Google is introducing a new Gmail tab, which is designed to help users rid their inbox of unwanted email subscriptions.
Gmail users are beginning to see a “Manage Subscriptions” page that’ll enable users to ditch those pesky newsletter and promotional emails with just an app.
The tab, which is beginning to show up users in the overflow menu, shows all of the lists, which you can tap and then tap again to confirm to unsubscribe to.
I’m currently seeing it on desktop, with the name of the sender, the email address and how many emails you’ve received from them recently. There’s a mail envelope with a minus symbol to the right of the sender. You can see the menu below.
When you click that, you’ll be asked to confirm: “Do you want to stop getting messages from all mailing lists from Starbucks,” by hitting unsubscribe.
In a support page, Google says: “Important: The ability to manage email subscriptions is gradually rolling out and may not be available to you yet.”
“In Gmail, you can manage all your active email subscriptions in one place. When you unsubscribe from a sender in ‘Manage subscriptions’, Gmail unsubscribes you from all active mailing lists related to that sender.
As with the existing option, that shows an ‘Unsubscribe’ button in next to each email itself, the process can usually be completed without opening a browser page. Either way it sure beats the old method of having to click to open each email, scroll all the way to the bottom, click unsubscribe and choose from a thousand reasons why, while the company tries to keep its claws into you via other ‘marketing preferences’.
Google does say it might take a few days for you to stop receiving the messages.
Opinion
Absolutely love this. As soon as I’m done furnishing you with the latest tech news, I’m going to spend half an hour quickly unsubscribing to all of those distracting newsletters that clog up the inbox. Sweet catharsis! To be fair to Google it has done an excellent job of categorising these emails so you don’t see them within the main inbox, but the option to get rid of them with a simple click is too good to turn down.
