Your mailbox & folders

Your mailbox keeps mail organized into standard folders you'll recognize from any email app. Folders are maintained for you — new mail lands in the inbox, suspected junk goes to Spam, and deleted messages move to Trash before they're removed.

The folders

Everything in the sidebar is set up for you. There is nothing to create, name or arrange before you can start reading your mail.

Folders and views

Ten entries, but they are not ten separate places. Knowing which is which explains why a message can appear in two of them at once:

• Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Scheduled, Spam and Trash are real folders. A message sits in exactly one of them at a time, and moving it to another takes it out of the first.
• All Mail, Unread and Starred are views. They gather messages that are already somewhere else, so opening a starred message in Starred is opening the same message that is still sitting in your inbox.
• Starring or reading changes nothing about where a message lives. Star a message and it joins the Starred view while staying exactly where it was; read it and it leaves the Unread view the same way.
• Snoozed sits between the two. A snoozed message is genuinely out of the inbox until its time comes round, then returns on its own — the queue is checked every minute, so it reappears within about a minute of when you asked for it.

What the numbers mean

The number beside a folder does not count the same thing everywhere, which is the single most common source of confusion in the sidebar:

• Inbox counts unread messages only. An inbox holding four hundred messages with everything read shows no number at all. This is deliberate — the number is there to tell you whether anything needs you, not how much mail you own.
• Every other folder counts everything in it. Sent, Drafts, Spam and Trash show how many messages are there, read or not.
• Snoozed and Scheduled carry no number. Both hold messages waiting on a clock rather than on you, so there is nothing to act on until their time arrives.
• The storage meter sits at the foot of the sidebar, showing what your mailbox has used against what your plan allows. See Storage & usage.
• Folders you never use can be hidden. Under Settings → Labels, the system labels section lets you drop any of them out of the sidebar — see Labels.

Quick views

Above the message list is a row of four tabs — Primary, All Mail, Starred and Sent:

• Primary is your inbox under a different name, so the first tab and the first sidebar entry show the same mail.
• They are shortcuts, not filters. Each tab shows exactly what the matching sidebar entry shows; they sit above the list so the places people switch between most are one click apart.
• The sidebar still has everything. Drafts, Scheduled, Snoozed, Spam, Trash and Unread are reached from there.

Reading a message

• Choose a message to open it. The list stays beside it, so you can move straight on to the next one.
• Replies are grouped into one conversation, with the most recent message open and the earlier ones collapsed above it. Choose any of them to expand it.
• Opening marks it read, which removes it from the Unread view and takes it off the inbox count. Sent, Drafts and Scheduled are exempt, since those are your own messages.
• The toolbar above the message acts on what you are reading — reply, forward, star, snooze, report spam or delete. See Organizing your inbox for what each one does, and Replies, forwards & threads for how conversations are put together.

When new mail arrives

• Mail appears on its own. NevTan Mail holds a live connection to the server, so new messages arrive in the list without a refresh and without you watching for them.
• A brief notice tells you how many came in, which is the useful part when several land at once while you are reading something else.
• New rows are marked in the list, so you can pick out what arrived while you were away from what was already there.

How long messages are kept

• Mail you keep is kept. Nothing in your inbox or your own folders is removed on a timer — only storage limits apply. See Your mailbox is full.
• Trash is emptied after 30 days. Deleted messages stay recoverable until then, and are permanently removed afterwards.
• The clear-out runs once a day, so a message is removed on the next sweep after it turns 30 days old rather than to the minute. A message a little past 30 days may still be there until the following day.