Today as I was looking through some of the options available in GMail labs and I came across this – Preview Pane. Its basically like the preview pane you get in Outlook or Thunderbird but with a small twist. You get to see the entire list of conversation happening and it also  seems to update quite easily when a new reply is received.

I am posting here a couple of screenshots I took from my email account. To enable this option, go to options on top right corner and click on “Labs” option. Scroll down to Preview Pane and click on ‘Enable’, save the changes and when you go back to your inbox, you see the Preview Pane option enabled on the top right side of your inbox.

Preview Pane available in Gmail Labs

Gmail Preview Pane in Vertical Mode

Gmail Preview Pane in Horizontal Mode

You can also remove the preview pane option by click on ‘No Split’. You can also set a 3-second “Mark as read” option enabled via Gmail Lab settings according to its official blog.

In my opinion, if you try it using the vertical pane it looks ugly and difficult to navigate through. However, if you use the horizontal split, it works nicely. You can also drag around the split around to keep a view on recent emails and the thread it displays to your comfort level.

Check out the a simple screen cast I made for Gmail’s Preview Pane option:

I find this option to be extremely useful. Go ahead and give this a try and share your thoughts on this in our comments section.

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