Handle helps you direct your attention to the right thing at the right time, whether you’re on your mobile Handle app or on your computer using our Chrome Handlebar extension with Gmail. (Support for more browsers is in our plans.)
But you may not know that Gmail has many built-in shortcuts that can help you navigate and take action on emails even more quickly while you use the Handlebar. We are planning on adding specific Handlebar shortcuts later. Right now, you can use the 't' key when you have an email open in Gmail on your computer, and the Handlebar will create a to-do from that email.
Here’s a quick guide to the most essential of these Gmail features.
First, by default, most of your keyboard shortcuts are turned off. To turn them all on, go to the Gmail settings gearwheel > General > Keyboard Shortcuts > turn shortcuts On.
If you’ve just typed in the Handlebar, to use any Gmail shortcut you need to click anywhere on the Gmail side of the window.
Once you’re in an email inside of Gmail, shortcuts give you many fast ways to act.
Move through your emails: Press ‘j’ to go forward, and ‘k to go backward
Move up and down inside of a conversation: Press ‘n’ for next, and ‘p’ for previous, and then press ‘enter’.
Reply to an open email: hit ‘r’. For reply-all, press ‘a’.
Forward an open email: Press ‘f’.
Archive your conversation: Press ‘e’ or ‘y’
Delete your conversation: Press ‘#’
Label the email or conversation you’re in: Press ‘l’
Compose a new email - Press ‘c’
Go back to your previous list of emails, search results, or conversations: Press ‘u’. You can also go directly to the inbox by typing ‘g’ then ‘i’.
Go to the search window: Press ‘/’
Find emails from a certain sender: In the search windows, type “from:person@example.com.” Learn other useful search operators here.
Select and mark multiple emails to take action on: Use ‘x’ to tick the checkbox next to every email. Note the thin horizontal marker just to the left of the checkbox that shows you the email you’re currently acting on.
To select all mail in your view, type ‘*’ then ‘a’.
There are many additional Gmail keyboard shortcuts - you can find Google's own master list by Googling for it - but these are the one's you'll keep coming back to.