Gmail Now Lets You Block Specific People

Google on Tuesday finally introduced a block sender feature, which will help you keep your Gmail inbox devoid of messages from people with whom you don't want to converse. The feature is available now on the Web, and will be rolling out to Android over the next week.

Until now, you could only report an email as spam in Gmail. If you took this action more than once, it would essentially function the same as blocking a sender, but there was no easy way to just block someone with the press of a button. That's changing today.

"Sometimes you get mail from someone who's really disruptive," Google Product Manager Sri Harsha Somanchi wrote in a blog post. "Hopefully it doesn't happen often — but when it does, you should be able to say, 'Never see messages from this person again.'"

To block someone just press the "More" button right next to Reply (a down arrow on the Web and three vertical dots on Android) and you'll see an option to block that email address. Once you block the person, any mail they send you from that email address in the future will go to the spam folder. If you and your ex end up working things out, you can always unblock them from your Settings.

Meanwhile, in addition to the new block option, the Gmail unsubscribe button is making its way to Android with this update, letting you opt out of mailing lists directly from the app.

:story: PC Magazine