Scheduling emails, protecting sensitive information or temporarily clearing your inbox - all of these tools already exist inside Gmail. They are simply easy to overlook.

Most of these features are tucked behind small icons or buried within dropdown menus. Once you know where to find them, they are straightforward to use. Yet Gmail rarely draws attention to them, leaving many users to explore only the surface of this familiar email service.

Below are five Gmail features worth knowing, along with clear instructions on how to access them and make the most of your inbox.

Protect sensitive information with Confidential Mode

Confidential Mode allows you to tightly control what recipients can do with your email.

To use it, compose your email as usual. At the bottom of the compose window, look for the padlock icon with a small clock. Click it to open Confidential Mode settings.

Here, you can set an expiration date for the email, ranging from one day to as long as five years. After that time, the message content will no longer be accessible.

You can also require recipients to enter a verification code sent via SMS before opening the email, adding an extra layer of security. When enabling this option, you must provide the recipient’s phone number so Gmail can deliver the code.

Once sent, the email arrives with the selected restrictions in place. Recipients can read the content, but forwarding, copying, printing and downloading are disabled.

When the expiration date passes, the message content automatically disappears from their inbox.

Send emails at the right time with Schedule Send

Composing emails late at night or very early in the morning can create awkward situations. Sending immediately might disturb others or reveal irregular work hours. Waiting to send manually later often leads to forgetting altogether.

Gmail’s Schedule Send feature solves this neatly.

After finishing your email, instead of clicking Send, select the small arrow next to the Send button. From the menu that appears, choose Schedule Send and select your preferred time.

You can edit or cancel a scheduled email anytime before it is sent by opening the Scheduled folder and making adjustments there.

Temporarily clear your inbox with Snooze

Snooze allows you to temporarily remove emails from your inbox and bring them back at a time you choose.

While viewing an email, look for the small clock icon in the top toolbar. If it does not appear immediately, click the three-dot menu and select “Switch to advanced toolbar.”

Click the clock icon and Gmail will suggest quick options such as Later today, Tomorrow, This weekend or Next week. If none fit your needs, select Pick date & time to set a specific moment.

Snoozed emails disappear from the inbox and move to the Snoozed folder. At the scheduled time, Gmail automatically returns them to the top of your inbox as if they had just arrived. You can snooze the same email multiple times if necessary.

Automatically connect Gmail with Google Calendar

Flight confirmations, restaurant reservations and medical appointments often require you to manually enter details into your calendar. Gmail can handle this automatically.

This integration feature detects dates, times and locations in emails and creates corresponding events in Google Calendar.

If events are not appearing, the feature may not be enabled.

Open Google Calendar, click the gear icon in the upper right corner and select Settings. In the left sidebar, go to Events settings and check the box labeled “Show events automatically created by Gmail in my calendar.”

Once activated, Gmail will scan incoming emails and automatically add related events to your calendar.

Process emails faster with Auto-advance

Checking email repeatedly can be exhausting. You open a message, read it, archive or delete it, return to the inbox, select the next one and repeat the cycle dozens of times a day.

Auto-advance removes this extra step.

Instead of returning to the inbox after each action, Gmail automatically opens the next email. You can process messages in a continuous flow without interruption, significantly reducing distractions.

To enable it, open Gmail, click the gear icon and choose See all settings. In the Advanced tab, locate Auto-advance, select Enable and save changes.

Then return to the General tab, scroll to the Auto-advance section and choose whether to move to the newer or older conversation after each action. Save the settings again.

Once activated, managing your inbox becomes noticeably faster and smoother - a small adjustment that makes a meaningful difference in daily productivity.

Hai Phong