Most people who search for this want one of four things: mail grouped by who sent it, unread mail at the top, the biggest emails first, or new mail filed away without touching it. Gmail can do all four, but none of them live where you would expect, because Gmail on the web has no sort columns. The message list is always ordered by date.
Everything below is Gmail in a desktop browser unless it says otherwise. We don't cover Outlook, Yahoo or Apple Mail.
What Gmail can and can't sort
| You want to sort by | Built into Gmail? | What to use |
|---|---|---|
| Date, newest first | Yes, the default | Nothing to do |
| Date, oldest first | Yes | The message counter menu |
| Unread, starred or important first | Yes | Inbox type setting |
| Sender | No | Find emails from, or from: search |
| Size | No | larger_than: search, or Google's storage manager |
| Subject | No | subject: search |
| Senders ranked by how much they send | No | A third-party tool |
Sort by date: newest or oldest first
Newest first is the default and you can't turn it off. To flip it, click the message counter at the top right of the inbox, the text that reads something like "1–50 of 2,340", and choose Oldest. You land on the last page, where your oldest mail is. The menu only appears once you have more than one page of mail.
If you want a window of time rather than a direction, search does it better. older_than:1y shows everything over a year old, and after:2025/01/01 before:2025/07/01 shows the first half of 2025. We have a full list of date queries in how to search Gmail by date.
Sort unread, starred or important mail to the top
This is the one real sort option Gmail has, and it's buried. Click the gear icon at the top right, scroll the quick settings panel to Inbox type, and pick one:
- Unread first puts unread mail in its own section at the top, with everything else below.
- Starred first does the same for starred messages.
- Important first uses Gmail's importance markers, the yellow tags it guesses from how you read mail.
- Priority Inbox splits the inbox into sections you can set yourself, such as important and unread, then starred, then everything else.
You can switch back to Default any time and nothing is lost. The Gmail app on your phone has the same setting under Settings, then your account, then Inbox type.
For a one-off look at unread mail, skip the setting and search is:unread. Add in:inbox to ignore unread mail you've already archived.
Sort by sender
Gmail won't order your inbox by sender. What it will do is show you everything from one sender at once, which is usually what people mean.
- Find any message from the sender in your inbox.
- Right-click it and choose Find emails from followed by their name.
- Gmail runs a search for every message from that address, in any label.
Typing from: and the address into the search box does the same, and from:@example.com catches every address at one company. From that results page you can select all, then archive, delete or label the lot.
The gap is ranking. Gmail won't tell you which senders fill most of your inbox. When we built our extension, that was the first screen we made, because it's the question behind most "sort by sender" searches. More on that below.
Sort by size
There's no size column either. Search larger_than:10M to see every message over 10 MB, or open Google's storage manager, which does list your largest Gmail messages biggest first. Both are covered step by step in how to arrange Gmail by size.
Sort by subject
Search subject: followed by a word or phrase, for example subject:invoice or subject:"order confirmation". Gmail already groups replies with the same subject into one conversation, so this mostly helps you gather receipts, bookings or statements that arrive as separate threads.
Sort new mail automatically as it arrives
Sorting after the fact gets old quickly. Filters do it for you on the way in.
- Type a search that matches the mail you want to sort, such as
from:news@example.comorsubject:receipt. - Click the search options icon at the right end of the search box, then Create filter.
- Tick Apply the label and choose or create a label. Labels are how Gmail does folders; how to create folders in Gmail walks through making one.
- Tick Skip the Inbox (Archive it) if you want the mail out of the inbox and only in its label.
- Tick Also apply filter to matching conversations to sort the mail you already have, then click Create filter.
Gmail's inbox tabs (Primary, Promotions, Social, Updates, Forums) are the other automatic sorter, and they need no setup. If mail keeps landing in the wrong tab, Gmail categories not working covers the fixes. If a filter you made isn't firing, see Gmail filters not working.
Two limits worth knowing before you build ten filters. A filter only sorts mail, so a newsletter you filed under "Shopping" still arrives every day and still counts toward your storage. And a label is a tag, so one message can sit under several labels at once. Gmail labels vs folders explains how that plays out.
When sorting isn't the fix
I'm Alec, and I built Gmail Unsubscribe, so weigh this with that in mind. A lot of the mail people sort into labels is mail they never read: retail newsletters, app notifications, lists they joined once to get a discount code. Sorting hides it. Unsubscribing stops it.
Gmail Unsubscribe is a Chrome extension that scans your inbox for subscription senders and lets you sort them by volume, so the senders filling your inbox are at the top of the list. That's the ranking Gmail doesn't give you. The first scan finds about 15 subscription senders on average. For the ones you pick, it unsubscribes using the sender's own mechanism, the RFC 8058 one-click endpoint first, and it can archive their old mail once you're done.
One caveat from our own data: roughly a third of unsubscribe attempts hit senders with no working unsubscribe mechanism. We show those as failed, sender by sender, so you know which ones need a filter or a block instead.
The free plan covers unlimited scans and archiving plus 5 unsubscribes a month. Pro is $35.88 a year for unlimited unsubscribes.
See your subscription senders ranked by how much they send. The scan takes about a minute and runs inside Gmail.
Add to Chrome, freeFrequently asked questions
Can you sort Gmail by sender?
Not as a sort order. Right-click a message and choose Find emails from, or search from: and the address, to see all mail from one sender. Gmail doesn't rank senders by how much they send you.
How do I sort Gmail by oldest first?
Click the message counter at the top right of the inbox and choose Oldest. It only shows up when you have more than one page of mail.
How do I show unread emails first in Gmail?
Gear icon, then Inbox type, then Unread first. For a quick look without changing settings, search is:unread.
How do I sort incoming emails into folders automatically in Gmail?
Create a filter from a search, and set it to apply a label and skip the inbox. Tick "Also apply filter to matching conversations" to sort the mail already there.