How to Create Email Filters and Rules in Gmail
Gmail calls them filters. Outlook calls the same idea rules. Either way they’re the closest thing email has to a cheat code — set one up in ninety seconds and it quietly sorts your mail for years. Here’s how to build them in Gmail, the recipes worth copying, and the one behaviour that trips up everyone arriving from Outlook.
In Gmail, go to Settings → See all settings → Filters and Blocked Addresses → Create a new filter. Set a condition — usually the sender — then choose actions and select Create filter. The quickest route is from an email you already have: open it, click the three dots, and choose Filter messages like these, which fills the sender in for you. Three things to know: filters run on Google’s servers so they work on every device; you can’t create them from the Gmail phone app; and unlike Outlook rules, if two filters match the same email Gmail applies both.
If you searched for “rules” and ended up here, that’s the first thing to sort out — Gmail has no feature by that name, which is why its help menu comes up empty. The feature is called a filter, and it does exactly what an Outlook rule does.
Everything below is Gmail unless a heading says otherwise, with a short section near the end for Outlook and Apple Mail if that’s what you’re actually using.
Filters, Rules and Labels: Getting the Words Straight
Three terms, and the differences aren’t only cosmetic.
| Term | What it means in Gmail |
|---|---|
| Filter | The actual feature — a condition plus one or more actions, applied automatically to incoming mail. |
| Rule | Not a Gmail term at all. It’s Outlook’s word for the same thing. If you’re hunting for rules, you want filters. |
| Label | Gmail’s answer to a folder — except a message can carry several labels at once, which a file in a folder can’t. |
That last one matters more than it sounds. In Outlook, moving a message into a folder takes it out of the inbox — one message, one place. In Gmail, applying a label moves nothing; the message sits in your inbox and under the label. To get it out of the inbox you have to separately tick skip the inbox, which is really an instruction to remove the Inbox label.
How to Create an Email Filter in Gmail
Three routes to the same screen. The first is much faster and is the one worth learning.
- Open a message from the sender you want to filter.
- Click the three dots at its top right.
- Choose Filter messages like these.
- Gmail fills in the From field — adjust anything else.
- Create filter, tick actions, then Create filter again.
- Gear icon → See all settings.
- Open Filters and Blocked Addresses.
- Click Create a new filter.
- Enter conditions, then Create filter.
- Choose actions and save.
The third route is the Show search options icon at the right of the search bar, which opens the same panel. Worth knowing because it lets you test before committing: fill in your conditions and press Search rather than Create filter, and Gmail shows you exactly which messages match. Ten seconds of checking beats discovering in six weeks that your newsletter filter has been quietly swallowing mail from your accountant.
from:(alice@x.com OR bob@y.com). Capital OR, and the brackets matter. For an exception, use a minus sign: from:@company.com -from:boss@company.com.On the actions screen, don’t miss Also apply filter to matching conversations. Tick it and Gmail retroactively processes everything already in your inbox that matches — it’ll tell you how many messages that is first. Leave it unticked and the filter only touches mail arriving from now on.
Every Action a Gmail Filter Can Take
You can tick several at once, and some combinations work better than others.
| Action | What it actually does |
|---|---|
| Skip the Inbox | Removes the Inbox label — the message goes straight to All Mail. Always pair with a label. |
| Mark as read | No unread badge. Good for automated notifications you review in batches. |
| Star it | Adds a star. Careful combining with Skip the Inbox — you get starred mail you never see. |
| Apply the label | Tags the message. You can create a new label here without leaving the screen. |
| Forward it to | Sends a copy elsewhere. The destination must be verified first under Forwarding and POP/IMAP. |
| Delete it | Straight to Trash, purged after 30 days. Use sparingly. |
| Never send it to Spam | The fix when a legitimate sender keeps getting caught by spam filtering. |
| Always mark it as important | Overrides Gmail’s own guess for Priority Inbox. |
| Never mark it as important | The opposite. Useful for chatty automated senders. |
| Categorise as | Forces the message into Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates or Forums. |
Two traps here. Forwarding needs a verified destination — add and confirm the address under Settings → Forwarding and POP/IMAP before the option will even appear, and there’s a separate lower cap on how many forwarding filters one account can hold. And Star it combined with Skip the Inbox gives you a starred message sitting outside your inbox, which is almost never what anyone means.
How Multiple Filters Interact (The Outlook Trap)
This is the behaviour that surprises people, and it’s a real design difference rather than a quirk.
Outlook processes rules top to bottom and generally stops at the first match — it even has a “stop processing more rules” option. Gmail doesn’t work that way. Filters run in the order they were created, and if two of them match the same message, both sets of actions are applied.
-from:manager@company.com in the From field. Or merge the two into one filter with the combined actions you actually want.There’s no way to reorder filters in Gmail’s interface and no stop-processing option, so your only real control is making sure conditions don’t overlap. When results look strange, the cause is almost always two filters both matching and quietly fighting each other.
Email Filter Recipes Worth Copying
Paste these into the Has the words field, which accepts Gmail’s full search syntax. Each is a filter I’d actually set up, roughly in the order I’d build them.
| Goal | Condition | Actions |
|---|---|---|
| Newsletters out of the inbox | list:* | Skip inbox + label “Reading” |
| Receipts filed for tax time | subject:(receipt OR invoice OR order OR shipped) | Label “Purchases” + mark read |
| Automated alerts, out of the way | from:(noreply OR no-reply OR notifications) | Skip inbox + label + mark read |
| Everything from one client | from:@clientdomain.com | Label with the client name |
| Mail where you’re only CC’d | -to:me | Skip inbox + label “FYI” |
| Big attachments, tagged not moved | larger:10M | Label “Large” only |
| Client PDFs only | from:@client.com has:attachment filename:pdf | Label + star |
| Shopping signups isolated | to:yourname+shop@gmail.com | Skip inbox + label “Shopping” |
| Rescue a sender from spam | from:important@partner.com | Never send to Spam |
| Broad sweep with an exception | from:@company.com -from:boss@company.com | Skip inbox + label |
The plus-address trick in row eight is worth adopting generally. Gmail ignores anything after a + in your address, so yourname+shop@gmail.com reaches you normally but is trivially filterable — and if that address later turns up in spam from somewhere else, you know exactly who leaked it.
Editing, Deleting and Exporting Filters
- Settings → Filters and Blocked Addresses lists them all.
- Edit to change conditions, then Continue, then Update filter.
- Delete removes it — but doesn’t undo anything it already did.
- Blocked senders sit on the same tab, separately from filters.
- Tick the filters you want, then Export at the bottom.
- Gmail produces an XML file.
- In the other account, choose Import filters.
- Select the file, then Create filters.
- Labels the filters reference are created automatically.
Export is genuinely useful and almost nobody knows it exists. It’s the fastest way to set up a new account, keep a personal and a work account in step, or hand a working filter set to a colleague — and it doubles as a backup before you start deleting things.
One thing deletion doesn’t do: reverse its own history. If a filter has been archiving mail for two years, removing it leaves all that mail exactly where it was put. Search the label and re-file manually if you want it back.
Creating Rules in Outlook and Apple Mail
If you’re not in Gmail, the same idea lives in a different place under a different name.
- New Outlook & web: Settings → Mail → Rules → + Add new rule.
- Classic Outlook: File → Manage Rules & Alerts → New Rule.
- Shortcut in both: right-click a message → Rules → Create rule.
- New Outlook can’t create rules for Gmail or Yahoo accounts added to it.
- Classic can run a rule on existing mail; new Outlook can’t.
- On a Mac: Mail → Settings → Rules → Add Rule.
- But those rules stay on that Mac and only run while it’s awake.
- For rules that work on your iPhone, use iCloud.com → Settings → Rules.
- iCloud rules are far more basic — one condition, one action.
- Basic rules that always run beat clever ones that sometimes don’t.
The important difference across all three: where the rule runs. Every Gmail filter runs on Google’s servers, so it works whether or not any device is switched on. Rules made in new Outlook or Outlook on the web are the same. But classic Outlook can create client-only rules that fire solely while Outlook is open, and Apple Mail’s Mac rules are always client-side and never sync to your phone. If a rule works on your desktop but not your mobile, that’s why.
Gmail’s Filter Limits
| Limit | Value | What to do about it |
|---|---|---|
| Filters per account | 1,000 | Google’s API documentation states this cap. Consolidate with OR before you get near it. |
| Forwarding filters | Capped, lower | Combine several senders into one forwarding filter using OR. |
| Conditions per filter | All AND’d | Use OR inside a single field to widen a match. |
| Creating on mobile | Not possible | Use a desktop browser. Existing filters still run. |
A thousand is plenty for most people. The accounts that get close usually have a separate filter per sender rather than per domain — replacing forty filters for forty people at one company with a single from:@company.com filter is tidier and more durable, because it keeps working when someone new joins.
Why a Filter Didn’t Work
| What you’re seeing | Usually because |
|---|---|
| Nothing happened to old emails | You didn’t tick “Also apply filter to matching conversations” — filters only touch new mail by default. |
| The email disappeared entirely | Skip the Inbox with no label. It’s in All Mail — search the sender. |
| Two filters fighting each other | Gmail applies every matching filter. Add a -from: exception to the broader one. |
| Only part of a thread was labelled | Filters act on individual messages, not whole conversations. |
| The message went to Spam anyway | Spam filtering runs before yours. Add “Never send it to Spam”. |
| Forwarding option is greyed out | The destination address hasn’t been verified under Forwarding and POP/IMAP. |
| Filter catches far too much | A single broad keyword. Add a sender condition alongside it. |
| Works on desktop, not on phone (Outlook or Apple Mail) | A client-side rule. Rebuild it server-side — Outlook on the web, or iCloud.com. |
Filters handle what arrives. For what you send, see our guide to adding a signature in Gmail — including why the mobile app keeps a separate one — or browse our free email signature templates.
Frequently Asked Questions
Go to Settings → See all settings → Filters and Blocked Addresses → Create a new filter, set a condition such as the sender’s address, click Create filter, then choose your actions and save. The fastest route is from an email you already have: open it, click the three dots at the top right, and choose Filter messages like these — Gmail fills in the sender for you. A third option is the Show search options icon at the right of the search bar, which lets you test the conditions with a search before committing.
Gmail calls them filters, not rules, which is why searching the help menu for “rules” turns up nothing. The steps are the same: Settings → See all settings → Filters and Blocked Addresses → Create a new filter. If you’re coming from Outlook, two other bits of vocabulary translate as well — Gmail’s labels do the job of Outlook’s folders, and Outlook’s “move to folder” is Gmail’s “apply label plus skip the inbox”, because applying a label alone doesn’t remove a message from your inbox.
Yes, with three differences worth knowing. Gmail calls them filters. Gmail uses labels rather than folders, so applying one doesn’t remove the message from your inbox unless you also tick “skip the inbox”. And where Outlook usually stops at the first matching rule, Gmail applies every filter that matches, with no stop-processing option and no way to reorder them. That last difference causes most of the confusion, because you can’t rely on filter order to resolve conflicts — you need explicit exceptions instead.
No. The Gmail app on Android and iPhone has no interface for creating or editing filters — it isn’t hidden in a menu, it genuinely isn’t there. You need a desktop browser at mail.google.com. Filters you’ve already created do work on mobile, because they run on Google’s servers rather than on any device, so this only affects the setup step. A practical workaround is to star anything you spot on your phone that needs a filter and handle the batch next time you’re at a computer.
Not unless you ask. Filters normally only affect new incoming mail. To apply one retroactively, tick Also apply filter to matching conversations on the actions screen before saving — Gmail will tell you how many existing messages it’s about to affect. This is how you clear a backlog of a few thousand newsletters in one click. If you’ve already saved the filter without ticking it, edit the filter and the option appears again when you re-save.
Almost certainly a filter that skips the inbox without applying a label. The mail isn’t deleted — it’s in All Mail — but with nothing tagging it there’s no obvious way to find it. Search for the sender and it’ll come back. Then edit the filter to add a label. As a rule, never combine “skip the inbox” with no label, and think twice before letting any filter delete automatically, since Trash is purged after 30 days.
Both run. Gmail applies every filter whose conditions match, in the order the filters were created, and there’s no “stop processing” option or way to reorder them. This can produce odd results — one filter stars a message while another archives it, so you end up with starred mail you never see. If a filter behaves strangely, look for a second one that also matches. The fix is either an exception in the broader filter, such as -from:boss@company.com, or merging the two into a single filter with the actions you actually want.
Google’s own API documentation puts the maximum at 1,000 filters per account, with a separate and lower cap on filters that forward to another address. Most people never come close. Accounts that do are usually running one filter per sender rather than per domain — replacing forty filters for forty colleagues at one company with a single from:@company.com filter is tidier and keeps working when someone new joins. Combining senders with OR inside one filter is the other way to consolidate.
Yes, and it’s the most underused feature on the page. In Settings → Filters and Blocked Addresses, tick the filters you want and click Export at the bottom — Gmail generates an XML file. In the destination account, open the same tab, choose Import filters, select the file and click Create filters. Any labels the filters reference are created automatically. It’s the fastest way to set up a new account, keep a personal and work account in step, or hand a working set to a colleague, and it doubles as a backup before you start deleting things.
The Bottom Line
Gmail’s rules are called filters, they live under Settings → Filters and Blocked Addresses, and the quickest way to build one is from an email you’ve already got. Because they run on Google’s servers, they work identically on every device — you just can’t create them from the phone app.
Two habits spare you most of the trouble. Always pair “skip the inbox” with a label, or mail disappears into All Mail with nothing to find it by. And remember that every matching filter runs, not just the first — so when something behaves oddly, there’s usually a second filter you’d forgotten about.