Create custom "Smart Folders" in Gmail

Question

At work I am forced to use gmail and tho I'd love to use it with Mail.App I don't want to mix my personal account(s) with work, so I prefer to use the native web gmail. But despite Priority Inbox and such, I still have a hard time finding some emails, probably because of years of muscle memory using Mail.app and smart folders.

I rarely access email in Mail.app from a folder, it's almost always through some sort of smart folder, these are a few of the ones I have:

The question is: how can I create something like this is Gmail, is it even possible?

For example, the yesterday one in Mail.app looks like this:

Any thoughts?

Answer 1

Ok, I have found a way to do this. Turns out that you need 1 Lab and a custom query. Although the result is not exactly the same.

First you need the Quick Links Google Lab by Dan P.

Once you have the lab enabled, you can go ahead and click on the advanced search button:

Which will allow you to create a custom query (albeit way more limited than Apple's Mail, at least you will have some control).

I select Inbox (not interested in archived stuff or deleted or anything like that), then select (for this example) 1 week from Today. And press the blue magnifying glass to perform the search.

After you see the results, click the Add Quick Link from the lab, as seen in the following image:

This will create a dynamic shortcut that will always point to "the last week" instead of fixed dates.

By using other dates and/or combinations you can create the "sense" of Smart Folders to always have a one click filter for your Family emails, and such.