Google has announced a new feature called “search chips” for Gmail. The feature lets you sort and filter search results by providing relevant filter suggestions. They show in the form of search chips under the search field.
This has only been possible by typing in search filters. Where you could counter guess until you finally find what you’re looking for. Or use the drop-down box to perform an advanced search.
With the search chips, there are now a variety of filters available, including those that will help you narrow down emails by sender. whether or not emails have an attachment, by time frame, and more. You can also use the new filters to exclude certain types of search results. For example, those that are calendar updates or chats. For example, you can specify emails by attachment types, such as text, spreadsheet or PDF.
The filters can be used in combination, helping you to narrow down searches as you go. For instance, you could search an email with a colleague’s name, which included a PDF, sent last month, using just a few clicks on the filters.
Google points out that this new feature can be used to easily narrow down your search results by setting various constraints like the type of attachment, calendar invites, or a timeframe within which the conversation must have happened.
“We have heard from our users that searching in Gmail could be faster and more intuitive. With search chips, you can easily refine your search results and find what you’re looking for faster. Without needing to sort through irrelevant returns or use search operators”, wrote the company in a blog post.
Currently, the Gmail search chips will be rolling out for Gsuite users. Maybe later roll out to the rest of Gmail. The rollout might take up to 15 days to fully be functional.
Once available the feature will be enabled by default and hence, you will not have to do any tweaking to get Gmail search chips.