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Nov 11, 2024

Gmail for Android is picking up a long-overdue feature

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The Gmail app on Android has pretty much everything you can ask for. In addition to doing the basics, the email client has also been supercharged with AI features courtesy of Google Gemini. But away from AI-related additions, the Gmail app continues to test other functionality aimed to benefit all users. Similarly, a recent report detailed how Gmail could add new search filters to sort emails by recency or relevancy. Google has now started rolling out this feature to some Gmail app users.

My ultimate rulebook to tame the Gmail inbox

Android Police and APKMirror founder Artem Russakovskii shared the good news on X/Twitter and a screenshot for our reference. Android Authority contributor AssembleDebug first revealed this feature's existence as part of an APK teardown in late October, and it appears to be reaching devices already. However, I'm not seeing the new filters on my devices, so there's likely a server-side element involved.

The previous search results page vs the updated version

As you can see from the second screenshot above, the newly added sort filters will appear just under the carousel of existing filters (Labels, From, To, Attachment, Date, Is unread, and Exclude calendar updates). It effectively replaces the Top results section, which shows a few emails relevant to the query, and the Results in Mail section, containing the rest of the results in reverse chronological order.

Tapping the filter opens a menu that lets you select either Most recent or Most relevant, with the selection also indicated at the top, so you always know which filter is applied. It's a little hard to believe that an option like this didn't exist already, but it's better late than never, as the saying goes.

When the feature is live, users will see an onscreen pop-up explaining what the filter does, as revealed by Android Authority's APK teardown last month. I'm already seeing these new filters on the web version of Gmail, so it shouldn't be long before they appear on the Gmail mobile apps globally.

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