Rules and custom bundles

Inbox let you make a bundle of your own and give it rules: "add emails from this sender", "add emails with these words". Under the hood those rules were Gmail filters that applied a label, and the bundle was that label. Inbox Reborn works the same way, with Gmail's own filters as the rules.

The recipe

1. Create a label in Gmail for the bundle: Receipts, Newsletters, School, a project name. Gmail's left menu → More → Create new label.

2. Create a filter that applies the label. Settings → Filters and Blocked Addresses → Create a new filter. Describe the mail: a sender, several senders joined with OR, a subject, words in the body, a list address.

   From: auto-confirm@amazon.com OR service@paypal.com OR transaction@etsy.com

   Click Create filter, tick Apply the label and choose yours, tick Also apply filter to matching conversations to label what's already there, and Create filter.

   Don't tick "Skip the Inbox"

   Bundles are built from inbox mail. A filter that archives the mail keeps it out of the bundle. Leave it in the inbox and let the bundle fold it away.

3. Drag the label up from Unbundled into Bundled in the inbox in the left menu. When asked, choose Move to inbox to bring the label's archived mail into the bundle, or Cancel to start the bundle with new mail only. See what moves when you drag.

From then on the filter labels mail as it arrives and the bundle takes care of itself, on every device: the label and the filter are Gmail's, so your phone shows the same labeled mail, just as rows.

Rules for an Unbundled label

Rules and bundling are independent. A label in Unbundled can have as many filters feeding it as you like; its mail simply shows one email at a time, with the label's chip, instead of folding into a bundle. The drag between the sections is the only thing that decides which of the two happens.

So "rules for an Unbundled label" is just a Gmail filter whose action is Apply the label, set up exactly as in step 2 above. The common patterns:

You want…	Filter
A sender's mail under a label, shown as rows	From: the sender → Apply the label
A sender's mail under a label, out of the inbox entirely	From: the sender → Apply the label and Skip the Inbox (it will never bundle)
A sender out of Updates or Forums, shown as a plain row	From: the sender → Categorize as: Primary (see Gmail's categories)
A sender into a different category's bundle	From: the sender → Categorize as: Updates (or Social, Promotions, Forums)

Recreating Inbox's own bundles

Travel, Purchases, Finance, Social, Updates, Forums and Promotions are already there; Gmail sorts into them for you (see Gmail's categories). If you'd rather decide yourself what counts as a purchase, make a label with a different name, such as Receipts, feed it with a filter as above, and drag it up. Gmail reserves the names Travel, Purchases and the other category names, and your own labels always get the stacked-envelopes bundle icon.

Tips

• Several senders, one rule: join addresses with OR in the From field, or use a domain: @amazon.com.
• Filter on the list address for mailing lists: list: in Has the words, for example list:news.example.com.
• Test before you commit: type the same words in Gmail's search box first. The filter matches exactly what the search finds.
• Edit later: Settings → Filters and Blocked Addresses lists every rule, with edit and delete next to each.