Start Gmail with a page other than Inbox

Currently Gmail does not allow a user to change the folder that is started with. What happens at the moment when you log on is that the first page to be shown to you is the inbox. This may be useful for some people but what if you really want to see your starred folder instead or perhaps a specific label.

Now there is a way to achieve this by linking directly to the page that you want to see. I forward all of my university mail to my Gmail account as it becomes easier to check it in this way. When I am at uni I would like the ability to start Gmail off with my "Uni Mail" label so that I do not have to look at any of the non-uni related emails that I get.

Even better is that if I wish to open each label within a tab then I can also do this with this method. All I would need to do is put all of these in a folder in my bookmarks and using Firefox I would do open the whole folder of links in separate tabs.

So...you must be wondering how this is done. Okay here is the link that you want to bookmark which will give to the starred folder as your initial folder: -

https://mail.google.com/mail/?&ik=&search=starred&view=tl&start=0&init=1&zx=1g852n7uru5m&fs=1

So let us break this down to see exactly what is going on here. The "search" string clearly tells us the starting folder which I have changed from inbox to starred. But what happens if you want to refer to a specific label? The way this can be achieved is to change "starred" to "cat" and then create a new string called "&cat=" followed by the name of your label.

Therefore the link becomes: -

https://mail.google.com/mail/?&ik=&search=cat&cat=insertmylabelhere&view=tl&start=0&init=1&zx=1g852n7uru5m&fs=1

of course you have to change the place I have written "insertmylabelhere" with your specific label. You can include spaces right into the link which will automatically be converted to the "%20" by your browser and will count as a space in your label.

I couldn't actually find a string to do a direct compose, so if anyone knows how to do this then feel free to post the link.

This is a cool method to have multiple views all at once. Especially for those who use their Gmail for "Getting Things Done" and want to check their Gmail account just to reflect on what tasks are left to do and what has been completed.