Jason Unger

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Check out what happened to a recent Google Calendar reminder I got for an upcoming meeting:

Because Gmail thinks that these automated reminders (from calendar-notification@google.com) are phishing emails, it removes the ability to click on any of the links. This prevents you from unsubscribing to the notifications and checking out more event details.

Gmail also throws these messages into your spam folder, making it pretty useless as a reminder.

Google: left hand, meet right hand.

Why doesn't Google allow you to create an "unread" label for easy access in Gmail?

It's one of those "hidden labels" that Google uses, but doesn't allow you to actually access without typing into the search bar.

There are workarounds, but they're not ideal.

I use Gmail for everything. It's my personal email. It's my business email. It's my work email. I probably have 5 or 6 Gmail accounts.

So it actually IS a big deal that I have to type in "label:unread" into my search bar every time I need to find the emails I haven't read yet.

I understand that Google would rather have you archive your read emails and only keep unread emails in your inbox, but that's not how I manage my mail.

I read the stuff that is important, then leave the less important stuff unread to do later (I rarely check my starred items, so that doesn't help).

Come on, Google, let me create that unread shortcut. It would make life a lot easier for me.