So this post is a little behind, but I was unaware of a fantastic new Gmail feature until a couple days ago, so I figured others may still be unaware as well.
I use Gmail a lot (multiple times every day), as it’s my main email account. I also have an iPhone that I use Gmail on (multiple times every day). And there’s a part of using Gmail on my iPhone that I royally hated (see where I’m going yet?). Until about six weeks ago, when you deleted an email from your Gmail account in the native Mail app on any iOS device (iPad, iPhone, iPod touch), that email actually got ‘archived’, not deleted. This meant that the email still hung around until you logged into your Gmail account in a browser, found it in your ‘archived emails’, then deleted it from there.
I understand this may not concern most users out there since Google gives you like 7+ Gigs of storage for emails, but I’m a little OCD about that kinda stuff, plus, it definitely does start to pile up especially when you’ve had your Gmail account for many years. Not to mention all those archived emails will show up in any searches you perform in ‘all mail’, thus making it loads more difficult to find a specific email. I disliked this so much, I actually stopped deleting messages from my iPhone for a few months. Then I just started using the web client of Gmail in Mobile Safari on the phone. And finally, what proved to be a pretty decent solution for the longest time, I downloaded the Gmail app from the App Store and did all my deleting, writing, reading, and organizing of emails through that app.
Now, on to the real solution. Finally, at long last, Gmail put a stop to this madness at the beginning of January this year. If you log into your Google Sync account, you can now simply check an option called “Delete Email As Trash”. With that option checked, a message will now be sent to Gmail’s trash when you click the little trash can on you iOS Mail app, instead of being thrown into the archive abyss. Wahoo!!
iPhoneHacks.com provides a little more detail on how to accomplish this. Now my compulsive Gmail usage and native iOS Mail app are working together in harmony and all is well in my world.
