Grouped mail view

Groups split your message list into sections, so the mail that matters to you the most stays at the top and related messages sit together. For example, you can keep mail from your team in one section, newsletters in another, and everything else below.

You can group your Inbox, any other folder or label, and any saved search. The grouping you choose will stay consistent across different devices or logged in sessions.

The grouped mail view feature is available to customers on all subscription plans. 

• Turning on a ready-made grouping
• Custom groups
  • Suggested groups
  • Writing your own group search
• Editing and disabling groups
• Groups in other folders, labels, and saved searches
• Working with grouped mail
• Keyboard shortcuts

Turning on a ready-made grouping

To group a folder, label, or saved search:

1. Open the folder, label, or saved search you want to group.
2. Click the More menu (⋯) at the top of the message list.
3. Choose Group, then select a grouping.

Three groupings are ready to use:

• By age: Today, Yesterday, This week, This month, Older
• Pinned first: Pinned conversations, then everything else
• Unread first: Unread conversations, then everything else

Custom groups

Custom groups let you decide exactly how your mail is split. Each group is a search, and every conversation that matches goes into that group.

To create a custom group:

1. Open the folder, label, or saved search you want to group.
2. Click the More menu (⋯) at the top of the message list.
3. Choose Group → Custom….
4. Select Add group

From here you can select from our suggested groups, or write your own group search:

Suggested groups

We suggest these options, which cover the most common ways to group mail:

• Pinned: conversations you've pinned
• Unread: conversations with unread messages
• Following: conversations you're following
• Calendar invites: messages with calendar invitations
• VIPs: mail from the contacts you've marked as VIPs
• My organization: mail from anyone at your custom domain (shown only if you use a custom domain with Fastmail)

Writing your own group search

After following the steps above:

1. Select Custom…
2. Give the group a name.
3. Enter a search query, then select Add.

Searches here use the same search operators you use when searching your mail. Some examples:

You can combine operators with AND, OR, and NOT to make a group as narrow or as broad as you need. See Searching your mail for the full list of operators.

Searches here can't search message bodies, so a plain word on its own, like meeting, won't work as a group. Use an operator instead, such as subject:meeting.

If a search query includes something that won't work, we'll let you know which part to change before you save.

Editing and disabling groups

To reorder groups:

1. Open the folder, label, or saved search you want to change.
2. Click the More menu (⋯) at the top of the message list.
3. Choose Group → Custom….
4. Drag groups to reorder them.
5. Select Save.

Note that if a conversation matches more than one group, it appears in the first group that matches.
 

To rename a group or change a search query:

1. Open the folder, label, or saved search you want to change.
2. Click the More menu (⋯) at the top of the message list.
3. Choose Group → Custom….
4. Right click on the ⋯ menu on the right side.
5. Select Edit.
6. Make then necessary changes and select Save.
7. Select Save again.

To delete a group:

1. Open the folder, label, or saved search you want to change.
2. Click the More menu (⋯) at the top of the message list.
3. Choose Group → Custom….
4. Right click on the ⋯ menu on the right side.
5. Select Remove, then select Save.

To go back to an ungrouped view:

1. Open the folder, label, or saved search you want to change.
2. Click the More menu (⋯) at the top of the message list.
3. Then select Group → None.

Groups in other folders, labels, and saved searches

Groups are set separately for each folder, label, and saved search. That means you can split your Inbox into work, notifications, and everything else, while your saved search is grouped by age and your Archive isn't grouped at all.

To set up groups elsewhere, open that folder, label, or saved search and choose Group from the More menu (⋯), just as you would in your Inbox.

Working with grouped mail

Each section has a header showing its name and how many conversations it holds.

• Collapse a section: click its header to hide it. We'll remember which sections you collapsed, so they stay out of the way. Click the header again to expand it.
• Act on a whole section: use Select all in a section header to select every conversation in it, then archive, move, mark as read, or delete them in one go.
• Sort within sections: grouping doesn't replace sorting. Pick any sort order from the More menu (⋯), such as oldest first or by sender, and it applies inside each section.

Groups only change how your message list is laid out. Folder unread counts, badges, and notifications work exactly as before.

Grouping works whether you have conversations on or off. With conversations on, each conversation is placed in a group as a whole; with conversations off, each message is placed in a group individually.

Keyboard shortcuts

With keyboard shortcuts turned on, you can jump between groups without touching the mouse:

The usual J and K still move between conversations within a group, just as when grouping is not enabled.