As a basic Android user, you should already be aware of the conventional ways of selecting e-mail messages in Gmail for Android. If you remember correctly, there is a small tiny check-box present at the beginning of each e-mail title in the list view which allows you to select multiple e-mail messages to perform certain operations such as deletion, labeling etc…
However, in my case, I do miss those check-boxes a number of times and that annoys me quite a bit. The reason why it annoys me so bad is when I miss those check-boxes, it opens the email message and then I have to go back select it all over again to repeat the process.
Fortunately, Gmail for Android has an internal setting which allows us to remove the check-boxes completely and replace those criteria with a long selection. The long press and hold simply selects the specific e-mail message once you enable the respective setting from the settings section. Here’s how to do it.
Alternate Way to Select E-mails in Android Gmail
- Open Gmail for Android
- Go to settings
- Under General settings, find an option which says – Hide Check-boxes
- Remove the tick-mark that is present to enable long selection mode
That’s it! Now, you don’t need to worry about opening an e-mail message accidentally while making selection.
PS – You may not find this option on Android devices running Android 4.2.1.
