Gmail is the world's largest email service, and has undoubtedly set the standard for what people expect in terms of ease of use and inbox size.

But that doesn't mean it can't be better.

There are a bunch of apps and plugins floating around the internet that can make your experience using Gmail much more enjoyable and productive.

With these add-ons, you can see when people are tracking your emails, automatically know everything about people who emailed you, send self-destructing emails, and so much more. You can leverage the power of GIFs and even use Gmail like you would WhatsApp.

Check out our list of 16 tools that will turn you into a Gmail pro...

1. Sortd

Sortd is a smart skin for Gmail that transforms your inbox into a set of lists you can customize to fit your workflow. You can change the list names, add as many as you please, and reorder them at will.

Sortd is built around dragging and dropping, and tailoring your inbox to fit your needs is refreshingly simple.

2. Ugly Email

You may not know, but there are now email-tracking tools that make it easy for people to see when you open an email, what you click, and where you're located. To fight these, the Ugly Email Chrome extension shows you when your emails in Gmail are being tracked.

And it starts working before you click anything. Once Ugly Email is installed, a tiny little eye symbol appears next to any email in your inbox that's being tracked.

3. FullContact

This Chrome extension lets you see the social profiles and job titles of everyone who sends you emails. You can read through their tweets, check out their Instagram photos, and browse their Facebook updates.

You can even get detailed information on their organizations, like location, size, and demographics. It works with Google Calendar as well, in case you want to brush up before a meeting.

4. Mixmax

Mixmax is a Chrome extension that is full of useful nuggets. It makes scheduling meetings easy by letting people select times within the email itself, and at the same time tracks when someone has opened the message so you know when to bug them.

It also saves you time with the ability to both schedule emails to be sent later and create one-click email templates.

5. Mailburn

This iPhone app automatically shows you Gmail conversations with real people only. The theory is that you can take care of things like newsletters when you are at your computer, but that you don't want to miss an email from an actual person when you are on the go.

In the app, you see conversations as chats like in WhatsApp, without things like "Show quoted text."

6. Unsubscriber

Unsubscriber for Gmail is an iPhone app with one simple premise: easily allowing you to unsubscribe from mailing lists and newsletters. Simply swipe left to unsubscribe, or swipe right to keep your subscription. Then you can delete unsubscribed emails with a single tap.

7. MailTrack.Io

MailTrack.io is a Chrome extension that lets you know both when your email was sent (with one check mark), and when it was opened (with two check marks). Not only that, but MailTrack.io can tell you when someone has read your email even if the email itself was sent to multiple recipients.

For those who want real-time notifications, MailTrack.io has an option to have pop-up desktop alerts when someone opens one of your emails.

8. Snapmail

Snapmail is a Chrome extension that adds a button next to Gmail's "send" button that you can use to send self-destructing messages. The button encrypts your message and only sends someone a link to it.

Once your recipient follows the link to the message, Snapmail informs them it will self-destruct in 60 seconds. And then it does. Right now, Snapmail only encrypts text content.

9. Gmail Offline

Gmail Offline lets you work in Gmail even when you have no internet connection. This is useful for when your connection is spotty, or you don't want to waste your data by tethering to your phone, but still want to draft some emails.

10. Giphy For Gmail

Giphy, the popular GIF-searching company, has a Chrome extension that puts the power of GIFs straight into your Gmail. If you install the extension, a little rainbow Giphy icon will pop up near your normal formatting icons. And this button will let you insert GIFs into your emails to your heart's content.

11. Dropbox For Gmail

Dropbox for Gmail is a Chrome extension that adds a Dropbox button to Gmail's "Compose." This makes it extremely easy to send Dropbox share links in an email, and allows you to bypass the process of attempting to email large files -- and saves valuable space in your inbox.

12. Boomerang

Boomerang is a plugin that works with Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. It has a lot of great tidbits, but perhaps the most useful is the ability to "send later." You just write a message like you normally would and then use either a calendar picker or text box ("next Monday") to schedule when it will send. You can also set a reminder to yourself if you don't hear back so you know when to follow up.

13. Find Big Mail

If you find you are getting low on space in your Gmail, it's probably because you have a bunch of emails with big attachments cluttering up your inbox. Find Big Mail is a program that scans your account and helps you find the largest files in your inbox. Then it helps you delete them. Poof. In a second, you can cut down the size of your inbox by an insane amount.

14. Wisestamp

Wisestamp is a Chrome extension that helps you customize your signature. You can chose fonts, size, color, and images -- but you can also add in more exotic elements like RSS feeds, and social services like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

15. Send From Gmail

This Chrome extension is for anyone who has ever snorted in frustration when they click on an email icon online and Apple's mail client pops up. With Send from Gmail this will never happen again. It makes a Compose window in Gmail pop up whenever you click an email address on any web page.

16. GrexIt

GrexIt is a Chrome extension that is great for collaborating with coworkers, or anyone else you are working on a project with. With shared labels, if you add a label to any email conversation in your inbox, it shows up in your colleagues inboxes with that label attached. It's particularly good for keeping track of who has what assignment, and sharing emails.

Gmail is a pretty powerful email service, but you can still find all sorts of goodies and extra features in Gmail Labs. The list is pretty massive, so we've narrowed down our 10 favourite Lab features to help increase your email productivity.

Undo send

We've all been there: You spend half an hour writing a strongly worded letter, hit send, and realize you probably shouldn't have done that. Thankfully, Gmail's Undo Send feature — available in Gmail Labs — is there to save you from yourself.

After sending an email, Gmail will wait a predefined number of seconds (5, 10, 20, or 30, configurable in Gmail's settings) before sending. During this period, you can hit the "Undo" button to take back your mistake.

Even if you don't foresee needing it, it's a lot better than yanking out your Ethernet cable, so you might as well keep it around just in case. I use it far more than I'd like to admit.

 

Custom keyboard shortcuts

We love keyboard shortcuts. It's no secret. The shortcuts in Gmail are some of our favorites, allowing you to ninja your way through Gmail with just your keyboard — and they even add a few every once in a while.

However, if you don't find Gmail's default keybindings very intuitive, the Custom Keyboard Shortcuts feature — available in Gmail Labs — lets you customize your own shortcuts from Gmail's Settings page.

 

Preview external services in messages

Gmail has quite a few labs that let you preview things like videos, documents, voicemails, and images in emails if they're sent from certain services. For example, if one of your contacts sends you a message with an address in it, the Google Maps Preview Lab will automatically show you that address on a map.

There are also preview Labs for Google Voice, Yelp, and Picasa if you or your contacts use those services.

 

 

Auto-advance

If you cycle through a lot of messages at once, it's probably really annoying that Gmail takes you back to the inbox whenever you delete, archive, or mute a conversation.

The Auto-advance feature, available in Gmail Labs, lets you choose what Gmail does in this situation, so you can go straight to the next (or previous) email whenever you delete or archive a message.

It's small, but a good time saver and a fix for a pretty big annoyance.

 

 

Unread message icon

Gmail's tabs might light up when you have new messages, but if you want a quick glance at how many unread emails are in your inbox, Gmail Labs' Unread Message Icon will do the trick.

It's perfect for keeping Gmail in a pinned tab, but make sure it doesn't distract you: after all, you shouldn't be answering email as soon as it comes in. So if having it on tempts you to constantly check your inbox, keep it off.

 

 

Send & Archive

Just head into Gmail's General Settings and click the "Show "Send & Archive" button in reply" radio button. From now on, when you're composing an email, you can send your message and archive the thread in one fell swoop-keeping your inbox clean and tidy.

 

 

 

 

Apps search

If you use Google Docs or Google Sites, Apps Search (available in Labs) is a great feature that extends Gmail's search capabilities to those two apps. That way, when you search for something in Gmail, it'll also bring up matching search results from Docs and Sites below the Gmail ones.

That way you can do all your Google-related work in one, consolidated tab.

 

 

Default 'Reply All'

Arguably the most controversial feature of the bunch, this lets you set your default reply action to "Reply All" instead of "Reply". Often, when multiple people are involved in an email thread, one person will break off by accidentally hitting the "Reply" button instead of "Reply All", and then everyone else misses that part of the conversation.

Save yourself from being that person by tweaking this option in Gmail's general settings. On the occasions you want to reply just to one person, you'll still be able to do so by hitting the dropdown menu next to the Reply All button.

 

 

Canned responses

If you find yourself doing a lot of repetitive typing, the Canned Responses lab will save you serious time. Enable it in Gmail Labs, type in the messages you find yourself sending over and over again, and then send them in the future with the click of a button. You can even send them automatically using filters, which makes for a useful vacation responder.

Note also that you can use OS-wide text expansion if you need to do this outside of Gmail — though Gmail's canned responses can be used no matter what computer you're on. They're even available on your phone.