How to get Gmail's Priority Inbox on your mobile device

Gmail's new Priority Inbox feature has revolutionized how many people deal with their email. Unfortunately, you may have noticed that it's only available on the standard desktop version of Gmail in your browser. Well, that's not entirely true.

Priority Inbox works based on a label called "Important" that Gmail's priority algorithm applies to messages it considers important. Just like you can compose a Gmail search that will include items in your inbox or starred items by using the in:inbox or in:starred search operators, you can include items that Google's algorithm considers important by including in:important.

On your iPhone you can go to the mobile version of Gmail in Safari, and compose the following search:

in:inbox in:important 

This is the basic criteria for what Gmail shows you in the top Important pane in desktop Gmail when using Priority Inbox. Once you've run the search, tap the + button at the bottom of the iPhone's screen, and choose Add to Home Screen. Voila, you've now got one-tap access to your Priority Inbox on your iPhone.

You can actually get access to the Important label as an IMAP folder on any IMAP-capable mail client including those on mobile devices, but because there isn't a way to compose a search query on mail clients that says, "show me messages that are both in the Inbox and the Important folder" you can't really create the same effect. But if your goal is simply to see what Priority Inbox deems important, this might be a worthwhile option.

Tags: email, gmail, important, inbox, iphone, priority inbox, PriorityInbox, search operators, SearchOperators