Skip Your Inbox to Compose Mail with Gmail

If you find yourself checking new emails in your Inbox when your sole purpose was to write an email, this tip will help you skip your Inbox and get to an email Compose Mail page directly.

The whole trick is done by this URL, which you can access if you are logged into your Gmail account:

https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm

The link opens an isolated Compose Mail Gmail page. You can write your email. Then send it or leave it as a Draft.

From here, you have two different options to use it:

• Bookmark the URL.
• Create a Search Engine.. command in Google Chrome. This is explained below.

Create a command in Google Chrome for Compose Mail

To add the command to Google Chrome, right-click the address bar and select Edit Search Engines...

At the bottom of the table named Other search engines table, you can fill the three inputs with something like this:

• Add a new search engine (name): Compose Mail
• Keyword (command): e
• URL with %s in place: https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm

This makes the command totally accessible just with your keyboard. With Google Chrome active, press CMD + L on OS X, CTRL+L on Windows- to go to the address bar, then e. Now press either Enter to Compose Mail in the current tab or press Alt + Enter to open a new tab.

The main purpose of this is to go directly to the Compose Mail without having to open your email Inbox. The bookmark can be used from any desktop browser. In iOS, I found the app Notes to be a good way for sending emails and write drafts also skipping your Inbox.