This app fixes one of Gmail’s biggest shortcomings on Android

One of the workflows of my digital organization involves marking the email that reaches my inbox and archiving it, either manually or through automated filters. On the desktop, Gmail allows me to create these tags and rules, but the Android app lacks this feature, to my disappointment. Every time I’m on my phone and thinking of a new or better way to handle my email, I have to make a mental note and wait until I get back to my office to set it up. Then we met eLabels, a third-party application that collects the hassle of Gmail and offers these simple but unexpected absences of features on Android.

Let’s start by clarifying a few things. ELabels is free with a banner ad at the bottom of some screens. A $ 3.99 Pro Update unlocks an ad-free experience, a dark theme, customizable label colors, access to Gmail system tags (incoming, draft, spam, trash, archiving, etc …) and an unread graphic element per inscription. The application does not require full access to your Gmail inbox, but only to your tags and filters, so it will not be able to read your messages. In terms of permissions, on Android, you only need to access your contacts because it needs to use the Google connection.

Licenses, business functions, dark theme setting, and unread label widget.

Going through the technical details, eLabels is as simple as an application can take. Two bottom tabs let you switch between tags and filters, while the top bar lets you connect and switch between as many Gmail accounts as you want. There you can also search through the app, show / hide specific information and access the settings (basically only the topic and comment sections).

Tags are displayed in the same color and hierarchy as Gmail, so you can analyze them quickly. The user interface is designed in a similar way: pressing a tag opens it (redirecting to the Gmail app), while targeting its left anchored icon displays different options per tag. These include editing (name, color), deleting, adding a sub-tag, modifying its parent in Gmail, and changing its visibility within eLabels. A floating button also allows you to create new tags from scratch. Basically, every tagging feature found in Gmail on the web is replicated here, so you can manage everything as you wish and then go to the Gmail app or web interface to see the fruits of your labor.

Tag options

All your filters are on the second tab and you can easily edit them or create a new one. Most of the desktop options are available so you can add whatever criteria you want (from, to, theme, has the words, has no, size, has attachments) and then select an automated action for it (forward , application highlight, categorize, skip inbox, mark as read, star, delete, never send spam and always / never mark as important). The only thing missing is the ability to apply these changes to existing emails as you can on the web, but this is understandable because eLabels cannot read your email. And because you do not configure filters directly from Gmail but from a third-party application, you can not speed up the process by using the “filters like these” feature on the web. Instead, you need to create and define the rule manually within eLabels. It’s a small inconvenience, but I’m willing to put up with it as long as I can manage my filters on the go, without having to wait until I’m in front of my computer.

Filter options.

This is all that the application aims to do and it does it perfectly, simply, effectively. This is the best compliment I can give him. Maybe one day Gmail will add these features to its native Android app, but until then, we have eLabels as a solution.