Gmail's better ways to label with "Move to" and auto-complete

When Gmail launched with labels as the only way of organizing emails, it kicked off a big folder vs label debate. Folder had been the de facto way of organizing emails before Gmail.

I have been on the label side of the debate for the following reasons.

1) Multiple labels can be assigned to any one email making it easy to tag emails. eg. you can attach several labels to email like todo, reference, later etc.
2) Labels are easy to search with Gmails' label search using in:label search.
3) Emails are not stored in more than one place as with folders. With folders, a copy is stored in each of the folders if an email needs to be stored in more than one folder.
4) With time, Google has added colours to labels making them easy to distinguish and more usable.

But as the features continue to grow, the complexity of managing the labels has also grown.

For example if you need to add a label to a mail you have to
a) select the email to be labeled
b) click on the actions drop down
c) and then choose a label.

3 Clicks and some scrolling in total for an email or group of emails. Imagine applying 3 labels to 30 emails every day, the situation can become really painful and can statistically speaking become the single most web application responsible for RSI(Repetitive Stress injury)

It can be really cumbersome to do this for 10's of emails every single day. If you also need to archive the emails you have labeled, you will have to follow similar steps or use a keyboard shortcut to do it.

From today Gmail is changing the interface to make these actions easy to do.




There is a Move to drop down which will function as labeling email+ archiving them, moving them out of sight from the inbox with a single action.

Labels now also have a drop down and autocomplete will work which will make applying multiple labels easy. Labels can be applied using shortcut keys. No mouse needed. :)



Another super attempt from Gmail to make using email pain free. Its not available to everyone yet. According to Google it will be rolled out to all the users soon.

Official Gmail announcement about this.

What other activities do you think takes longer than few clicks in Gmail?