Gmail custom filter shortcut

Question

These days I'm getting so many spam emails, so I go to "filter message like this" -> From "sender's id" ->next step -> "Also apply filter to n conversations below" -> create filter.

Above process seems like a waste of time, since it's a general pattern to follow for such mails.

So I was wondering if there is any keyboard shortcut, but it appears there isn't (correct me if I am wrong). So what do you people do in similar situation (to repeat same filtering mechanism) to speed up your access?

Answer 1

You could use a keyboard macro tool like autohotkey (or the simpler texter, based on autohotkey) to define a single keystroke to execute a series of commands like that (see the gmail keyboard shortcuts for how to do the whole sequence with keystrokes & not a mouse - start with "." to get the "More Actions" drop-down).

Yet another way is to create a general filter for emails from certain addresses and each time you want to add another one, just update the one filter instead of creating a new one. That will help prevent filter bloat and keep all the blocked senders on a single rule. I use that method to mark opt-in ads that I want to bulk delete sometime in the future. All the ad sources get a label based on a single rule with lots of From values.

All that being said, I don't think this is really the way you should be dealing with Spam.

It seems to me the best way to deal with Spam is to simply report it as Spam (using the gmail button for that) - then Gmail will figure out how to identify that spam email and do it all for you - and to the benefit of other gmail users, too. Spammers (unlike opt-in advertisers) change their sending addresses faster than most people can build filters, so it's really better to help tune the overall spam filtering system than try to build local, temporary solutions.

Good luck!