You’ve got too much mail!

Email has been known to stress out some members of Generation Z and others who favour the immediacy of chat apps over a teeming inbox. But the old electronic postal system still has its fans, who may prefer its slowness. Many apps include shortcuts to streamline the mail handling, so if you often plow through your inbox on your phone, here are a few of those timesavers for Google’s Gmail and Apple’s iOS Mail.

Filing or dumping messages quickly lets you take command of your inbox right away — and you can do that with your thumb, thanks to the “swipe” controls in the app. For example, you can assign one action (like “flag”) to a leftward swipe and pick another (like “archive”) for your rightward swipe. Delete is always an option. In the Gmail app for Android, tap the menu icon in the upper-left corner, select Settings, and choose Swipe actions. Tap the Change button to select an action for both the left and the right swipe motion.

To set up your swipe actions in iOS Mail, tap the Settings icon on the iPhone’s home screen, select Mail, and then choose Swipe Options. Choose the action you want to assign to the Swipe Left and Swipe Right functions.