How to Disable and Remove Important Labels in Gmail

Depending on the email client you use, you may see every and I do mean ev-er-y single email marked with a bright yellow IMPORTANT  label. It’s maddening to keep unchecking them to only have the next email reappear as important. Again.

Here’s the only fix that works to stop Gmail from marking all emails as important.

If you don’t want emails getting marked as important, go to mail settings > inbox  – disable Importance markers, and then set up a new filter.

Step 1: How to Disable Gmail “Important” Markers 

Label Settings

Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t. If Gmail keeps marking incoming mail as important– even after you’ve manually unchecked it in your email client–move on to Step 2. It works like a charm.

Step 2: How to Set Up a New Filter to Remove Important Markers

1.  Set up a new filter
2.  In  the DOESNT HAVE THE WORDS box type a garbage string eg qwertyuioppoiuytreewq
3.  tick “Never mark Important”.

4.  As you create the filter, make sure to select to have it applied to all matching messages. For Outlook users, that will also empty your Important folder and as it will remain empty as long as the filter is active, and then you can just ignore that folder.

1.

2.

 

3.

 

10 thoughts on “How to Disable and Remove Important Labels in Gmail”

  1. Tried no.1 a number of times but to no avail.

    I didn’t think of doing no.2, excellent workaround – thank you Karen :)

  2. I had already done the things to Disable Gmaill Important markers, and it was working on my browser email. But not on my phone’s Gmail app. I’ve set up sever filters but I didn’t understand how what you suggested would do anything. I was pleasantly surprised when i set it up on my Chrome Gmail account and ran it (which didn’t have any in its Important folder), that on my phone’s Gmail app, all the items in the Important folder just disappeared. Wonderful. Thanks so much!

  3. What an easy solution!

    Hopefully this will give me relief from the “Important” folder

    So simple: every email that does NOT have a string of random letter/numbers will not be marked as “Important”

    Thank you so much.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top