I haven’t organized Gmail in years, and this feature makes it fine

There are two kinds of people: the kind that is constantly cleaning up their email inbox and the kind that never touches it. I fall into the latter camp — I have hundreds of thousands of emails in my Gmail inboxes across multiple accounts. My newest Gmail account has over 55,000 emails in it, and my oldest one has over 100,000 emails in it. None of these are in the trash or archive — I’d rather not waste time with organization and work entirely out of my main inbox. Admittedly, this makes it easy to miss emails or difficult to find information buried in old messages.

Google’s Gemini in Workspace suite aims to use AI to solve some of these daily problems, so I tried it. The experience was both better and worse than I expected. Gemini successfully surfaces information found in your emails, but it won’t necessarily be the most recent data. The chatbot does well with specific queries, but vague requests usually fall flat. Still, the integration with Gmail, Calendar, and Search can perform better than the regular Gmail search function. Here’s what I learned after using Gemini to navigate my Gmails, and whether you should start using it.

Gemini isn’t a replacement for Gmail search

The AI assistant isn’t great at bulk searches or inbox cleaning

Credit: Brady Snyder / MakeUseOf

Gemini is fully integrated with Workspace apps like Gmail. Open the Gmail app on your Android or iOS device, and you’ll see the Gemini sparkle icon floating around near the top of the screen. Where it appears will depend on context, but Gemini will follow you around as you search your inbox, read and reply to incoming messages, and compose new messages of your own. The Gemini sparkle is prominently displayed inside the main Gmail search bar, although you can still use the regular Gmail search function without chatting with AI.

I thought having Gemini in Gmail would help me search my endless stream of emails better, but that wasn’t the case. Gmail’s standard search function is, well, not great. If I search for “MakeUseOf” in my inbox expecting to find our site’s newsletters, that’s not what Gmail returns. Instead, I’ll get every email I’ve ever replied to simply because I have “MakeUseOf” in my signature. That sums up the flaws with Gmail search in a nutshell, and Gemini isn’t any better.

Gemini in Gmail is puzzlingly not designed for bulk searches or organizational tasks, which I find surprising. If I ask Gemini to “Find all my emails from the MakeUseOf newsletter” or “Move all my promotional emails to Trash,” it can’t complete the request. Instead, it returns a response like, “Sure! You can find your emails in Gmail Search.” That’s… not very helpful. Although Gemini let me down for what I was hoping to use it for, it ended up helping me out in a way I didn’t expect.

Gemini pulls info from your emails

While it’s not a search replacement, it’s a search alternative

Gemini isn’t great at searching for your emails, but it is superb at extracting information from your emails. Ask the AI assistant to find a specific email or group a bunch of emails together, and it’ll tell you to use Gmail’s regular search function. To make the most of Gemini in Gmail, you need to reframe your questions. Instead of asking for that email from an online store, ask when that package will be delivered. It won’t find the email for you, but it will answer the question.

For example, I asked Gemini in Gmail when my last package arrived, and it answered with a natural-language response. It also provided the email that it used as a source for its answer. After revealing the Sources list, I can tap the email source to view the original message. Similarly, I can ask Gemini to find my next meeting, and it’ll use a mix of Calendar and Gmail information to answer. For a more complicated test, I asked Gemini to round up a list of online orders that haven’t been delivered yet, and it surprisingly completed the task (based on the information it had in my Gmail.)

Credit: Brady Snyder / MakeUseOf

One potential problem is that your Gmail doesn’t always have the most up-to-date information. It’ll answer your prompts based on the information it has, but that could be outdated. For example, many online stores send confirmation emails when an order is placed or when it ships, but not all of them confirm when that order is delivered. So, Gemini mistakenly listed a few orders in response to my question. Even going back to my prompt about my last package, it wasn’t completely accurate, because this Gmail account isn’t linked to my Amazon account. Gemini didn’t have all the information, so it fell short.

The takeaway is that Gemini will only be as useful as your Gmail inbox — if every important piece of information flows through your emails, it’ll have a rich database of information to pull from. Those that use multiple accounts or knowledge bases might find Gemini’s knowledge to be incorrect or incomplete.

Another perk is that Gemini can do more than just search your inbox. It can also pull information from the web when it makes sense to, which I find really helpful. I asked Gemini in Gmail for the date of Google I/O 2026, as I assumed that information had to have crossed my inbox at some point. Instead of finding it in an email that may or may not have existed, Gemini found the correct information using multiple web sources. It’s a neat fallback when trying to discover publicly accessible information.

Using the main chatbot or individual features like Help me write, Gemini in Gmail can be used to generate the body of a message from scratch.

I have even less of a reason to clean my inbox

I’ve never been one to organize my Gmail, and Gemini makes it fine

Credit: Brady Snyder / MakeUseOf

For many, Gemini in Gmail won’t be a replacement for regular organization and the usual Gmail search function. As someone who was never going to clean up their inbox anyway, it’s enough for me. With a specific prompt, Gemini can be better at extracting information from emails than the regular search tool. While it’s not great at finding specific emails, you can access them as sources after using a thoughtful Gemini prompt. In the future, Google should fix Gmail’s search function — perhaps by infusing AI and Gemini into the experience. Until then, Gemini is better than nothing.

OS

Android

Price model

Free/subscription

Platform

Android/iOS

Gmail is a free email service created by Google that lets people send, receive, and organize email online. It’s now supercharged by Gemini, the company’s AI assistant. You can extract information, generate emails, and more using the Gemini chatbot in the Gmail search bar.