Gmail uses several signals to automatically mark your emails as important or not important.
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How Gmail decides which emails are important
Gmail uses several signals to decide which messages to automatically mark as important, including:
- Whom you email, and how often you email them
- Which emails you open
- Which emails you reply to
- Keywords that are in emails you usually read
- Which emails you star, archive, or delete
To see why an email was marked as important, hover over the importance marker .
Note: If an email was marked as important but you don't want it to be, click the importance marker to change it. This also helps Gmail learn which emails you think are important.
See your important emails
Next to emails that Gmail thinks is important, you'll see a yellow Importance marker . If an email hasn't been marked as important, the marker will be empty.
To see all your emails that are marked as important, search Gmail for is:important.
Change your importance marker settings
Don't use past actions to predict which emails are important
- Using a browser, open Gmail. You can't change this setting from the Gmail app, but the settings you choose on your computer will apply to your app too.
- In the top right, click Settings
See all settings.
- Click the Inbox tab.
- In the "Importance markers" section, select Don't use my past actions to predict which messages are important.
- At the bottom of the page, click Save Changes.
Hide importance markers in Gmail
- Using a browser, open Gmail. You can't change this setting from the Gmail app, but the settings you choose on your computer will apply to your app too.
- In the top right, click Settings
- Click the Inbox tab.
- In the "Importance markers" section, select No markers.
- At the bottom of the page, click Save Changes.