How Does ‘Muting’ Work in Gmail?

gmailmute

My understanding was that when you "muted" a conversation in Gmail, future emails came in but they didn't bring that conversation back into the inbox. I clearly don't understand how this feature works because I just muted a conversation, and archived it, and a new email came in and it shows as unread again.

Best Answer

You are correct. Muting a conversation archives it and any new emails that fall under the conversation (same subject) will skip the inbox and be archived.

I'm guessing you might be stuck on this next part though, as it seems to lessen the value of the feature itself.

Muting a conversation does not normally work if your email is in the To or Cc field. However, there is now a feature in Gmail Labs called Smart Mute that will keep a thread archived as long as your email address was not added to the To or Cc after you clicked Mute.

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As a bit of a spoiler, we tested this last night. I have two email address (which I will call for the sake of example "test1@gmail.com" and "test2@gmail.com"), and then we did this:

To:      Rebecca <Recip@gmail.com>
From:    My Name <test1@gmail.com>
Subject: this is a test
Body:  blah blah whatever

and additionally

To:      Rebecca <Recip@gmail.com>
From:    My Name <test1@gmail.com>
Subject: this is a test
Body:  this should nest under the other

and voila, they nested. No work required. And then we did this:

To:      Rebecca <Recip@gmail.com>
From:    My Name <test2@gmail.com>
Subject: this is a test
Body:  does this nest with the others?

And it didn't nest!

So in other words, two emails from the same sender with the same subject will nest. Two emails from two different addresses with the same subject will not nest.

Gmail “Mute” not working

Could you please search for in:inbox is:unread and let me know if the same messages turn up in that search?

If they do, then the problem is that the message is being delivered to your inbox. Being labeled "Important" can bypass other filters in Gmail. You can control this option on the Inbox tab of your Settings by selecting "Don't override filters."

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