on the left of the address bar
  5. Type the keyword you want to search and press enter

DONE!

That’s how to search gmail without opening your inbox…

To do the same thing with Google Drive, replace step 4, 5, and 6 in the first set of instructions (SETUP) with the following, respectively:

  • DRIVE
  • drive.google.com
  • https://drive.google.com/#search/%s

Then, in step 2 of the second set of instructions (USEAGE), replace “gmail.com” with “drive.google.com”

Simple as that – Now you can search Google Drive without opening “My Drive” and getting confused / forgetting what you went in there for in the first place!

I know these two tricks have saved me a whole lot of time & heartburn, hope they do the same for you!