Somewhat recently, Gmail started automatically labeling new messages as "Social", "Promotions", "Updates", or "Forums". These labels clash with those that I already have, and Gmail isn't categorizing them right anyway. I want them gone.
Under [gear image]->Configure Inbox, I found "Select tabs to enable". I unchecked everything except for "Primary", which can't be.
Under [gear icon]->Settings->Labels (or [any message]->[label icon]->Manage labels), I can find under "Categories" the undesired labels. I toggled both columns to "hide".
Despite all this, they still appear at the bottom of the label list for each message, and Gmail still tags incoming new messages with them. To properly categorize new messages, I first need to uncheck any of these tags Gmail adds, and then add my own. After unchecking, they're still in the label list:
I want these silly things gone entirely. How can I get rid of them?
Best Answer
A listing of other users expressing (various degrees of) outrage over the same topic can be found here. As before, the accepted solution doesn't work.
However, one person found a temporary solution using Adblock Plus (here, first message on Jun 26 (of 2013, I assume)):
This seems to work for me. It's really regrettable, since the data is still there, the problem is still there, and this is really just a workaround that may break if Google changes the website's underlying code.
Still, in light of the fact that the "correct" solution to the problem doesn't seem to fix anything, there's not much else I can do. This temporary solution is permanent for me, unless Google can fix the underlying problem.