Filtering messages in Gmail using contact groups/labels

Question

So I get a lot of mails from recruiters.

To begin with I created a filter with tests for all the domains of all the agencies who mail me, this filter expression is getting unmanageable.

What I would like to do is create contacts for all my recruiters, apply a label/category to those contacts, and then write a filter that says if the sender is a contact with this label-category then apply a label-category to the email.

However I can't see an easy way to write the expression to test the label-cat.

Answer 1

There is no Easy Way

You cannot do what you want directly from within Gmail's GUI.

Your existing approach maintaining a filter with a list of mail domains (or emails, or names) is the way to do it in Gmail. Keep it as short as possible.

e.g.

from:({recruiter.com yournextopp.com getajob.com})

rather than

from:(recruiter.com) OR from:(yournextopp.com) OR from:(getajob.com)

You can do more complex tasks by creating a Google App Script (script.google.com) if you have some coding experience.